35 Men Share Things They Didn't Know They Were Doing Wrong Until They Started Living With A Woman

After Bored Panda reached out to Gerdaandemail for a comment, the author of the viral post agreed to take some time out of his day for a quick chat about what inspired him to explore this topic.

"I was taking care of some household chores when it struck me that several of the things I did, my wife had taught me or helped me improve," the Redditor recalled.

"Specifically, I was doing laundry and got thinking about how I used to ruin my clothes by ignoring the laundry instructions. My wife has helped me take care of myself in so many ways, both mentally, physically and practically, and I was wondering if anybody else had the same experience."

Even though more couples are living together than ever before, according to one study that took a closer look at 192 young people in their late twenties, the motivation for men and women to share a place are different.

"We found that responses varied by gender much more than they did by race or ethnicity, suggesting a substantial gender gap in the perceived role of cohabitation in the union formation process," said Pamela Smock, a sociologist who directs the University of Michigan Population Studies Center, part of the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).

She conducted the study with Penelope Huang of the University of California Hastings College of the Law, Wendy Manning of Bowling Green State University, and Cara Bergstrom-Lynch of East Connecticut State University, and discovered that overall, three key reasons for living together emerged: wanting to spend more time with one's partner, wanting to share life's financial burdens, and wanting to test compatibility.

But the way men and women put forth these three goals differed quite a lot. Women highlighted "love" as a reason to live together three times as often as men did, while men cited "sex" as a reason to live together four times as often as women did.

Both men and women saw cohabitation as a temporary state in which to gauge compatibility, but women saw it as a transitional arrangement preceding marriage, while men tended to see it as a convenient, low-risk way to see if a relationship had longer-term potential, using terms like "test drive" to describe the arrangement.

The strongest gender differences, however, emerged in the perceived disadvantages of cohabitation. Women believed that living together meant less commitment and legitimacy than marriage, while men saw the greatest disadvantage as their shrunken freedom.

Despite the mismatches in motives and expectations, Smock noted that young adults appear to see cohabitation as an expected part of life. "Ultimately, the clearest message was that living together is very much taken for granted. As a result, the upward climb in the proportion of young adults who cohabit is likely to continue for some time," she explained.

Returning to our topic, Gerdaandemail thinks that men learning something from a woman isn't necessarily a question about genders "but rather how one relates to new information from a person who is different from oneself."

"Chances are that your partner and you have different interests that have generated different pools of knowledge that can be used to contribute to the relationship," he said.

"As someone who has vastly better conversations" with his wife than with most men, the Redditor also believes that men and women can definitely "speak the same language" and understand each other.

"In my opinion, good communication has its roots in mutual respect, interest, and willingness to learn and listen. Gender is far too blunt a tool to distinguish between good or bad conversationalists," he added. Which is a perfect reminder that if you've been with someone who you feel didn't really get you, it wasn't proof that you can't find common ground with the opposite gender. Maybe you just weren't compatible.