A Cultural Approach to Male-Female Communication

I found this article very interesting, and it illuminated many problems I have in communication with my boyfriend.
This article focused on the different ways men and woman communicate, and how the culture surrounding each sex influences how they talk.
Woman and girls start learning social communication from an early age. They are taught, though not intentionally, to not control conversation with men. Friendship among girls is based heavily on talk, on sharing secrets, ideas and gossip. Girls learn to subtly control relationships through criticism, disguised insults, and exclusion. They also learn to accurately read another's intentions through their speech, because shared secrets can go wrong if they are delivered into untrustworthy hands.
Men and boys challenge each other more in conversation. They converse to dominate, to assert, and to establish allies.
Woman tend encourage the conversation through sounds such as "mm-hmm" (I'm listening) and asking questions that keep the conversation going. They respond quickly and directly to what others say, and address the speaker. They also discuss problems to gain reassurance and share experiences, not necessarily to gain solutions.
Men, on the other hand, use the mm-hmm sound for agreement, and interpret questions as direct requests for information. They commonly don't reply immediately or at all to what was just spoken, or do so in a uninterested tone. When a woman discusses a problem with them, they interpret it as a request for a solution.

Many of the communication differences of men and woman struck a cord with me. I have been with my boyfriend for 2.5 years, and we have recurring problems in communication that I have attributed to individual problems, not a culture-based sex difference. My boyfriend is constantly feeding me facts and information, and questions I design to simply begin or continue a conversation leads to a long, detailed answer. Not what I was looking for. He often doesn't reply after I finish talking to him, and when pressed for a reply responds with few words and little enthusiasm, though I know he is interested in what I'm saying. We also have conflicts when I come to him with a problem, and he starts going through all the solutions when all I want is comfort and sympathetic words. He also thinks I have agreed with him, when I have simply acknowledged that I hear him.
Though these problems most likely won't disappear after reading this article, I may be more accepting of them since I see them now as not Carl problems, but general man problems :-).