Mr and Ms. Communication: Miscommunication

Our first argument, some 28 years ago, was about the Niagara Escarpment. We were driving into Ontario (I was driving, my  husband was navigating). I saw the Escarpment for the first time and asked him what it was. I couldn't understand what his answer meant, so I kept asking questions trying to clarify it. He couldn't understand what I didn't understand. We argued for a lot of miles. And that argument was prophetic. From then until now, our disagreements have always stemmed from a failure to communicate.

 

Now, this is pretty ironic, given that we have both worked in fields that require good communication skills. But I complain that he can't talk right and lacks nuance. He thinks I'm so nuanced that my real point gets lost.

 

Over the years we've learned to deal with this. Something that in the early years of the marriage escalated to a three-day silent treatment, with its concomitant tension in the gut, is now resolved within the half-hour. One of us will cool down, make an approach, and the other accepts it. We talk about what happened and we reach a resolution. This is a definite improvement. In fact, I think we both deserve a Great Achievement Award.

 

A defining characteristic of each of us has always been not just the need to be right but the need to be acknowledged as right. We both want it to be clear that "I" am right and "you" are wrong. No wimpy win-win situations for US. But that too is in the past. We both still feel the urge to be right, but we know it isn't worth the emotional pain of demanding our due. Each of us has learned to say, with relative good grace, "You're right." Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard. No, I'm lying. It's never easy.

 

Over the years my husband's bad hearing (too many rock concerts in his youth) has become worse, and mine has become bad enough for me to notice how very bad it is. Neither of us wears a hearing aid around the house, so those tricky falling-off ends of sentences get lost.

 

He says, "I'm going to go check the flamdoodle."

 

Now, do I say, "What did you say?" Or do I pretend I know what it is he's going to check?

 

If I pretend, then I may get into trouble later when he asks what I think of the whatever and I don't realize that the whatever was actually the flamdoodle under its real name.

 

But how many times a day can one ask to have a sentence repeated (or even more confusingly, the end of a sentence, or the beginning of a sentence, which gets you into explaining "I heard the subject and the verb of the sentence, but what was the objective complement?" All these complicated maneuvers, just because both of us are pretending we don't need to wear our hearing aids around the house.

 

It isn't vanity. So what is it? Well, if we knew what it was, we could begin changing the situation. Laziness? The expense of the hearing-aid batteries?  It's hard to talk on the phone when you've got that thing in your ear. So that's one valid excuse. Also, if I play the cello while wearing my hearing aid, it whistles (the device, not the cello). But there's really no valid reason not to wear the hearing aids. Last year we both included in our goals-for-the-year an intention to wear our hearing aids around the house. When we reviewed the goals this year, we realized we had failed completely on that item. So it's on the list again.

 

And yet here I sit at the computer, bare-eared, and he sits at his computer, also bare-eared. Maybe we'll change tomorrow. It's definitely time to bite the bullet, admit that we're both deaf as posts, and do our bit to overcome the Communication Deficit of the household.

 

As we tell the children, marriage is a terrific vehicle for encouraging self-knowledge and the knowledge of human relations. You just have to be prepared to work at it forever.

 

Copyright 2009 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com