“We’re SO different!!!” Isn’t that something you realize about each other the longer you live together as husband and wife?

Before you marry, you concentrate on the many things you have in common. But after you’ve been married for a while and your life gets busy with all it takes to maintain a household … WOW! You can sure see how very different you both approach life!

It can easily get to the point where eventually your differences overshadow all or most of your commonalities.

But what is that all about… why are we so different? Well, there are many reasons — a few of them are because:

• We were raised in different homes with different parents and siblings, maybe even different cultural influences were involved.

• We were influenced by different friends and life experiences. No two people go down exactly the same path in life and those experiences and people influence how we approach life.

• Our different educational, church, and personal experiences with God, all have a big influence on that which we value and decide is important to us.

• Because of our earlier experiences, we’ve formed different expectations concerning how we approach situations. Many of them, we didn’t even realize we held until something or someone (like our spouse) bumps into them and they come to the surface.

• We have been created uniquely different by God with different temperaments and DNA (which influences us as well).

• We have hormone and testosterone differences that influence us daily (and sometimes minute-by-minute).

[Read more →]

I’m constantly amazed by how easy it is to overlook one of the more obvious facts about men and women: They’re different! Feminists and others in the recent past have worked to blur the distinctions between the sexes. But this effort is ultimately doomed because God created us male and female—different.

When this Ozark country boy married the refined city girl, our differences came out in dozens of ways. For instance, Barbara believed that grass and flowers were meant to be tamed and made to grow beautifully inside a freshly painted white picket fence. I had a philosophy I learned from my dad, who discipled me in the fine art of avoiding yard work. He would let the yard die a slow death in July, so he didn’t have to mow it the rest of the summer. In turn, I believed that if God had intended for leaves to be collected, He would have had them fall in plastic bags to begin with.

Barbara and I have worked through many of our differences. Some were funny, but others weren’t. And it’s no coincidence that our present home sits back on a heavily forested hillside that overlooks a beautiful lake. We enjoy the sunsets, but you won’t find much of a lawn. I’m trying to change, though. One summer, the children and I surprised Barbara by hauling tons of rocks to outline a trail and some flower beds.

All of us know that men and women are separated by more than basic, biological nuances. But just how different are we? After considerable research, an author named Cris Evatt developed a general summary of male and female personality traits. Of course, these are generalizations that may only apply in degrees to any particular person, and some items on the list probably relate more to social conditioning than real personality differences. But you will enjoy reviewing and discussing the list with your spouse. [Read more →]