“Men are like waffles, women are like spaghetti."

This was the sage advice that my Big gave me after a devastating heartbreak the fall of my freshman year. We were riding in her car back down to my parent’s house where I sat teary-eyed and confused, and I couldn’t wrap my head around how the man of my dreams could simply cut me out of his life like he had earlier that day. It seemed like all I could think about was him, while he didn’t have a single thought about me. The saying “out of sight—out of mind” kept running through my brain, and I blubbered out streams of jumbled words as my Big drove and patiently listened.

Finally, after 45 minutes of my babbling, my Big simply said, “Ashley, you have to realize: men are like waffles, women are like spaghetti.” I trusted my Big so much, but I could not for the life of me understand how this affected my own life. I mean I have always joked about how men and women’s brains were wired differently—but brains in relation to food? No thank you.

However, the funny thing is that it actually makes a little bit of sense. There is a whole book on the matter too, written by Bill and Pam Farrel.

Think about a human brain. It’s complicated and amazing all at once. Now focus specifically on thinking. Our thoughts control everything about who we are, don’t they? You can’t deny that men and women think differently. I mean, take shopping or television or even driving, for an example. When was the last time a man and a woman agreed on how to do any of those?

Picture a man’s brain as a waffle. He has a box for every thought and a thought for every box. Now, his brain itself can only focus and digest one box at a time, as there can only be one thought in each box. A man can switch between boxes as quickly and as often as he wants to, however, whenever he is in a box, whichever thought is in that box is the only thought that he is focused on.

There are a few more elements to having a waffle brain that are important to note. Just like a waffle, a man can simply cut out a box he chooses not to think about anymore and get rid of it. He can add new boxes all of the time, but if he cuts away a part of his waffle then that thought is pretty much gone. Out of sight, out of mind. Another important thing to realize is that a man does not have to be in any of his boxes at all. This is why when you ask a guy what he is thinking about and he replies “nothing,” he is honestly not thinking about anything. Look at when (most) men try to multi-task. Does it ever really work out?

A woman’s brain on the other hand is like a pile of spaghetti. Each noodle is a thought that is jumbled up with the rest of the noodles in a pile. When a woman is focused on one thought or noodle, she is also taking into consideration every other thought that that particular noodle is touching. A woman has a hard time being fully and completely focused on any one noodle because of all of the surrounding noodles. That’s why when you ask a woman what she is thinking about she will list off streams of thoughts that may or may not have anything to do with one another.

If a woman were trying to eliminate a certain noodle or pull it out of the pile, the rest of the noodles would collapse and become tangled in one another. It takes lots of time and effort to carefully remove a single noodle. This can explain why women tend to hold on to things for longer amounts of time, or have a hard time of letting things go. That is why people think women are more emotional and needy—their noodles are just a tangled mess.

Granted, this is just an analogy and is just a fun way of explaining the differences between men and women. Not all men have waffles for brains, and not all women have spaghetti brains either. Both types of brains are needed in their own ways. It was merely fun advice that helped me understand how I was feeling. Thank you, Big, for all of your wise words and quirky analogies!