There Is Hope

Let's have a little fun today.  I ran across this passage in my notes along with the comment that I made at the time.

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1 Peter 3:7(NKJV)

Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.

Really?  We can understand them?

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Yep.  That's what the Bible says.  But seriously, aren’t the difference between men and women the coolest thing.  We all have strengths and weaknesses and if we are lucky our spouse's strengths complement our weaknesses and vice versa. 

If you'd like some fun insight into understanding each other I'd like to recommend a book, Incompatibility: Still Grounds for a Great Marriage by Chuck and Barb Snyder.  Here is a quick blurb about the book.

Do women really spend more time in the bathroom? Are men truly more gifted when it comes to handling the remote control? Will women ever understand the intense concentration demanded by Monday Night Football? Chuck and Barb Snyder (who reveal that their only area of compatibility is having the same kids and grandkids) tackle these and other questions in Incompatibility: (Still) Grounds for a Great Marriage, an entertaining, insightful, and sensible primer on marriage for Christian couples. Ten years after their popular original book, they've teamed up again to present new material and elaborate on their original themes. Readers will learn that differences between couples are actually part of God's plan for marriage and should be viewed as assets, not liabilities.

I taught an Adult Sunday School class from this book years ago.  It was a hoot.  It also helped us understand each other better.  Let me give you an example.

We were married with young children at the time.  My wife was a full time Mom and I worked outside the home. 

When I would get home from work, as soon as I walked in the house my wife would always ask "how was your day"  and my response was always "it was fine, it's over, let's move on."  Now she always felt I was being evasive with my answer and I always felt she was prying because she wasn't satisfied with my answer.  For me as a guy, I wasn't trying to shut her out by not sharing, I was giving her the same answer I would give a guy friend.  As a guy I just don't need that depth of detail.   I also felt like "man I just walked in the door, let me unwind a minute before you attack me with questions".

It wasn't until we read this book and taught this class that we were able to fix this issue.  The key was understanding the difference between the way she meant the question and the way I interpreted the question.  Here is what I mean by that.

When my wife asked the question she meant "how was your day at 9:00, how was it at 10:30, how was it at noon….?"  She didn't really mean it literally but what she wanted was for me to share with her some of the things that went on through out my day.  Because for women it is much more about the relationship aspects of life.  (This is generalization and of course there are always exceptions)

Let me give you a couple of examples from the book to backup the generalizations.

Compare men's magazines and woman's magazine.  Men's magazines are full of statistics like horsepower and rpm's and batting averages, etc.  Women's magazines are chock full of articles about the "relationships".

Here is another example.  Women vs men when touching base with a friend to get together for lunch or something. 

Woman: Hi, how are the kids?  How is your sister?  What's going on?.... After getting an update on the relationship stuff  they finally get around to scheduling lunch.

Man: Lunch? (a grunt from the other end of phone), Theos and Stacy's.  11:30.  See ya!

So what I had to learn was that when she asked that question, she wasn't trying to pry, she just needed me to provide her a little detail from my day.  And what she learned was that if she gave me a half hour to relax, say hi to the kids, whatever, I was much more willing to make the effort to share the details of my day. 

So celebrate the differences!