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PROGRAM D-7457
Why aren’t women like men – or vice versa?
Men and women were created for different purposes—men for work, women for relationship. This doesn’t mean we have rigid roles from which we can never escape. It just means we often approach life situations quite differently.
Differences in Our Brains
You’ve probably heard of the right brain/left brain theory. From the right side of our brain we are creative, impulsive, and emotional. From the left side we are rational, problem solving, and logical.
Men are typically very left brained. Women tend to be more right brained, but we have a bridge between the right and left brain that men do not have. In other words, we have more ability to move over to the rational side than men have to move over to the emotional side.
Men are generally more analytical and spatially astute than women. Women, on the other hand, tend to function with a general capacity for both, affording them the ability to integrate emotions with the rational process of analytical thought. Men, in contrast, can disassociate themselves from their feelings and operate out of the left side of the brain. That’s why a man will often say, “Don’t take it personally,” and we women wonder how else you can take it!
Women recognize emotional nuances in voice, gesture and facial expression. We’re far more perceptive. Men don’t pick up on non-verbals like women do.
A woman may cry more often because she receives more emotional input, reacts more strongly to it, and expresses it with greater force. Crying women make men very uncomfortable and helpless. They just want to get out of there! Women encourage tears. It’s okay to cry, we tell each other.
God created us differently for very good reasons. Sin came into the picture to spoil God’s good creation, but we have the power, as sons and daughters of God, to recapture the real harmony and interdependence that God meant when he created men and women. But in order to do that, we do need to understand and accept our differences—and not only accept them, but appreciate them.