Men Are Like Wafes

Women Are Like

Nashville, TN
Week 1 Appreciating the Differences
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week one
Dive into the Differences
So, how are you to grasp the differences between men and women? We like to
think of them this way: men are like wafes, women are like spaghetti. At rst this
may seem silly, even juvenile, but stay with us. It is a picture that works and men
get it (because it involves food).
MEN ARE LIKE WAFFLES
Men process life in boxes. If you look down at a wafe, you see a collection of boxes
separated by walls. The boxes are separate from each other and make convenient
holding places. That is typically how men process life. Their thinking is divided up
into boxes that have room for one issue and one issue only. The rst issue of life
goes in the rst box, the second goes in the second box, and so on.
The typical man lives in one box at a time and one box only. When a man
is at work, he is at work. When he is in the garage tinkering, he is in the garage
tinkering. When he is watching TV, he is simply watching TV. That is why he looks
as though he is in a trance and can ignore everything else going on around him.
Social scientists call this compartmentalizingthat is, putting life and responsibili-
ties into different compartments.
A man will strategically organize his life in boxes and then spend most of his
time in the boxes in which he can succeed. Success is such a strong motivation for
him that he will seek out boxes that work and ignore boxes that confuse him or
make him feel like a failure.
The drive to succeed is why men nd it so easy to develop hobbies that
consume their time. If a man nds something he is good at, it makes him feel
good about himself and about his life. Because men tend to be good with mechani-
cal and spatial activities, they get emotionally attached to building, xing, and
chasing things. Yard projects become expressions of their personalities. Their car
becomes their signature.
The bottom line is this: men feel best about themselves when they are solv-
ing problems. Therefore, they spend most of their time doing what they are best at
while they attempt to ignore the things that cause them to feel decient.
WOMEN ARE LIKE SPAGHETTI
Women process life more like a plate of pasta. If you look at a plate of spaghetti,
you notice there are lots of individual noodles that all touch one another. If you
attempt to follow one noodle around the plate, you will intersect a lot of other
noodles, and you might even switch to another noodle seamlessly. Women face
&
waf f l es

s paghet t i
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life in this way. Every thought and issue is connected to every other thought and
issue in some way. Life is much more of a process for women than it is for men.
This is why a woman is typically better at multitasking than a man. She can
talk on the phone, prepare a meal, make a shopping list, work on the agenda for
tomorrows business meeting, give instructions to her children as they are going
out to play, and close the door with her foot without skipping a beat. As a result,
most women are in pursuit of connecting life together. They solve problems from
a much different perspective than men.
Women consistently sense the need to talk things through. In conversation
they can link together the logical, emotional, relational, and spiritual aspects of
the issue. The links come naturally, so the conversation is effortless. If they are
able to connect all the issues, the answer to the question at hand bubbles to the
surface and is readily accepted.
This often creates signicant stress for couples. While she is making all the
connections, he is frantically jumping boxes trying to keep up with the conversa-
tion. The mans eyes are rolling back in his head while a tidal wave of information
is swallowing him up. When she is done, she feels better and he is overwhelmed.
The conversation might look something like this:
Honey, the other day I was driving by your favorite truck storethe one where
you got that cool cup holder that goes on the window; and that truck store is right
next to my favorite dress shop. You know, the one with the cute two-piece suit in
the window? That suit is my color. You know, last week I went to that seminar
on colors to nd out what colors look good on me and what colors dont, and they
said I was a summer and that suit is a summer color so I knew if I bought it and
put it on youd say, Oh baby, you look so ne! and I love it when you say that. I
was thinking that suit looks a lot like the one Mrs. Clinton wore when she was
saying she communicated with Eleanor Roosevelt for inspiration. I dont know,
that seems kind of weird because Eleanor is dead. Isnt that kind of like some of
that New Age stuff we heard about in church on Sunday? That kind of stuff is
creeping into the schools. Maybe we should stop and pray for the kids!
The whole time his wife is praying, hes thinking, So what about my truck?
One thing that creates havoc in male/female interaction is the fact that most
men have boxes in their wafe that have no words. These boxes contain thoughts
about the past, their work, and pleasant experiences, but these thoughts do not
turn into words.
Not all of the wordless boxes have thoughts, however. There are actually
boxes in the average mans wafe that contain no words and no thoughts. These
boxes are just as blank as a white sheet of paper. They are EMPTY! To help relieve
stress in his life, a man will park in these boxes to relax. Amazingly, his wife always
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week one
seems to notice when he is in park. She observes his blank look and the relaxed
posture he has taken on the couch. She assumes this is a good time to talk as he is
so relaxed, and so she invariably asks, What are you thinking, sweetheart?
He immediately panics because he knows if he tells the truth she will think
he is lying. She cannot imagine a moment without words in her mind. If he says,
nothing, she thinks he is hiding something and is afraid to talk about it. She
becomes instantly curious and mildly suspicious. Not wanting to disappoint his
wife, his eyes start darting back and forth hoping to nd a box in close proximity
that has words in it. If he nds a box of words quickly, he will engage his wife in
conversation and both will feel good about the relationship. If he is slow in nding
words, her suspicion fails to be extinguished and he feels a sense of failure. He
desperately wants to explain to his wife that he sometimes just goes blank. Noth-
ing is wrong, he isnt in denial, and nothing is being hidden. This is the way he has
been his whole life, but she cannot imagine it.
These blank boxes have an interesting characteristic that often gets in the
way of meaningful conversation. In the middle of conversation a man will periodi-
cally be moving from one box to another, and in between two boxes of words he
passes through one of these blank boxes. Right in the middle of conversation, he
goes silent. He knows he should have something to say, but he is blank.
DIFFERENT BY DESIGN
The differences between men and women are not limited to conversation. Men and
women think differently, process emotions differently, make decisions differently,
and learn differently. Yet men and women complement one another so beautifully
that a healthy relationship makes both partners more complete.
The differences start in the physical structure of the brain. Research is
conrming that the brains of men and women are subtly different For example,
studies show that human male brains are, on average, approximately ten percent
larger than female brains. Certain brain areas in women, however, contain more
nerve cells.
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The differences then extend to the operation of the brain. One study shows
that men and women perform equally well in a test that asks subjects to read a
list of nonsense words and determine if they rhyme. Yet, imaging results found
that women use areas on the right and left sides of the brain, while men only use
areas on the left side to complete the test.
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Even when it comes to the use of the
brain, women connect both sides while men keep it as simple as possible by using
only one side.
It then follows that men and women excel at different tasks. Tests show
that women generally can recall lists of words or paragraphs of text better than
men. On the other hand, men usually perform better on tests that require the