ACT 1, SCENE 1
[Workaholic or hard-working] husband and pregnant wife sitting at dinner table. His cell phone rings, they look at each other.
Husband: “I’m going to ignore that, I want to spend time with you.”
Wife: “No, get it. It’s OK.”
Husband: “No, I’ll skip it so we can have dinner together.”
Wife: ” Really, answer it. I know your business is important.”
Husband: “Are you sure?”
Wife: “Yes, answer it.”
Husband answers phone and speaks to a client who obviously has a problem.
Husband to client: “Please hold for a minute.”
Husband to wife: “He wants to see me right away but I can put him off until after dinner or sometime early morning. Which works better for you?”
Wife: “Go now. I know you want to go now.”
Husband: “No, I want to handle the problem but it can wait until after we have dinner together. I want to be with you.”
Wife: “It’s obvious you need to go and I know your work is important.”
Husband to client: “I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”
ACT 1, SCENE 2
Husband gets up from dinner table and starts to get ready to go meet client.
Wife [angry and hurt]: We never have any time together, you’re always putting your clients first.
Husband [frustrated]: “I said I’d stay and have dinner with you but you said it was OK to leave.”
Wife: “I know you didn’t really want to stay, that you wanted to go see your client.”
Husband leaves frustrated and angry. Wife is crying and hurt.
Honesty – Saying What You Really Want
The scenario above has been played out innumerable times in relationships; not just in marriages, but in friendships and working relationships as well.
Here’s five important items to consider when having a dialogue with someone.
1. Ask for (say) what you want. Even if you don’t always end up getting what you want, at least you were true to yourself, which is an important step in both self-care and self-growth.
2. You feel better about yourself for being honest.
3. Truth-telling builds trust within relationships and doesn’t leave any of the parties wondering or second-guessing what s/he thinks the other person “really” wants.
4. It reduces misunderstandings and one person doesn’t end up angry and the other one hurt.
5. Conversations are not “crazy-making” because they’re clear and each person feels safe knowing what the other person really wants.
Mind reading
There were two kinds of misguided thinking or mind reading going on in scenes 1 and 2.
First, the wife thought she knew what the husband “really” wanted, but she didn’t. The outcome in this situation is obvious but reflect on situations you’ve encountered in the workplace when you or another person engaged in mind reading. What were the outcomes?
Pat, a colleague, said that s/he had experience with projects like the one you were working on and offered to help you. You “knew” s/he was only offering the help because s/he wanted to garner credit when the project was finished.
Net result of this incorrect mind reading:
- Pat missed out on getting help from an experienced person.
- Pat lost the value of another perspective.
- Pat wasn’t seen as a team player.
- Pat could have been you.
The other misguided thinking that occurred in the original scenario, although not stated, was that the wife thought the husband should read her mind and know what she really wanted (in this case, him to stay home).
For the health of your relationships, dispel the myth that your spouse, partner, friend or colleague should know:
- what you’re thinking or feeling
- what you want
- how you perceive their actions
No one can read your mind, even if they manage to guess correctly once in a while. If you want something, ask for it clearly and directly.
You also can’t read another person’s mind so be aware of jumping to conclusions and adding meaning to what people say or do (aka mind reading). The likelihood of interpreting others’ actions based on your personal autobiography, rather than correctly assessing the other person’s actual motivation, is very high.
To stop jumping to conclusions, and possibly racheting up your emotions on a mistaken belief or interpretation, test your belief by asking the other person for clarification. For example:
- “Cherry it seems like you’re ignoring me.”
- “Larry, you’re quiet, does it have anything to do with me?”
What stories do you have about when you “practiced” mind reading or didn’t speak up for yourself?
Two classic books that are hopeful on this topic are:
1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey when he talks about interpreting things from your own autobiography and Habit 5 Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood.
2. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook by Peter Senge et al and its section on mental models and the ladder of inference.
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Oh this is such an important topic! I think sometimes we women WANT the husband to stay home, but we don’t WANT THE GUILT knowing he would be happier with the client (if not happier, he’d feel better or more productive or otherwise fulfilling his outside duties.)
I bet false-mind reading must account for 80-99% of all fights! :) Great reminder to STOP the insanity!
Elizabeth,
I agree, I think that false mind reading and not being clear about what we want accounts for a large percentage of disagreements and misunderstandings that people have in all types of relationships.
I love the expression, stop the insanity. Cherry
Love this..soo true! So hard to find the courage to actually be assertive and stand in your OWN power and actually be powerful and say, yes, I’d like you to do x or y or z…for me, I am worth it! Can be easier to feel helpless and abdicate your power and remain powerless, and be angry and hurt…..
I say, GRAB YOUR POWER, YOU ARE WORTH IT!
(I know not so easy done!)
Kathy,
Too often people, and anecdotally I think it’s more woman than men, abdicate their power. It sets up a negative cycle of events which is very unfortunate. Each of us has the right to ask for what we want; doesn’t guarantee we’ll get it, but it sure increases our chances while practicing our assertiveness. Cherry
At the risk of throwing a wrench into this all-too-common scenario…I think husband acted passive-aggressively when not recognizing that dinner time is sacred, and arrives at the end of the work day…Not hating on the men, same goes for the female counterparts.
When asking/deferring, huz is deflecting the responsibility, and putting wife in a no-win situation, and clearly not possessing personal/professional boundaries.
If he’s truly hard-working his marriage, he’s gonna eat w/out the CrackBerry tethered to his dinner napkin. What’s gonna change when baby arrives….?
Linda,
THere’s a couple assumptions you’re working under that may or may not be true for this family:
~dinner time is sacred.
~it’s the end of the work day; perhaps he’s a realtor
~his cell phone was on his person, perhaps it was on the hallway table and they could both hear it
~passive =-agressive maybe but the real estate biz has been down (I’m totally making this storyline up) and he knows his wife won’t be working once the baby’s born and he knows they have some extra expenses coming up
I can see why you’re saying he’s deflecting responsibility but I don’t think it puts her in a no-win situation unless she has trouble speaking up for herself.
THe point is that she, he and everyone, both at home and in the workplace need to speak honestly about what they want. She did not. Even if he’s a total schmuck, which is possible, she shouldn’t be saying go-go-go and then when he goes let it be known then that she didn’t want him to. We all need to be responsible for speaking our truth and asking for what we want. Did all that continue the discussion Linda? :)
Hui Linda – Yes, thanks for bringing this up, it takes two to tango, and both need to shoulder the responsibility of the marriage….great points!
Kathy,
Absolutely, both parties have to shoulder the responsibility in a marriage and in any relationship. That being said, each person has to say what they really want. You can see what I wrote to Linda. Cherry
Hi Cherry –
Good points, as I wrote my response I WAS wondering if there were any agreements regarding dinnertime phone/work issues and I was thinking it would be difficult for that woman to even bring up those issues to her husband. And her husband was trying to communicate with her and she kept deflecting those attempts. S, again I think one of the underlying purposes in teaching communication is teaching that it feels good in the long run to be assertive and to be able to tolerate standing in some degree of personal power, rather than opting for the powerless feelings that are so familiar. Lots of people (men & women) seem unable to feel ok in their assertiveness. It’s not easy growing up!
No, it’s not easy growing up but, most of the time I like it. :)
Great post. Playing psychic mind reader gets us in to trouble every time. I’ve had so many clients tell me a story about something “awful” a loved one did and as I’m listening it’s so clear that one or both (or sometimes more) people were involved in conversations that weren’t actually happening. I usually kindly explain that they’re clearly horrible psychics and to try saying what they really mean and trusting that the other person might, just possibly, be saying what they mean… If they’re not sure, ask for clarification.
Thanks Katie. I hate to think about all the times in the past when I was sure I knew why someone acted the way they did and then found out I was wrong. I rarely make that mistake anymore because of my increased awareness that I can’t mind-read. Cherry
Interesting post and discussion. From the dialogue, it appears that this was a repeat situation, a kind of historic pattern that tied behavior and assumption together. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the husband and wife had negotiated what they both wanted/needed after the first situation and then held each other to their agreement. When we delay dealing with issues, they get bigger. I forget which management guru wrote this but it’s quite true: What we resist, persists. ~Dawn
What we resist, persists. I hate that quote because it’s so true and it’s hard sometimes to stop resisting.
Thanks for the comment Dawn, Cherry
Thanks for a very enlightening post on the subject of saying what you want to get what you want. I can put myself in the situation as your wife in the example, because my husband have to visit clients at dinnertime and sometimes we don’t know till the last minute. We need the income, so I need to cope, so I will say: “You have to go, that’s fine because it is what it is. Let’s plan a date!” The passive-aggressive shit just don’t work, and getting mad because of a situation that we can’t change, is a waste of my energy.
To avoid mind reading, I often ask my husband, if he is mad at me or he just had a bad day at work. He will tell me. He will also ask me how I am doing, so I tell him because it is my responsibility to be honest with him. I can say that I don’t like his work hours. The point is that even though we have been together for a long time, we still need to make sure that we understand each other.
Irene,
It sounds like your husband and you communicate in a healthy way. Asking for clarification and having each spouse respond honestly is wonderful. Good for you. Cherry
That kind of behavior is very irritating to me and I do think it’s passive aggressive – No, really it’s ok – go. And then turn around and be angry that hubs listened to you? What is THAT all about? I know it’s common, but I can’t stand it.
However, the link to work is a good one for me to have been reminded of – that humility, do what’s best for the whole versus me, etc. can be toxic. For me it’s more subtle than the marriage one though & I’m not quite sure why I didn’t make the correlation before.
Thank you Cherry!
You’re welcome Daria. I’m glad you also mentioned the connection to work. Sometimes the kind of behavior I wrote about is easy to see at home between spouses, but not as easy to recognize at work. Cherry
Hi Cherry,
I think this issue is an important one and I think a fairly complex one. For example, in the beginning of my marriage, I told my husband a lot that I didn’t want him to work as much, that it hurt, that I felt lonely, etc. It didn’t get me what I wanted. In fact, it began to drive him away with his guilt and anger and resentment stress of having to earn an income and his anxiety about that. In the scenario you wrote about (very well, I might add), yeah, wifey needed to speak honestly and own her desire/power. I think the KEY to this approach would be to have the wife say what she really wants and then learn to tolerate the emotional pain if his answer is ‘no, I’m going to work’ – kind of like what Daria wrote about. It took me years to tolerate that emotional pain and now when I let him know I’m upset about the amount he’s working I’m OK – and he knows it – if the answer is no. (He works a lot less now and is much less reactive to my emotions and desires around it) I had no idea how hard it was going to be when I got married to learn to tolerate my husband’s no – but I’m glad I did it. We are so much happier because of it.
I have very similar experiences Miriam. Your point about managing the anxiety and focusing on self is so right! It gives my husband the opportunity to figure out what he wants, instead of reacting to me with guilt, anger and so forth.