"When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking."
-Elayne Boolser

Men are different; they are so, so different. Any woman who has ever shopped with a man knows that guys have a unique logic and see the world in ways that are often difficult, and sometimes impossible, for us ladies to understand. My friend A has always found men to be confusing, but just how foreign they are did not become clear until she married one. After the wedding, A's husband got a new job, and together they moved from the midwest to southern California. During the first few months, A was out of work and depended totally on her husband's income for financial support. The first time she asked her husband for a little extra money, he scowled. When she told him she needed some nail polish remover, he gave her a response that only a man could: "You don't need nail polish remover. Just stop painting your nails and you won't have any more polish to remove." A was astonished and thought she had married the most unreasonable man alive.

Of course, to men, women can be confusing, too. SP & I are trying to save money so we agreed that we need to cut back on our spending. For SP, cutting back means buying only essentials. It means making do with what he already has and not buying anything new until he can really afford it. I, however, have a different view. I see that the way to help our financial situation is not to stop shopping altogether but rather to stop shopping for things at full price! As SP says it, "Kate thinks that cutting back means buying things on sale!"

It is often said that women love to shop and men hate to shop, but this is not true. It's not that men hate to shop, it's that men hate the way women shop. They like to shop for the items they find desirable, like big screen tv's, video games, hockey equipment, cd's, or electric drills. Men want to be entertained, and for most of them, spending hours in the women's clothing section looking for a dress in the perfect shade of cherry red is not a good time. On the other hand, spending hours searching for the perfect ice skates & hockey stick in a sporting goods store or for the perfect new video game is captivating. Men just have different ideas than women of what's interesting, what's important, and what's worth spending time focusing on.

I have learned this from the many shopping trips I have taken with SP. SP cannot tell the different between a Kate Spade, a Louis Vuitton, and a Coach handbag like I can, and I cannot tell the different between the graphics of a football game being played on a Nintendo 64 and an XBOX like he can. And whenever we enter a bookstore, SP looks at books on humor, music, and personal finance, whereas I like new fiction, cookbooks, and bridal magazines.

Because SP & I aren't always interested in the same things, I've got a plan that helps make shopping trips together more enjoyable. Instead of dragging him into clothing store after clothing store and making him wait while I search through the racks and try on armloads of clothes, I encourage him to go into the stores he likes. This works fabulously because I am free to try on as many pairs of shoes as I want without him nagging me to hurry up, and he is able to admire the fanciest grills without me telling him we don't need such an expensive barbecue. We try to devote a little bit of time to each of our needs on every shopping trip we take.

It's funny the lessons you learn from shopping. I see that this is a tactic we could use in the other areas of our life -- and both end up more content. I should encourage SP to have guys-only nights out playing pool or cards with his friends, to go to as many baseball games as he can, and to pursue his dream of travelling the world. Although these are not things that always interest me, I want to make sure SP does them because I know they are important to him. Not only would my attitude help him, but it would help me, too. When I encourage SP, he encourages me. Maybe he would back me in taking weekly yoga classes with a friend, in travelling across the country to visit my satellite sisters, and in pursuing my dream of owning my own bridal salon.

A sure-fire way, I believe, to create happiness with your man (or woman), whether out shopping or at home, is to remember that we're different -- and that's okay. Instead of trying to force them to have the same interests as you, encourage them to do the things they love.