“Why do you want to cover that beautiful floor?” This is my husband’s standard response whenever I suggest buying an area rug.
“Because a rug will finish this room.”
“The room is finished,” he insists. Dan thinks a room is finished when the doors are hung and walls are painted.
I huff off, frustrated again by the million and one differences between men and women – and that’s just counting the differences in the home improvement arena. Here are more head-scratching differences:
Men don’t get drapes. Show me a man who does, and I’ll show you a man who got an extra X chromosome. Ditto for wallpaper.
Men don’t get custom bedding. They really don’t understand why you can’t just zip two sleeping bags together. But if a custom coverlet makes the woman happier in bed, he usually won’t put up a fight.
Men don’t get centerpieces. “Why put something on a table that you just have to move every time you need the table?” they ask.
Men don’t get throw pillows. (See above logic.)
Men don’t get big, conveniently located laundry room. Men would just as soon put the laundry room outdoors like an outhouse. Women want it central, so lugging clothes around the house isn’t their primary workout.
Men do get home theaters and surround sounds. Women, however, don’t get why it’s cool to have sound so realistic the whole room vibrates and feels as though World War II planes are dropping bombs down your neck.
Men also want big grills. Women want big bathtubs.
Men love their garages. They will defend them to their deaths. Actually, deaths have occurred when a woman craving more space wanted to turn the garage into a gym or art studio.
And men don’t get area rugs. If you have carpet, men think putting a rug on carpet is redundant. If you have hard floors, like stone or wood, they know how much they cost, so refuse to cover them up.
None of this surprises Michael Gurian, an expert on gender brain differences, and author of “What Could He Be Thinking.” To try to understand men better, I read his book and called him. Turns out the different ways men and women look at home improvement – or life – come down to the way the two genders’ brains are wired.
In men, the dominant brain region ponders questions like: How big? How much? Does it have a remote? Women’s brains allot more space to the region that ponders how many colors does it come in, and is it washable? Here’s what else is different:
Men focus on gross value, while women focus on fine value. “Men get their identity from how big their home is and how much land they have. Women get their identity from the quality of the interior space,” says Gurian, who heads the Gurian Institute in Spokane, WA.
Women’s brains take in more sensory data than men’s. They are biologically wired to see more, hear more, smell more and feel more, he says. “This is why men don’t understand why women can’t relax if the house is a mess.”
Women trust feelings; men trust logic. A woman decides to buy a home if a bird is nesting in the eaves, and the cupboard knobs are just like the one’s her grandma used to have. Men buy if the seller knocks 10 percent off the asking price.
At home, men look out; women look in. This harkens back to our predecessors’ days when cavemen focused on the woolly mammoth hunt, while cavewomen focused on finding the perfect hearthstone. Which is why, 10 million years later, when extra money flows in for a home improvement, men want rain gutters and women want drapes.
Absorbing all this, I’ve come up with a strategy to help women prevail on the home front more often: Think like a man. I try this on Dan, and re-approach the subject of that area rug:
“I know you think a rug will cover up our beautiful floor,” I say, “but think of a beautiful area rug like great lingerie.” He lifts his eyebrows. “It invites you to imagine what’s underneath.”
He doesn’t immediately fall for this, but at least I’ve gotten him thinking.
(Tune in next week when a therapist offers tips to help couples survive a remodel.)
Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area. You may contact her through marnijameson.com.
