I frequently find myself asking people if they want to vent, or solve. I'm game for either, but like many of you, pretty sure "solve" is our default state and "vent" is theirs and the mismatch? Not so great.
Yea, my wives is pretty 93% in "solve" mode and I'm 84% in "solve" mode so we try to explicitly say "can I just vent (or talk something out loud) to you?"