Damned Nut

When I was at WisCon last May, the ultra cool and sexy Ian Hagemann talked about "nut and bolt" issues in relationships. He said: "say you have a bolt. And say you have a nut. If they're threaded to the same gauge, they actually fit together. If not, it doesn't make a lot of sense for the nut to go around saying 'that godamned bolt. How dare it be threaded that way?' or for the bolt to say, 'that stupid nut. What is its problem?'"

I thought that this was a nifty metaphor. Has anyone actually succeeded in thinking that way?