Week Seven

This week was very insightful and I feel like we had a lot of really great class discussions. Something that really stuck with me was when we talked about the differences between men and women and how those differences can lead to problems in communicating what we need from one another in a relationship. When we talked about that in class it was kind of like a light bulb went off in my head and it totally made sense! Men and women are divinely different, so how can we expect to think and require the same things from each other that we think we need? It just makes sense to me that we need to find better ways to talk about difficult issues so we can come to understand each others needs.
I liked the metaphor/ class activity that we did in class to represent trying to talk about difficult issues with your spouse. It was really hard for me to describe to the person who I was working with what the picture looked like so she could draw it. That is definitely how it is in marriage, at least for me, most of the time! Often I know that I feel frustrated about something, but it is hard to explain why I am irritated or why something is so important to me. In my experience, when it seems that you just aren't getting your point across to your spouse it is best to just say to them "Look, I am feeling frustrated right now and I can't really express to you why, so just please be understanding that I am feeling hurt right now". That usually goes over better then yelling at each other or talking in circles.