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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY Common interests bolster a marriage This is not an "advice-to-the-lovelorn" column, but rather a short look at the institution of marriage. Just the other day, while my wife, Nora, and I were on our morning walk, we began talking about how fortunate we were to agree on so many things in our lives. We have known couples who seem to disagree on about as many things as they agree on. It takes time for couples to learn just how different they are. As every advice columnist from Emily Post to Dear Abby has written from time to time, the basic problem is that men and women simply think differently. Men tend to think in a straight line -- "just give me the facts and skip the touchy-feely stuff," while women say, "Sure, the facts are important, but facts don't have feelings, and we need both." One of the reasons for having long engagements is so the pair can learn each other's foibles. (Of course, we didn't follow that -- we had a big church wedding less than four months after we met.) It is easy for either party to think that the other will easily change once the I do's are said. Once in a while, a man and a woman will marry and then find they disagree on major things that had never come up before. Here are a couple of examples of areas that can be troublesome: CAMPING : Suppose you and your future mate meet each other for the first time six months before you marry. If that six-month period consisted mostly of fall and winter and early spring, you may have never discussed your views on the great outdoors. After going away for a honeymoon, you settle into your new apartment, only to have your mate say, "Wow, do you realize that camping season starts in a couple of weeks? We'll have a wonderful time sleeping on the ground." I am not assigning a sex to either party above, knowing that camping and living out-of-doors is usually a taste that children acquire through their experiences with their parents, and is not a gender thing. Either a man or a woman may be adamantly against camping, even after spending childhood summers out in the woods with parents, brothers and sisters. Come fall, the scene might change to a deer camp in the mountains. The summer camps and the winter versions are almost identical, except for the tales around the campfires at the winter version about the big bucks that got away. Nora and I were blessed in that we both are not great campers. She was from a camping family. Her family took long trips to Eastern Oregon during the deer season every fall, but Nora made it clear to me during the courtship that she preferred a good bed to sleeping on the ground in a lumpy sleeping bag. I was a city kid who had never gone camping as a child. When the war came along, I learned how to dig foxholes and sleep in them in the rain, but I vowed that if I made it home, I would sleep on the ground only under major duress. We both have commented on how rocky our relationship would have been if we had not talked about the subject beforehand, rather than finding later that one of us actually loved the smoke of a campfire and the buzz of mosquitoes. MUSIC : This is not a major problem for many couples, what with rock 'n' roll being so ubiquitous, but there must be cases where the worst happened. Can you imagine a young man who grew up with country-and-western music in his home vowing to love, honor and cherish a young woman who grew up in a household where classical music and even opera was almost worshipped? The problems mentioned here are nothing when compared to basic differences between a husband and a wife over money, politics or religion. Couples with those problems should consult a good marriage counselor. Nora says that the hardest thing to learn in marriage is to bend. Eventually, if both partners work at it, the two will bend into one. (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA