If you’re female, you probably enjoy lively conversations. Since time began, women have loved to chatter.

But, do you realize that talking too much can hurt your relationships with men?

Women like to discuss lots of details, while men typically like to get to the point.

There are, of course, exceptions. We can all name a few chatty men. But, for the most part, women take the prize on verbally overloading listeners.

“My wife talks so much, it makes me dizzy to listen to her,” says a friend of ours we’ll call Vaughn.

“I swear,” Vaughn groans, “I feel like she’s giving me the Chinese water torture.”

Another man we know says his wife’s chatter has caused him to wreck the car. “I’ve had two bad accidents on account of her ceaseless banter,” he insists. “She’s dangerous!”

Most nice men aren’t going to tell their wives, sisters, mothers, or girlfriends to talk less. It wouldn’t be polite. It probably would not be well received either.

“I tried to tell my last girlfriend to cool the endless talk,” says a firefighter we know. “She pummeled me with a string of obscenities. That hurt!”

If you’re female, consider these tips for better conversations:

•Slack up on monologues. Even your female friends don’t want to listen nonstop. Make sure the conversation is a two-way street.

•Give solutions with each problem. For example, if you want to rant about your husband’s messiness, try to kindly slide in a few ways he can help stay organized.

•Use humor to lighten things up. All of us like to gripe sometimes, but don’t overdo it. Interject humor to keep your own mood balanced. Avoid too much drama.

As we speak, we all need to listen to ourselves. How much we bend someone’s ear or how aggravated we sound does matter.

It’s easy to ruin someone’s day with bad conversation. Besides, you can put yourself in a gloom and doom mood.

“Women tend to think men are impermeable to their chatter,” says a therapist we’ll refer to as Jill. “But when some of my female clients tell me what they’ve said to men in their lives, I’m not shocked when the men abandon the relationship!”

Jill adds, “My own mother talks so much when I visit her, it makes my head spin.”

Jill points out that women can use language rather recklessly. “While it feels therapeutic to gripe, groan, moan, and unload on somebody,” Jill says, “we all need to think about how we come across.”

Women need to allow silence during their conversations. Silence allows both parties to relax, think, and bond.

“I’ve noticed that women who talk easily with men feel comfortable not talking,” says Jill. “Men will jump in and share their thoughts, if women create relaxed silence.”

Psychologists say that we each bond with another person when we talk and the other person listens.

By listening more and talking less, a woman can create the opportunity for a man to share his thoughts.

“I stopped filling in all of the conversation on the way to work,” says a wife we’ll call Kim. “My husband and I have been riding together for years. A few months back, I started keeping quieter to see if he’d take up the slack. He did. After 10 years of marriage, I feel like I’m actually getting to know what’s on his mind.”

Judi Hopson and Emma Hopson are authors of a stress management book for paramedics, firefighters and police, Burnout To Balance: EMS Stress. Ted Hagen is a family psychologist.