Battles of the sexes?

[Zues126]

So I'll bump your thread one more time and tell a funny story about the weekend. I went to the science museum with my children, and they had an exhibit about seeing things from another person's point of view. There were three instructional experiments:

1) They had you and your kids sit on opposite sides of a model of a few volcanoes. From your viewpoint the small volcanoes were in front, from the child's the small were in the rear. They were then asked what picture best describes YOUR view, and there were four pictures. Younger children chose the picture of what they viewed from their seat.

2) Kid is shown a minute maid juice box and asked 'what's in the box'. He answers "juice". Then they flip the box around and show him the back was hollowed out and it was full of string. They ask 'what is actually in the box', and he says 'string!'. Then they asked "a moment ago when we asked what you thought was in the box, what did you say", and the kid says 'string' (because he knows now he can't conceptualize that he didn't know a minute ago). Finally they say 'sally is coming in and doesn't know what's in the box. what do you suppose she'll guess?' and the kid says "String!"

3) Two women, sarah and jenny. Two toy chests. Sarah takes a bear and puts it in toy chest A. She then goes on a walk. While Sarah is away, Jenny moves the bear to toy chest B. Finally Sarah returns. Where will Sarah look for the toy bear? Kids (including mine) answered toy chest B.

The point of 2/3 is that when the kids knew the 'correct' answer, they couldn't even conceptualize that other people might think or feel differently. The ability to comprehend the other person's point of view is a learned skill that takes hard work.

I thought this was fitting and relevant to a lot of this discussion. I think all humans struggle with this, but in particular us DBers. The more pain there is in the marriage the more wrong our spouses behave, and eventually we are overwhelmed with our own pain and staring at their bad behavior. This on top of a clearly natural selfish view from our species. How can we ever win?!?

My advice to myself and all is to stay humble.

I talked to a good friend tonight. He is the smartest person I've ever met, and I've rubbed some elbows. Point is I gave him a compliment. I told him that he was the smartest person I've met, and that he was brilliant at analysis and understanding things rationally...yet he was religious, and followed an external set of beliefs. I told him it was smart and explained that our thoughts can easily follow our feelings and can rationalize a bunch of crap. And that while he was a genius, it was a double edged sword because he could also convince himself of anything. So ultimately he was so smart, that he didn't trust his own brilliance, and long ago turned his life over to God, because his intellect is subjective, whereas it's been proven that people that follow a set of religious beliefs hold up well in the world.

Moral of the stories are simple. Follow your beliefs not your feelings/thoughts as we are flawed humans seeing things imperfectly from our own perspective. A good scientist doesn't make conclusions, that's why gravity is a theory. Just be curious, not furious, and stand back and watch your thoughts shift and evolve over time. Bottom line, stay humble and know that we are all wrong.