I had an interesting conversation over the weekend with one of the only married couples that I am close to. They were trying to describe what they saw as the differences between males and females, which was kind of discouraging to be honest. Their basic premise was that they would never really be able to understand each other's perspective, but that they had to be sensitive to those differences in how they thought. And that the burden for this weighed primarily on the guy, since girls were more sensitive to conflict and rejection. The husband agreed with this perspective, but I can't help but wonder if he has been brainwashed by his wife, since their views were nearly identical.
I have heard other married guys dismiss the possibility of ever understanding females, and vice versa. I guess one could make a case that the idea is to find one that you understand well enough to live with, but I can't help but hope to someday actually be on the same page as my future wife. I will admit that a majority of the time when I am interacting with girls, I am totally lost as to why they do what they do. But there are times when I can relate to what they are doing and why, which is an improvement from farther in the past, when I never had any idea what they were doing, so I may be growing in the right direction.
I am conscious of the fact that singleness isn't a disease to which marriage is a cure, but I do have a certain discrete desire to find a partner or companion with whom to share life with. If I just wanted to be married for the sake of being married, I have had opportunities to make that happen. But I am not looking for a relationship that I can survive, I am looking for one that I can really connect through. Growth is a significant factor in any marriage, and a key part in deciding who to marry, should be recognizing how partners can help each other grow.
The two conflicting schools of thought about who one should marry can be summed up as "opposites attract," versus "cut from the same cloth." On the one hand, being different allows a couple's opposing strengths and weaknesses to complement one another. My parents always described themselves as completely opposite, and claimed that strengthened their marriage and helped them make better decisions together. The fact that they are divorced now speaks for itself, but even before that, I was always aware of the level of conflict that those differences created. I have always preferred the idea of marrying someone who I was already similar to. While being very different would give me more opportunities to learn from my wife, I would much prefer to learn with my wife. While there may be things we both struggle with, it will be easier to relate to and respect those challenges if we approach them from a similar perspective. It will encourage us both to grow in those areas together. If one partner has a strength in a certain area, there will be little incentive for the other to grow in that regard if their partner can deal with those challenges for them. That can be a good and efficient thing in some instances, but it will be something that separates instead of unites them.
Now I realize there will always be differences because everyone is uniquely created, and you will learn from any relationship because everyone has something to offer or teach you. But most people would agree that both parties should share similar values and principles before pursuing a serious relationship. So it seems safe to conclude that in an ideal relationship, there should be a balance between similarities and differences. As we discussed earlier, there are a wealth of fundamental differences between males and females to start with, so it seems like the challenge would be in finding the similarities to balance those out.
I am someone who is quite conscious of my own unique traits, and was recently described as "someone who wears their uniqueness on their sleeve as opposed to hiding it." That can make it harder to find those similarities, leading me to explore relationships that I knew didn't really fit. While I learned a lot from those experiences, I know they weren't really an ideal match. For a long time I held little hope of actually finding someone who was anything like me, to really identify with or relate to. Now that I know of at least one other person who fits that description, it is easier to believe there might be others out there. It seems that the bigger challenge may lie in finding one who identifies and relates back. That is exponentially less probable, so we see where the part about trusting God comes into play.
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