Word Conservation -- Is it Just a Guy Thing?

If a person is making a quilt and seeks input from the Old Curmudgeon, perhaps asking "which do you think I should use, the blue or the green?" the most likely answer is an absentminded "Yes, dear." Infuriating as this is, the quilt-making person, being an optimist, keeps trying. After all, she knows what he is capable of. That summer of nineteen sixty something, they discussed all sorts of philosophical questions, far into the night. Granted, this was partly due to the fact that the person now making the quilt was resistant to attempts at other activities. Because, don't you know, of the nuns standing behind the couch in his parents' basement in Brooklyn.
So how did they get from there--talking their heads off all summer-- to here, where the OC wants the quiltmaker, if she must speak, to get her point across in five words or less, and his eyes glaze over when she doesn't? Has he [say it isn't so!] grown weary of her blathering? Words are toys. She plays with them and moves them around. " Getting creative," he calls it, and she feels vaguely guilty. And retreats to her sewing room and decides on the green, and busies herself quilting.