Narrowing the Gender Gap

For an upcoming guest speaking engagement, the topic I chose to talk about is communication between couples and understanding our partner in order to help narrow the gender gap. Since a lot of couples who farm and ranch work together in addition to living together, I thought this might be a helpful topic. 

According to the books I kept finding in our home library that I bought, read, and kept for reference, it’s evident that by no means am I an expert on the subject but rather far from it. In my effort to gather information, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself over the books on relationships, communication and understanding our partners that I kept finding and had forgotten about. It was evident that I continually try to understand the male mind as well as try to get my husband to understand me.

Of course, experience does count for something. After 18 years of knowing someone, you definitely pick up a few things about each other. As you learn new things about your partner, you adapt your thinking, behavior, and attitude toward them.

Of all the books I’ve read and shared with my husband the two books that revolutionized our marriage was For Women Only by Shaunti Feldhahn

and For Men Only by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn.

Yes, I HAD to read For Men Only to find out what it said about women and how accurate it was about the way women think (it is right on). I think these two books should be required by law that a couple reads them before they get their marriage license. Both books basically hold all the secrets in understanding the opposite sex.

In order to prepare the material for my talk I re-read both of them and doing so was a good refresher for me in understanding how men and women think and just how different our thinking really is. Getting my husband to read “another relationship book” is proof of the differences in the way men and women think, so in the past in order to get the information into his head, I offered to read to him instead! He was willing to humor me and listen so I would read a chapter a night before we went to bed and we’d have a brief discussion if we felt like it.

Most of my guest speaking talk will be referencing these two books in addition to some of the other books that have benefitted our relationship including The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman (my runner up for insightful reading on relationships), and To Have and To Hold by Val Farmer. All of these books are Christian based, quick, easy reads and surprisingly beneficial to at least narrowing the gender gap and books I highly recommend in understand our spouse.

There’s only one book I’m still waiting to find in understanding my husband and it’s one that explains what his hand signals mean.