Page 32 - Family Life Student Textbook

The problem becomes large for us when we see the differences as a negative rather than a positive. We
wish that our mate would be more like us. We get irritated when they do not share our values. Because they
have different needs than I do, we can easily get frustrated having to deal with them day after day.

Our brains work differently.

God created a man's brain to work differently that a woman's brain. We know that biologically in the womb,
the brain of a male child develops differently than the brain of a female child. We see those differences as
our children grow up. In this book we want to focus on the differences between men and women and how
they relate to marriage.

Men's brains are compartmentalized. This means that they have many different parts that they can keep
separated. It is fairly easy for a husband to leave work and its problems behind, and then go spend time with
his friends. And it is easier for him to sit and watch television and put all over those problems out of his
mind. We could compare his brain to a waffle which has many small compartments in it. A man
can put various areas of his life into these different compartments and shut the door. And
because he can keep them separated, he can move from one to the other. This is one reason
that a young man can break off a relationship with a young lady and immediately move on to
another relationship. It is quite simple for him to close the door on that part of his life and step
into the future to start a new relationship. Women cannot comprehend how he could do this
and become very hurt because this would be impossible for them.

A man also has a “nothing” box in which he can go to hide out from the world. A wife will ask her husband
what he is thinking about and he will respond with “nothing”. This shocks her, because she finds it
impossible to not be thinking about something. She comes to believe that her husband just doesn't care
about her because he won’t tell her what he is thinking.

Women's brains are more like a ball of electrical wires continually buzzing with activity and
thoughts. She can’t shut off her thoughts and think about nothing. Instead of being like a
waffle, their brain is more like spaghetti. Instead of being compartmentalized, every thought
is interwoven with other thoughts. It is very difficult for her to shut a door to those thoughts
as they are intermingled with her entire life. Sometimes a women’s thinking pattern is
compared to that of a river where the past, present, and future all flow together. If you
would pour some dye into a river, all the water below that point would become colored by
that die. This is the way a women’s brain works. One troubling thought will naturally affect
everything else.

Men use one side of their brain at a time while women use both sides at once. Men are more objective
while women are more relational. Men are more left brain oriented which involves reason, logic, and
aggression Whereas women are more in touch with their feelings. They are sensitive to the subliminal and
they enjoy relationships and romance. Men tend to idealize facts alone, while women naturally use her
emotions and intuition as they try to sort out the facts.

Young female children make sounds which almost always has to do with conversation. They're trying to
learn to speak and communicate. 40% of male children’s sounds are just sounds they hear and imitate. They
will imitate the motors of cars, trucks and animals. These sounds do not have much to do with words or
conversation.

Men and women speak different amounts of words each day. The average man speaks about 12,000 words
a day. But the average woman speaks over 25,000 words a day. A wife talks to her husband even while in
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