No matter how good our goals for the year, determination and discipline if our home - our love live is in disarray then other aspects of our life will be in confusion too. This write-up is taken from the book: Marriage, Family and sexuality edited by Kerby Anderson. This is part of our Self-Development 2017 Series.
Men are from mars, women are from Venus?
Ray and Sue Bohlin
Sue: Counselor John Gray made a ton of money-and attracted countless grateful fans-in writing his best -selling book Men Are From Mars, Women Are FromVenus.1 This book explored the intrinsic differences between men and women in a way that has helped millions of people understand why relationships between the two sexes can be so frustrating!
Ray: in this chapter we’ll be examining some of the insights from this book, then looking at what the Bible says about how God wants men and women to relate to each other. It’s no surprise that since when God created us to be different, He knew all about those differences thousands of years ago when He gave very specific instructions for each gender!
Sue: The whimsical premise of Men Are from Mars is that many years ago, all men lived on mars, all women lived on Venus. Once they got together, they respected and enjoyed their differences-until one day everybody woke up completely forgetting that they once come from different planets. And ever since, men mistakenly expect women to think and communicate and react the way men do, and women expect men to think and communicate and react the way women do. These unrealistic expectations cause frustration. But when we understand the God given differences between male and female, We have more realistic expectations of the other be very frustrating for some people when gender differences are painted in such broad strokes, since there’s such a broad spectrum of what women are like and what men are like. Both men and women come in different shapes and sizes, but by and large, we feel that most will identify with these characteristics.
Sue: with that said, let’s look at some differences between men and women.
How Men and women Differ
Ray: Men get a sense of self from achievement, we tend to be task oriented, and being self-reliant is very important to us. You put those two together, and you get people who hate to ask for directions or for help. I’ll wander in a store for fifteen minutes trying to find something on my own, because accomplishing the task of getting a certain item is not going to be satisfying unless I do it myself. For us, asking for help is an admission of failure; we see it as a weakness.
Sue: Women get a sense of self from relationships. Where men are task oriented, we are relationally oriented. Our connections to other people are most important thing to us. Instead of prizing self-reliance, we tend to be interdependent, enjoying the connectedness to other people, especially other women. For us, both asking for help and offering it is a compliment; we’re saying, “let me build a bridge between us. I value you, and it’ll bind us together.”
Ray: Men usually focus on goal. We want to get to the bottom line, to the end of something.
Sue: But women enjoy the process, not that reaching goal is not important, but we like getting there too. That’s why driving vacations are so different for men and women; the guys want to get to their destinations and beat their best time with the fewest stops, and we sort of treasure to talk and look and maybe stop at the outlet malls along the way!
We believe these admittedly broad-brushed differences are rooted in God-created traits. In fact, some Christian authors like Gary smalley and stu weber have addressed them in their book as well.
Ray: Men are competitive. Big shock, huh? Whether we’re on the basketball court or on the highway, we just naturally want to win, to be out front. Many of us are driven to prove ourselves, to prove that we are competent, and it comes out in a competitive spirit.
Sue: And it’s not that girls aren’t competitive, because of course we are; it’s just that we tend to be cooperative than competitive. When girls are playing and one gets hurt, the game will often stop and even be forgotten while everyone gathers around and comforts the one who went down. It’s that relational part of us coming out.
Ray: Men are often more logical and analytical than women.
Sue: And we tend to be more intuitive than men. This isn’t some sort of mystic claim; there was a study at Stanford University that women catch subliminal messages faster and more accurate than men. Voila-intuition.
Ray: This difference is evident in brain activity. Men’s brains tend to show activity in one hemisphere at a time…
Sue: Where women’s brains will show the two hemisphere of communication with each other, back and forth, constantly. That means that often, men and women can arrive at the same conclusion, using completely different means to get there. Our thinking has accused of being convoluted, but it works!
Ray: Men are linear. We can usually focus on just one thing at a time. That’s why Sue’s learned not to try to talk to me while I’m reading the paper. It’s a struggle for me to read and listen at the same time.
Sue: Yes, I’ve learned to get Ray’s attention and ask if I can talk to him so it’ll be an actual conversation and not a monologue! God made us women to be muti-taskers, able to juggle many things at once. It’s a requirement for mothering, I’ve discovered. Many times I’d be cooking dinner and helping the kids’ homework and answering the phone and keeping an ear on the radio, at all the same time.
Ray: Men tend to be compartmentalized, like a chest of drawers: work in one drawer, relationships in another drawer, sports in a third drawer, and so on. All the various parts of our lives can be split off from each other.
Sue: whereas women are more like a ball of yarn where everything connected to everything else. That’s why a woman can’t get romantic when there’s some unresolved anger and frustration with her husband and he doesn’t see what the two things have to do with each other.
Ray: one more thing: men are action oriented. When we feel hostile, our first instinct is to release it physically. And when we’re upset, the way for us to feel better is to actively solve the problem.
Sue: women are verbal. (Another big surprise, huh?). Our hostility is released words rather than fists. And when we’re upset, the way for us to so many feel better is by talking about our problem with other people.
Ray: when men are under stress, we generally distract ourselves with various activities. That’s why you see so many men head for the nearest basketball hoop or bury themselves in the paper or TV. But there’s another aspect of the way we handle severe stress that can be particularly frustrating to women who understand the way we are: a man withdraws into his “cave.” We need to be apart from everybody else while we figure out problems alone. Remember, a man is very self-reliant and competitive, and to ask for help is weakness, so he will first want to solve the problem by himself.
Sue: we women handle stress in the exact opposite way, which of course is going to pose major problems until we understand this difference! When we’re stressed, we get more involved with other people. We want to talk about what’s upsetting us, because we process information and feeling by putting them into words. But merely talking is only half of it; we talk in order to be heard and under-stood. Having good listeners on the other hand is equally important. No wonder there is so much misunderstanding when people are under stress. As a friend of ours put it, “men head for their cave, and women head for the back door!”
Ray: John Gray gave some great advice. He said that when a man’s going into his cave, he can give powerful assurance to the woman in his life by telling her, “I’ll be back.”
Sue: Works for me! What’s next?
Ray: A man’s primary need is for respect. A man needs respect- trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval, and encouragement-both from his peers and from the significant woman in his life. A man needs to know he is respected. He also needs to be needed. That’s why it’s so devastating when a man loses his job. He gets his sense of self achievements, and he needs to be needed, so when the means to achieve and provide for his family is taken away, it’s emotionally catastrophic.
Sue: it’s good for us women to know that, so we can be grace-givers in a time of awful trauma. I think that just as a man is devastated by the loss of his job, a woman is devastated by the loss of a close relationship; both losses reflect the God-given differences between us. Just as a man needs to be respected, we primarily need to be cherished. Cherishing means giving each other tender care, understanding, respect, devotion, validation, and reassurance. We need to know other’s think we are special. And just as a man needs to be needed, we need to be protected. That’s why security is so important to us. A man needs to be able to provide for.
Ray: one final difference. For men, words are simply for conveying facts and information.
Sue: But women, words mean much more. They are not just to convey information, but to explore and discover our thoughts and feelings, to help us feel better when we’re upset, and it’s the only way we have to create intimacy. To a woman, words are like breathing.
Women’s Needs and Issues
Ray: we have been examining how God created men and women to be different. So it’s not surprising to find how much of our uniqueness and how many of our needs are addressed by God’s command and precepts in the Bible.
Sue: in this section this section we’ll consider women’s needs and issues, and look at how God fit perfectly to the observations we’ve made. In the next section, we’ll look at men’s needs.
As I said, our primary needs as women is to be cherished –to be shown TLC, understanding, respect, devotion, validation, and reassurance.
Ray: And in Ephesians 5:25, we read God’s command that addresses this need: “husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,” when we think about the way Christ loves the church, we see a sacrificial love, a tender love, and a love that is committed to acting in the church’s best interest at our savior’s own expense. God doesn’t just want men to love their wives like they love sports He wants us to love our wives in a way that makes them feel cherished and special. He wants us to love our wives with a sacrificial love that puts her needs and desires above our own.
First peter 3:7 gives further instruction along this line: “your husband’s likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way” (NASB ). The Greek literally reads, “Dwell with them according to knowledge.” The only way to live with your wife in an “understanding way” is to seek to know to know her. And a husband listens and responds to what his wife shares- remembering that women are created to be verbal- she will be cherished and understood and loved.
The last part of 1 peter 3:7 continues, “Lives with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman.” This isn’t a slam on women. When we read this verse, with ought to think along the lines of a fine china cup. It’s definitely weaker than a tin cup, but that’s because it’s so fragile, delicate, and far more valuable. When we serve dinner on our china, we’re very careful in handling it, and extremely protective of washing and drying it. We treat our china with tenderness and gentleness because of its fragility and value. That’s how we cherish it. And that’s how man is to treat his wife - not roughly or carelessly, but with tenderness and gentleness, because God made women to be treated with special care.
Sue: The flip side of needing to be cherished is our need for security. We need to be protected and provided for. Even when a wife works, she wants to know that her that her husband is the main provider, or at truly wants to be and is working to that end. The burden of being forced to provide for our families is bigger than we should have to bear.
Ray: God created that need for security within women. That’s why he puts such a high value on the provisional aspect of a man’s character. First Timothy 5:8 says, if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” God wants men to be diligent workers and providers.” He created us to bear the burden of providing; women are to be protected from that burden whenever possible.
Men’s Needs and Issues
Ray: Men’s primary needs are for respect and support - to receive trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval, and encouragement.
Sue: I think God intends for wives to meet those needs by submitting to their husbands, as they are commanded to do in Ephesians 5:22 1 peter 3:1. Submission doesn’t mean giving in or being overworked or dormant; it’s a gift of our will. It means submission to God first, then demonstrating that submission by choosing to serve and respect our husbands, always being their number one supporter, even when a man is more of a jerk than a superman, he needs the respect of his wife, even if she has to ask the lord for his perspective on what area of his life are worthy of respect!
It’s interesting to me that in Ephesians 5, at the beginning on the passage of marriage, Paul exhorts women to submit to their husbands as the lord , and closes this section by saying, “ And the wife must respect her husband” (v.33), submission and respect aren’t the same thing, but they’re both necessary to meet a man’s god- given needs. In the middle of this, “marriage sandwich” is the awesome command for men to love their wives sacrificially and tenderly, as Christ loves the church. What I see is that offering submission and respect in a natural response to that kind of love.
Ray: Another aspect of men’s constitution is that we’re action oriented, whereas women who are verbal.
Sue: yes, and that’s why I am very intrigued by the wisdom of peter’s admonishment to women, where he says, you wives be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior” (1 peter 3:1-2 NASB). To men, words are cheap-and if they’re coming from a woman, all too plentiful! What impresses a man is what people do, not what they say. So here the holy spirit inspired peter to basically tell us to shut up and live holy lives, which is the only language that’s going to have a true impact on a man.
Ray: Another characteristic of men is that we tend to be self-oriented, as opposed to women who are more relational.
Sue: It’s interesting to me that Paul exhorts men to love their wives as they love themselves and their own bodies (Eph. 5:33). And he does this without condemning them for that self-orientation; he just uses it as a point of reference to demonstrate how powerfully men are to love their wives. From what I’ve observed at the health club about the way some men love their bodies, God wants men to indulge their wives with some major pampering!
Ray: One last comment. While men and women may be constitutionally different by design, we do share one important and serious flaw: our sin nature. Both genders are prideful and selfish. And that is one reason we find commands to both men and women to serve the other sex. But in the midst of our service, we can certainly enjoy the differences God gave us!
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