This went on for a little while, and I could see I wasn’t helping at all, so I intervened and said, “Is this kind of how it goes in your relationship?”
“Every day, Stephen,” he replied.
“It’s the story of our marriage,” she said.
I looked at the two of them, and the thought crossed my mind that they were two half-brained people living together. “Do you have any children?” I asked.
“Yes, two.”
“Really?” I asked incredulously. “How did you do it?”
“What do you mean, how did we do it?”
“You were synergistic!” I said. “One plus one usually equals two. But you made one plus one equal four. Now that’s synergy. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So how did you do it?”
“You know how we did it!” he replied.
“You must have valued the differences!” I exclaimed.
Now contrast that experience with that of some friends of ours who were in the same situation—except their roles were reversed. The wife said:
My husband and I have very different thinking styles. I tend to be more logical and sequential—more “left brained.” He tends to be more “right brained,” to look at things more holistically.
When we were first married, this difference created something of a problem in our communication. It seemed that he was always scanning the horizon, looking at new alternatives, new possibilities. It was easy for him to change course midstream if he thought he saw a better way. On the other hand, I tended to be diligent and precise. Once we had a clear direction, I would work out the details, burrow in, and stay the course, no matter what.
This gave rise to a number of challenges when it came to making decisions together on everything from setting goals to buying things to disciplining the children. Our commitment to each other was very solid, but we were both caught up in our own ways of thinking and it seemed like a lot of work to try to make decisions together.
For a time we tried to separate areas of responsibility. In doing the budget, for example, he would do much of the long-range planning, and I would keep the records. And this proved to be helpful. We were both contributing to the marriage and family in our own areas of strength.
But when we discovered how to use our differences to create synergy, we came to a new level of richness in our relationship. We discovered that we could take turns listening to each other and have our eyes opened to a whole new way of seeing things. Instead of approaching problems from “opposite” sides, we were able to come together and approach problems with shared and much greater understanding.
This opened the door to all kinds of new solutions to our problems. It also gave us something wonderful to do together. When we finally realized that our differences were parts of a greater whole, we began exploring the possibilities of putting those parts together in new ways.
We discovered that we love to write together. He goes for the big concepts, the holistic ideas and the right brain ways of teaching. I challenge and interact with him on the ideas, arrange the content, and do the wordsmithing. And we love it! This has brought us together in a whole new level of contribution. We’ve found that our togetherness is much better because of our differences rather than in spite of them.
Notice how both couples were dealing with right and left brain differences in thinking. In the first situation, these differences led to frustration, misunderstanding, and alienation. In the second, they led to a new level of unity and richness in the relationship.
How was the second couple able to get such positive results?
They learned how to value the difference and use it to create something new. As a result, they’re better together than they are alone.
As we said in Habit 5, everyone is unique. And that uniqueness, that difference, is the basis of synergy. In fact, the whole foundation of the biological creation of a family hinges on the physical differences between a man and a woman that produce children. And that physical creative power serves as a metaphor for other kinds of good things that can come as a result of differences.
It’s not enough to simply tolerate differences in the family. You can’t just accept differences. You can’t just diversify family functions to accommodate differences. To have the kind of creative magic we’re talking about, you must actually celebrate differences. You must be able to say sincerely, “The fact that we see things differently is a strength—not a weakness—in our relationship.”
From Admiration to Irritation
Ironically, often the very things that attract people to each other in the beginning of a relationship are the differences, the ways in which someone is delightfully, pleasantly, excitingly different. Yet as they get into the relationship, somehow admiration changes to irritation, and some of those differences are the very things that cause the greatest distress.
I remember coming home one night after having been away from meaningful communication with our young children for two or three days. I was feeling somewhat guilty about this lack of communication, and when I feel guilty, I tend to become a bit indulgent.
Because I was often away, Sandra had to compensate for my indulgence by coming on a bit too strong. Her toughness caused me to become a little softer. My increased softness caused her to become a little harder. Thus, the discipline system in our home was sometimes driven more by politics than by the consistent application of principles that create a beautiful family culture.
When I came home that night, I went to the top of the stairs and yelled, “Boys, are you there? How’s it going?”
One of the younger boys ran down the hall, looked up at me, and then shouted back to his brother, “Hey, Sean, he’s nice.” (In other words, “He’s in a good mood!”)
What I didn’t know was that these boys were in bed under threat of their lives. They had used every conceivable excuse to get up and keep playing and goofing off. That had gone on until my wife’s patience had come to an end. She had sent them to bed with a final command: “Now you boys stay in bed or else!”
So when they saw Dad’s car lights shine through the window, a new ray of hope was born. They thought, Let’s see what kind of mood Dad is in. If he’s in a good mood, we can get up and play some more. When I came into the house, they were waiting. The words, “Hey, Sean, he’s nice,” were their cue. We started wrestling around in the front room and having all kinds of fun.
Then out came Mom. With a mixture of frustration and anger in her voice, she shouted, “Are those kids still up?”
I quickly replied, “Hey, I haven’t seen much of them lately. I want to play with them for a little while.” Needless to say, she didn’t like my response, nor did I like hers. And there were the boys, watching Mom and Dad arguing right in front of them.
The problem was that we had not synergized on this issue and come up with agreements we were both willing to live with. I was too much a product of my moods and feelings, and I wasn’t consistent. I didn’t show respect for the fact that these boys were in bed and should have stayed in bed. But I also hadn’t seen them for some time. And a pertinent question was “How important is the bedtime rule anyway?”
The solution to this problem was not worked out immediately, but eventually we concluded that the bedtime rule wasn’t that important for our family—particularly as the children became teenagers. We felt that what were normal bedtimes for many families were important and fun family times for us. The kids would sit around and talk, eat, and laugh—particularly with Sandra, since I typically went to bed earlier. The thing that enabled that synergistic solution for our family was acknowledging the differences and allowing all of us to do what we individually and collectively felt strongly about.
Sometimes living with differences and appreciating other people’s uniqueness is hard. We tend to want to mold people in our own image. When we get our security from our opinions, to hear a different opinion—particularly from someone as close as our spouse or children—threatens that security. We want them to agree with us, to think the way we think, to go along with our ideas. But as someone once said, “When everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.” Another said, “When two agree, one is unnecessary.” Without difference, there’s no basis for synergy, no option to create new solutions and opportunities.
The key is to learn to blend the best of them together in a way that creates something entirely new. You can’t have a delicious stew without diversity. You can’t have a fruit salad without diversity. It’s the diversity that creates the interest, the flavor, the new combination that puts together the best of all different things.