My Husband is a Martian – Part 1

In honor of our recent 17th anniversary, I’m doing a series on personality types, learning styles and culture and how this has been a challenge for us in our communication. I hope by sharing from our experiences and from what we've learned (and are still learning) that your relationships will grow and flourish.

The truth is I’m married to a Martian. At times, I was convinced that God must have a made a mistake when He put the two of us together. For one, I’m a verbal communicator, processing while I speak. There would be times when the things I said to my Martian husband were misunderstood and then, just like in a court of law, were used against me. I could say the exact same things to other people and get the response and understanding that I was expecting, but not with my Martian. In fact, he used to say that I was the only person on this planet who communicates like I do.

We were fortunate to discover that our differences were not that uncommon to mankind. One of the courses that we did together twice was very helpful in making sense of all the confusion, which was the DISC Model of Human Behavior. You can’t put people in boxes, but you can learn to understand them better.

The D stands for Dominant type people. The I stands for Inspiring type people. The S stands for Supportive type people. The C stands for Cautious type people.

From the courses we took and this free online test, we learned that I am a blend of I and D with my I style being slightly stronger. Some of my strengths are that I am enthusiastic, outgoing, personable, decisive and independent, while some of my weaknesses can be that I am excitable, reacting, talkative, harsh and dominating.

My husband is a blend of C and S with C being his dominant style. Some of his strengths are that he is thorough, orderly, serious, supportive and dependable, while some of his weaknesses can be that he is critical, indecisive, picky, dependent and slow.

As you can see, in many ways hubby and I are complete opposites. This means we often rub each other up the wrong way. In one area where we are similar is that we both tend to be task-oriented and not always enough people-oriented. If we are too task-oriented then we can push people aside, which is hurtful. Because of my husband’s culture, he has been good at reminding me to mind my manners when I’m with others. I’ll discuss our cultures in a later post.

Here is part 2 at My Husband is a Martian - Part 2.

Further resources:

• Wikipedia
• Changing Minds