While she is going through this litany of woes, she notices that he is becoming very agitated and very irritated. Now she gets very upset because his response to her is agitation and irritation.

What’s going on here? They’re going to have a fight about a headache! The problem is very simply this: He’s a man and she’s a woman. That’s all! Because he’s a man, he’s a competitor. Life is a series of challenges that demand that you compete.

He says, “I’ve got a headache!” So what does she say? “I’ve got a migraine.”Now, he thinks to himself, “Oh, all that I’ve got is an ordinary, common, garden-variety headache, but she has a migraine!” Not only does she have a migraine, she's got to go on and on and on about this migraine. “Oh yeah, that’s a typical woman; they’ve always got to be competing!”

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Now she is looking at this irritable brute who does not understand that she is empathetic and she’s trying to say, “I understand perfectly what you’re going through. I went through this yesterday!” But until he understands that she isn’t competing, she’s empathizing; until she understands that he is competing and doesn’t understand empathy, there will be clashes! We can laugh about it, but it’s one little example of the differentiation between male and female.

Deborah Tannen goes on to observe: The wife says, “I’ve got a splitting headache.” Husband says, “Take a couple aspirins.” She gets very upset; who does he think he is! Does he think that I am so stupid that I don’t know that if I have a headache, I should take a couple of aspirins? He has no sensitivity at all. All she is looking for is what a little T.L.C. That never occurs to him – T.L.C., what’s that? Life is a series of problems to be fixed! We have a problem here: the little lady has a headache, fix it, two aspirins, next! Do you get my drift? It’s called differentiation of gender! We’re supposed to recognize that there is a completeness in the melding of the two, rather than agreeing to conflict and battle of the sexes, because you see, “from the beginning of creation God created male and female” and He knew what He was doing!

Proposition, number three:

The marital union requires leaving and cleaving.

Your text doesn’t use the word “cleaving.” It says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and the two will becomes one flesh.” But I like to use the word cleaving because it comes from the Old English of the King James Version of the Bible, and I use that when it suits my purposes. Here it suits my purposes, because “leaving and cleaving”has a nice ring to it. There’s only one problem with the old English word “cleaving,” and that is it can mean two things which are mutually exclusive. Cleaving can mean sticking together, or it can mean what happens when you pick up an ax or a cleaver and you split things apart! The old word “cleave” however, doesn’t mean splitting apart, it means holding together!