Page 33 - Family Life Student Textbook

another room where he cannot possibly hear her. She talks while going from one room into another, then
comes back and says, “…and you better not forget that!”. This frustrates the man and he begins to believe
that she doesn’t even intend for him to listen, so he stops listening. Men talk until the facts are done.
However, women talk until they feel better. It is important that every relationship understands these
differences. Men, I encourage you to allow your wife to talk to you. By talking they will start to feel better.

Men need solutions and women need understanding. Men are competitive. When driving a car, a man
would rather not take a break and stop because he doesn’t want the other cars to pass him. They are into
conquering and hunting. That is why a man will hunt for a wife. But once he marries her, the hunt is over,
and he moves on to other things. The problem is that his wife still wants to be pursued. Before marriage,
men are very relational but after the wedding is over, he has conquered that goal and he naturally moves on
to other challenges.

A man separates his being from his surroundings. In other words, he tries to not to let the situation around
him affect his view of himself. But a woman finds that very difficult. Everything affects her view of herself.
Women feel very broken down inside if things around them are not right. They want everything fixed in
order to feel better. Man get their identity from what they do at work. Women get their identity from the
relationships they have and who they know. When men get together and introduce themselves, the first
question they ask is “what do you do for a job?”. But when women get together, they talk about their
marriage and how many children they have, and so on. They communicate on a more relational level.

Man joke about things like losing a son in the mall. Women are horrified they would say this and they don’t
think it is funny! Man generalize most things, whereas women tend to be very detailed oriented because
they experience everything with both sides of their brains. They feel everything. They remember every
detail because they remember how that detail made them feel.

Women work hard on their relationships as they are very important to them. They have natural ability to
recognize a good relationship. Sometimes when a husband shares with his wife what he plans to do or say,
she says “you better not do that, because of how it's going to make the other person feel.”.

When you ask a husband to rate his marriage, he might say it is a 9. But when you ask the wife she will say,
“no way! It is more like a 3!”. She tends to rate their relationship lower because she's more in tune with the
feelings and the tensions in the relationship.

Women expect men to know what they are feeling. But husbands do not know what she is thinking and
feeling. She needs to clearly communicate and tell him. She intimidates her husband when she tells him “if
you really loved me, you would know what I'm feeling and thinking.” But she is speaking a different language
then he understands. Man do it first, then feel it. But women feel it first period then do it.

Differences in Characteristics:

Besides the general differences between men and women, each person also has different characteristics.
For instance, one can be quite impatient while the other is permissive. One is indecisive, while the other is
impulsive. One is overly talkative, while the other is uncommunicative. One is disorganized, while the other
is rigidly ordered. One can have a critical spirit, while the other is more compromising. One can be very
demanding, while the other is more lenient.

What do we do with all these differences? Each of us must decide to accept our mate as a gift from God
rather than to reject his gift and try to remake that person. Each of us comes into marriage with a picture in
their mind of what we expect and desire our spouse to be like. Once we're married, we discover that our
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