So, the other day the garbage disposal in the house broke. After getting the number for the repair person, I sent it to my wife for her to give the guy a call and schedule the repair. Now mind you, normally when we need a repair or anything related to taking care of stuff with the house, my wife usually handles it. I make sure she has the money to get it done. Well, this time when I sent her the number she responded, “Why can’t you call?” I said, “Because you normally take care of those things.” With a slight attitude she said, “Well you could have called the guy as easily as I could have.”

My reply, “Ummm…ok, I’ll handle it.”

After calling the repair guy and setting up the appointment and letting her know what he charged (like she asked me to) she says….”Well…we need to call a few other people and get price quotes. He’s kinda high. Now that I think about it, we can probably just YouTube it and do it ourselves…you think?”

The dialogue that happened between us is the reason I asked her to handle it in the first place. For me I saw the problem, found the solution, and put the solution in play (repair guy, Friday night at 5:30pm Boom!) Now after I’ve done that, suddenly she wants to add 13 more steps to what I saw as a 3 step process. Now I’m a little frustrated and I’m back to….”Well how about you just handle it!” I know some of my brothers out there feel me on this! This got me to thinking even more about how in our relationships we can allow our man and woman differences to cause more frustration than they need to. Many times that frustration comes from the fact that we want our mates to think as we do and when that doesn’t happen sometimes it can cause conflict. I heard Pastor Steven Furtick say “Frustration is the difference between what we expect and what we experience.” Here are a few areas where men and women may differ and if we just seek to understand we won’t be as frustrated.

Okay…I know every woman in America is going to say this is an “excuse” and won’t even try to understand this point, but if you understand it, you just might make your lives easier.

Have you ever heard the saying, “Men are like waffles and women are like spaghetti?”

When you pour syrup on a waffle, it falls into the squares…every section is separated from the next. Nice and orderly right?

Well, when you put sauce on spaghetti, it falls all over the place, no rhyme or reason. Once the sauce is spread, it’s all in a big pile but it ends up working out just fine. For men if we have established clear roles and duties then we will probably do exactly what our role entails…we will do what’s in the squares. Women however, are more “big picture” oriented. Things can be all over the place and everywhere for them, but they make sense of it all even amid the seeming chaos.

See how the story concludes on the next page —>