Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts: Seven Questions to Ask Before---And After---You Marry by Les; Leslie Parrott

Author:Les; Leslie Parrott
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion, Christian Life, Love & Marriage
ISBN: 9780310565987
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2004-01-01T22:00:00+00:00

Question Five

Have You Bridged the Gender Gap?

I am a man and you are a woman.

I can’t think of a better arrangement.

GROUCHO MARX

“You aren't really going to pack all those clothes, are you? This is a three-night trip, not three weeks. Besides, who cares how you look when you're camping?” I (Les) instantly regretted the words as they came out of my mouth. It was nearly midnight, and we were both a little testy. Early the next morning we were leaving for a weekend trip to a rustic camp near Santa Barbara.

“You take what you want, and I'll take what I want,” Leslie replied. “Just because you are content to wear the same pair of jeans for three days, don't expect me to do the same. Anyway, what about your laptop computer? Last time we flew back East we ended up lugging that thing all over the place, and you never even turned it on. So who is being frivolous about what he packs?”

“I like knowing my computer is there if I want to use it.”

“Well, I like having these clothes if I want to wear them,” Leslie replied.

“You're right, you're right,” I confessed. “What seems essential to me can be incidental to you and vice versa. At times we are just so different.”

Different indeed. In recent years researchers have discovered that women and men have different biological, psychological, and professional realities. Biologically, women have larger connections between the two hemispheres of their brains and a tendency toward superior verbal ability. Men's greater brain hemisphere separation may contribute a slight tendency toward abstract reasoning and a superior capacity to mentally rotate objects in space. Psychologically, women frequently find their sense of identity through relationships with others; men tend to find their sense of self through being separate. Professionally, men are often more focused on long-range goals; women are frequently more attentive to the process by which those goals are achieved.

The contrasts between women and men are sometimes so striking, one wonders how the attraction between them can be so strong. It's a puzzle humans have tried to solve for centuries. An ancient Greek myth tells of the earth being populated by beings who were half-man, half-woman. They were each complete in themselves and deemed themselves perfect. In their pride they rebelled against the gods, whereupon the irate Zeus split each of them in half, scattering the halves over the earth. Ever since, the myth has it, each half has been searching for its other half.

There are three or four things I cannot understand:

How eagles fly so high or snakes crawl on rocks, how ships sail the ocean or people fall in love.

PROVERBS 30:18-19 CEV

There must be some subtle fragment of truth in this mythical explanation. The story of creation underscores the fundamental fact of our need for each other because of our differences. Adam, living in the only Paradise that has ever existed on this earth, felt no pain and shed no tears. And yet, even in Paradise, loneliness flourished, so much so that God determined it was not “good” for man to be alone—something was missing.

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