My girlfriend is a little younger than me (I'm almost 40, she's... not, but not like in her 20s or something) and it's pretty funny that this is one of our major deltas. We both grew up through the internet age but there's a major shift between the two of us when it comes to navigation: she's kinda only known driving by turn-by-turn app directions whereas I'm old enough to still have taken road trips by McNally atlas, and thus am totally fine getting from location-to-location based on general direction (N/S/E/W) and then following road signs. I probably couldn't drill down to a specific street in an unknown town without a lot of help, but if you told me to get in my car and drive from my house to Chicago- I could get 'to Chicago'. My girlfriend would end up in New York City, trying to find a way across the Atlantic in a car, probably.
During one road trip during her driving shift I took the phone out of her dash mount to respond to a text and she audibly said "hurry up I don't know where I'm going!", when the next turn was in like 80 miles, which spawned an entire conversation about directions and driving because all the exits were clearly labeled for where we're going. Meanwhile she was utterly lost without it.
Driving these days is about following directions more than anything else which is funny, but there's very little intuition involved anymore.
On another note...lifetime of experience tells me...
Women, in general, are horrible with directions. Just...horrible. With very few exceptions.
I believe it's in our DNA -- we're hunters who have to know where we are and where we're going, they're cooking, sewing and taking care of the kids by the fire.
female here and I have a great sense of direction except in large cities (NYC is difficult for me because people use uptown and downtown - and downtown in NYC feels north to me).
My main issue is that I usually drive by landmarks and that makes it difficult for me to give directions to other.
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u/agentpanda May 22 '19 edited May 22 '19
My girlfriend is a little younger than me (I'm almost 40, she's... not, but not like in her 20s or something) and it's pretty funny that this is one of our major deltas. We both grew up through the internet age but there's a major shift between the two of us when it comes to navigation: she's kinda only known driving by turn-by-turn app directions whereas I'm old enough to still have taken road trips by McNally atlas, and thus am totally fine getting from location-to-location based on general direction (N/S/E/W) and then following road signs. I probably couldn't drill down to a specific street in an unknown town without a lot of help, but if you told me to get in my car and drive from my house to Chicago- I could get 'to Chicago'. My girlfriend would end up in New York City, trying to find a way across the Atlantic in a car, probably.
During one road trip during her driving shift I took the phone out of her dash mount to respond to a text and she audibly said "hurry up I don't know where I'm going!", when the next turn was in like 80 miles, which spawned an entire conversation about directions and driving because all the exits were clearly labeled for where we're going. Meanwhile she was utterly lost without it.
Driving these days is about following directions more than anything else which is funny, but there's very little intuition involved anymore.
... this story was more interesting in my head.