Gender in Marriage

Men. Women. Are we really all that different? If we are, or aren't, why does it even matter?

We have all heard the sayings that male and female brains are wired differently. This is in fact true. Men have more gray matter in their brains and women have more white matter. Gray matter helps the men to be able to hyper focus on one task at a time and the white matter helps women to move between many tasks very quickly at a time.

This can cause complications in a marriage. Men's mind are storages for boxes, and everything has a box and they can only open and look at one box at a time. Women are often compared to a ball of wire where everything is connected to everything, and they can go back and forth between everything without putting something else away.

This difference in thinking can cause a husband and a wife to argue and become frustrated with one another. This can make it difficult to communicate about how you are feeling and knowing that you are being understood. When a couple is going through infertility issues, they often need to feel united and together on things so they can have the support that they need.

My husband and I have always felt very together when approaching our infertile battle. We have never blamed one another for the situation we are in. But that doesn't mean we haven't had some tense conversations about what we have been feeling. Men often are the fixers in the relationship, and they just want to make it better. Women are talkers, and they need to talk about things to understand them and cope with them. This fact can upset the other party. When we don't understand how the other person thinks and feels it can cause some tension to build up. We may feel misunderstood and discounted in our feelings.

Now, having a better understanding of how each other’s brains work we can communicate more effectively with one another. There is a tool that we can use in communication that I call "listen and repeat". This is where you listen to what the other person is saying while they are sharing and then repeat back to them what is heard. This provides an opportunity for them to correct anything that was misunderstood and know that are being heard. It is important to pause often when communicating to allow for this repetition to take place before too much is shared, and ideas get lost.

Men and women alike need to know that they are validated in their feelings. Since men and women think so differently it can be hard to achieve this sense of understanding. If we can practice this "listen and repeat" method of communicating, we can know that the other person understands what we are trying to say and we will feel closer to them because of that.

It is so important to have those lines of communication open when couples face such difficult things like infertility. It is such an emotional trial that we go through, and we need to know that we have the understanding and listening ear of our spouse.

This can be an awkward thing to do at first. And sometimes it might feel tedious and like it is not necessary because we think we understand what the other is saying. It is especially difficult if you are a little bit flustered with your spouse. I know that as this is used and practiced it becomes second nature and you begin to do it without even thinking about it. I also know that as we do this our relationship with our spouse will become stronger and we will feel more connected with them. It can seem at times that there are too many differences between a couple that it will never be resolved, this just isn't the case. Yes, there are so many differences, but those differences will begin to complement one another and will strengthen that relationship.