I had a topic I wanted to discuss with my wife and I knew it was a bit sensitive. It will sound a bit ridiculous – they always do, don’t they? – but it was about dessert.
Yeah – dessert.
We’ve had friction about this before; I want less of it in the house because my kids, now old enough to bake on their own, have taken to making all kinds of incredibly delicious dessert items (and also to advising her on best desserts to purchase).
I do a decent job of not stuffing my face; I’ll limit myself to 2 (okay, 3) cookies after dinner. But still, I’ve gained some weight. I’m a sucker for chocolate. 😟
In the past, when I’ve brought this up with Chana, there’s been some pushback and not a lot of empathy. So the other day I brought up (without getting into the issue itself) that I’ve been feeling angry about just this point—the lack of an empathic response when I try to address this. She wisely and appropriately listened, reflected, validated, and empathized (if you’ve read the book already, this should sound familiar).
That night, while sitting in bed, I asked if we could open up the topic itself for me to express how I was feeling about it, and she was game.
And here’s where I totally tanked it.
I shared how hard it is for me to have delicious gooey chocolate smores cookies around on a regular basis, and I suggested that there are certainly other options out there that aren’t my taste that the girls (I only have girls) ill be satisfied with (anything that isn’t chocolate is much easier for me to resist).
They like meringues, they like rice krispies treats, they like cinnamon babka—surely we can investigate an expanded menu of choices?
Did I get enthusiastic agreement on this point? I did not. Did you catch my mistake there? (Anyone who's gotten through chapter 2 has a good shot at this!)
I ran right from an exploration of how I was feeling about the issue straight into offering a solution, without exploring her feelings about the situation first. This is a recipe for an argument.
And that’s what I got.
Chana, predictably, started explaining why those choices aren’t practical, and how stressful it was for her to find other options, and how the kids don’t like it, etc., etc.
I felt totally unheard, got irritated, and, frankly, I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but it ended with me saying (with a noticeable shut-things-down tone), “FINE, we’ll try this conversation again tomorrow,” and I turned over and started to go to sleep.
Now, to our credit, because we are quite practiced at this, I did succeed in pulling off a timeout here rather than bulldozing ahead into further conflict, and Chana did reopen the conversation warmly a few minutes later, and I did recognize the error, and we did try again, and everything did go much better. Maybe we’ll circle back to that in a future post. (Also, don’t feel bad if you’re not succeeding as well at recovery—like I said, we’re practiced at this, and have had our share of many failures.)
What I want to focus on here is my initial blunder. (Nothing keeps you humble like sharing your dumb mistakes with the world, eh?)
I shouldn’t have presented any solutions up front. I should have stuck to sharing my feelings – the frustration I felt at gaining weight again; the guilt about having eating more than I should; the embarrassment at not being able to control myself with the cookies; the anger I had at her for not being open to discussing this in the past, and for favoring the kids’ needs over mine; and probably more stuff I don’t even remember at this point.
And then I should have listened to Chana’s concerns and understood and validated those myself. (Now that I think about it, I think that when I first presented my feelings-solutions and she rebutted with her concerns, what killed the conversation might have been my weak attempt at reflecting empathically.)
After all, her feelings about this are entirely valid! And they are entirely different from mine (although I know she does care about my concerns too).
If we have a dessert that not all the kids like, then she has to deal with their complaints, and then their fighting amongst each other about it. Then there’s all the time that has to go into finding and trying new recipes, and the stress involved in that. (Chana and I have a history already around her apprehension with trying new recipes – more fodder for future posts.)
Chana had a lot of perfectly reasonable feelings to share, and I hopped right over them in an attempt to solve my own problem (fair and considerate though I may have been about it).
On the second go-round, we explicitly stuck to our feelings about the situation, as of course I counsel couples everywhere to do. And, no surprise, it went much better.
The solution then became pretty trivial – yes, we’ll work on finding other dessert options, while we pay attention at the same time to the kids’ preferences and inter-sibling issues.
Problem solved? Maybe. Time will tell.
But you didn’t read this post to find out about the culinary habits of my house. More likely you read it to enjoy my mistake, and hopefully learn something from it as well.
I hope you did!
Related Posts
