Men are rational and women are emotional. I'm sure you've heard that one before. Recently I heard Ravi Zacharias say something that got me thinking concerning this. He said something like:
"perhaps we as men are intimidated by women's emotional intelligence because they make the connection between thought and feeling much faster and more accurately than we do."
So, instead of feeling superior to our wife's emotional responses, we ought to stop and ask ourselves: "what is it about this circumstance, or subject that is bringing out this emotion in her?" My wife and I had an intense discussion recently about a subject that I thought she was over-reacting to. After hearing Ravi say this, I reflected on my wife's reaction which exhibited a bit of frustration and fear and it began to make sense to me. Although the thing we were discussing was totally clear in my mind, and I have thought it out in detail well enough to win the argument from a logical standpoint; I had not been leading her or the others involved in the subject with the clearest direction. What was clear to me hasn't been made clear to everyone else. No wonder she expressed the emotion of fear. For me, fear is weakness. What really happened was that her fear exposed my weakness: Sub-par leadership! Her emotions were acutely tuned to the information she was getting and they were like idiot lights on a dashboard telling me that there is something that I needed to pay attention to. It wasn't the thing that we were talking about necessarily, it was something deeper that I had to figure out. If I had been leading her to understand what I had already clearly thought through, and demonstrated it adequately, her emotional response would have been more confident rather than fearful. Maybe it's really true...women are smarter than men, and we're just too dumb to see it, or too proud to admit it.
1 Pontifications:
Nice thoughts. I think you are on point. I will say though, i don't think the issue is with men being dumb. we are just different, different in a way that is really eye opening. Lets look at it this way. What if the personalities are switched and men feel through stuff and women think logically. Because we men feel through stuff we will think it just doesnt make sense to only 'logically' think through stuff, because that's not what we do. see, if we are on the other side, our side looks somewhat ridiculous. In the same way if we use 'logic' only we wonder, why should you have 'emotional' resolution when it clearly makes logical sense?
But, i think the solution is that the two work together to come to a stronger conclusion. Men and women both have emotions and logic, we just lean more on one over the other.
I like how you thought through your wife's emotional unsettlement. I'm sure she'd always appreciate it if you try to seek emotional resolution.
Finally this illustrates my point about the solution being 'emotion' and 'logic' working together rather than 'emotion' vs 'logic' in conflict to find who is right.
Imagine you had a kid (maybe you do). You provide him/her with food, shelter, clothing, and toys. Logically, you should have a happy, content and satisfied child???? probably not... the child also needs, joy, peace, love, affection, comfort, value, significance, protection... these are 'emotional' needs but they are as important as(if not more) than the 'logical' needs. In this case, both emotion and logic work together to raise a child.
Together we as couples are stronger, wiser, and better, logically and emotionally. Just a little patience, understanding, and humility will bring the best in us as we lean on each other's strengths.
God help us!
Thanks again for the post!
Post a Comment