Understanding

UNDERSTANDING

By Eric Andreasen

Last night my wife and I had a misunderstanding.  She misunderstood my reaction to the fact that she had rearranged the furniture in our living room.  She thought she understood that I would be or was upset about the fact that she had made the changes.  I’ll admit that I didn’t really understand her need to want to rearrange the furniture.  I’d been perfectly content with how it was before and thought I understood that she liked it that way too.  But I now understand that I misunderstood her feelings.

I’ve come to the understanding long ago in my life and in my marriage that I can’t fully understand women.  This inability to understand often leads to such misunderstandings.  I understand that most guys are probably like me in the fact that we are more often than not content with how things are going.  We like and understand things that are unchanging.  I also understand that women’s feelings are often misunderstood by us guys.  No matter how hard we try, we can’t and never will be able to fully understand what they really feel.  I’ve come to the understanding that I’m o.k. with not understanding.  Guys would rather be content with their misunderstanding of women so that they don’t have to delve too deeply into the inner recesses of feelings and emotions that are scary to us.  Women sometimes can’t understand our lack of ability to understand them, and thus it occasionally leads to misunderstandings.

To get over our misunderstanding, we talked about how we’d misunderstood one another.  Together we came to the understanding that we often don’t understand each others feelings and reactions.  We understood that we still loved each other anyway, even when we can’t always understand why we feel and act differently.  I even told my wife that I understood that I didn’t fully understand and that this lack of understanding was sometimes very frustrating to her.  I apologized for not understanding my part in the misunderstanding and that I understood that I needed to be more understanding of her needs.  She said she understood.

It’s nice to understand one another.  These thoughts actually helped me come to and understanding about the meaning of the word understanding.  I understand that to understand, you actually have to sort of come down to something lesser than standing.  You have to come under your own stand on an issue so that you can understand someone else’s understanding of it.  Misunderstanding is when we try to understand, but we miss the mark and therefore miss coming under the understanding of the other person.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that having misunderstandings is a part of life and that it’s actually o.k. as long as both people understand that they have to actually give up a little bit of themselves to come to an understanding of each other.

I hope these words can help you understand what I’ve come to understand about understanding, so that you don’t have so many misunderstandings in your own relationships with others.  And if you don’t understand a word I’ve just said, its o.k., I’ll understand!