Care-Giving Is Like Communication in Marriage

Have you noticed that much of what we have been talking about relates to marriage communication?

I have studied this over the course of the last several years, and in preparation for a chapter in the (soon to be published) book, The LOVING Way to a Successful Marriage: Six Keys to Marital Bliss. The idea that men and women think differently (actually have different ways of forming their thought processes) often seems to intrigue audiences when I speak on this aspect of marriage.

Bill and Pam Farrel have written a very good book on this subject called, Men are Like Waffles: Women are Like Spaghetti. Basically, the idea is that men tend to think in compartments like the little boxes in waffles, and that women tend to view all of life as being interrelated like spaghetti all tangled together.

Men are ofen in problem-solving mode (and sometimes that is what the wife needs), but often the wife just needs him to empthize with her, or help her as she tries to see how what she is talking about relates to the rest of life. Sometimes all she wants is for him to listen.

Men relating to men in a care-giving situation can be done somewhat differently than men relating to women, but often we see the advice given to us in care-giving situations being more like the advice given to a husband when learning how to communicate with his wife. Why is that? Do you think it could be that in many care-giving situations we really can't fix the problem? So, we learn to be there for the person we are trying to help, just like a husband does for his wife in the situations where she really doesn't need the problem to be fixed.

Does this seem to make sense? Can you think of any other ways this analogy might work? Do you have any illustrations you might be comfortable in sharing of how just being there can help in your spirtual care-giving situations? Maybe you would like to show the distinction of where the analogy breaks down. (All anologies break down at some point because they only show how different things are alike--but still they are different things.)

Share some of your thoughts on this in some of your posts in unit 2.