"You marry a man, not a woman. Strange how easy it seems to be for some women to expect their husbands to act like women, to do what is expected of women. Instead of that they are men, they act like men, they do what is expected of men, and thus they do the unexpected. They surprise their wives by being men and some wives wake up to the awful truth that it was not, in fact, a
man that they wanted after all. It was marriage, or some vague idea of marriage, which provided the fringe benefits they were looking for.... But somehow marriage has also insinuated into their cozy lives this unpredictable, unmanageable, unruly creature called a man. He is likely to be bigger and louder and tougher and hungrier and dirtier than a woman expects, and she finds that bigger feet make bigger footprints on the newly washed kitchen floor; they make bigger noise on the stairs. She learns that what makes her cry may make him laugh. He eats far more than seems necessary or even reasonable.... When he takes a shower his broader dimensions mean more water used and a greater surface for water to cling to and therefore she finds that the towels get much wetter and he probably doesn't hang them up folded in three as she wants him to in order to display the monogram. He may not hang them up at all. ...When she cleans the bathroom she finds she has to clean in places she never had to clean before. He's a toothpaste-tube twister instead of a roller.
Anything he does which seems to her inexplicable or indefensible she dismesses with 'Just like a man!' as though this were a condemnation or at best an excuse instead of a very good reason for thanking God. It is a man she married, after all, and she is lucky if he acts like a man."
"I know it's hard for you to imagine this early in the game, but some day you may think to yourself (you might even say it out loud), 'I'm not sure my husband understands me.' You are probably right. He doesn't. He's a man. You're a woman.
There are some areas in which ne'er the twain shall meet and we should be glad of that. Although there are times when we are frustrated and infuriated by the inability to fathom the depths of another personality, who can deny the fascination of mystery, of knowing that there are depths we haven't plumbed?"
- Elisabeth Elliot,
Let Me Be a Woman
