I often Tweet that if you have found a good stock or spouse, you need to hold on to them through the thick & thin…deal with the minor hiccups.
Let’s look at this alliance of marriage closely.
First things first, if you are caught in a nuptial knot with a wrong person, then don’t waste your time reading this any further. Treat a bad relationship like a bad investment…get rid of it immediately. This write up is meant for only those who have a good spouse overall, but the marriage does suffer from minor hiccups (as it always does), which are threatening to blow into major ones. And the fact that it is given that the spouse is worth hanging on to (like a good stock!), you want to figure out how to deal with the situation.
Genesis of fault lines
If you’re married to a person, who is basically worth spending the rest of the life with, you need to learn to deal with minor fault lines. These fault lines have their earliest origins in the differences between the emotional worlds of girls and boys. Let’s dig deeper…
There are always two emotional realities in a marriage – his & her. The origin of this difference is not just in genotype (genes), but phenotype (genes + early upbringing). Right in the early age itself, girls, by design, are more emotionally triggered than boys. Girls are far more expressive, skilled & elaborate at articulating their emotions. Boys are relatively unskilled in reading one’s own & others emotions, leave along expressing them. As they grow older, the difference gets wider – girls becoming more adept at artful aggressive tactics like ostracism, vicious gossip and indirect vendettas. Boys resort to being confrontational when angered. As they grow further, men prefer independence & autonomy; women prefer a web of connectedness. Women experience a wider spectrum of emotions with greater intensity & range.
This, at a fundamental level, causes men to talk about “things”, while women seek emotional connection. Wives are adept in both reading non-verbal signals & expressing their feeling. Husbands are adept at minimising the emotions.
As the marriage brews, the couple has iterations of interactions where one partner prefers emotional confrontations, while the other wants to wriggle out. With each iteration of this emotional mismatch, there is a compounding effect as layers keep getting added on the subconscious of both. The criticism & confrontations start becoming:
1) harsher – The accumulated angst, causes the criticisms to become more generic & character assassinating, rather than being deed specific – Eg, rather than saying, you should have been more polite while speaking to my Mom, you start saying that you have no courtesy to talk to elders. Or, you don’t care about us. Or, you’ve gone mad.
2) anticipatory – Both partners are filled with precognitive emotions. The blood starts boiling at the slightest of the trigger. Even small issues become major ones. 1 small expression, triggers the reactions from the other, which triggers reactions from the former; an emotional contagion ensues. Criticism comes laden with contempt.
Consequences
With every iteration wives, the more emotional partners become belligerent, husbands, passive. The partner either gets defensive or counterattacking – the Caveman’s typical fight or flight response! Some typical consequences…
1) Stonewalling / Silent Treatment – The partner just goes blank, withdrawing from the conversation. It’s a combination of icy distance, superiority and distaste. It cuts all possibilities of truce.
2) Counter-attacking – A fruitless shouting match. Every word uttered, makes it even more difficult for the normalcy to return (akin to the typical judicial warning : You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law). They get into vicious loops of criticism & contempt, defensiveness & stonewalling. With no solution in sight, partners try to soothe their feeling on their own. They start leading parallel lives. They become Intimate Enemies!
If you can relate to this, read on. I do have suggestions, if not solutions!
Solution
As I illustrated in the initial part of the tweet, the root cause of this is the Emotional Mismatch between a Man & a Woman. They are at two ends of emotional spectrum; they need opposite fine tuning to bridge the gap.
Husbands – They should not avoid conflict. When they don’t pay heed to the wives’ complaints, they make them feel unheard or uncared for. They need to lend a sincere ear. They should be careful at not short circuiting the discussion by offering a practical solution too early. Hear her out fully. She is going to repeat & repeat, like a broken record. Listen patiently with a sincere smile & eye contact. Then offer a solution by starting with, “Hmm, I can understand…”
I say it again… just hearing her out fully is like winning 80% of the battle.It matters a world to a wife, if she ‘feels’ heard & respected. Do this & you can get away with any lame explanation/solution.
Wives – They should complain about deeds, not the personality; Just saying that a particular action is distressing, instead of writing off the person.
It’s important that at least one partner keeps the ego aside and tries to de-escalate the tension.
I propose a…
Three step process:
De-escalate, empathise, and hear out. This ensures small tensions stay small. Small confrontations, if heard out, are good. They do not let self-thoughts simmer, accumulate and cause bigger fights.
A Practical Challenge
The problem with marital confrontations is Emotional High jacking. Your blood starts boiling & adrenaline starts rushing with the slightest of the trigger. Problem erupts into a feedback loop, because the threshold of the Pre-Cognitive Emotion trigger is low for both partners. With, such emotional high jacking, it is impossible to calm down, hear out sincerely, not make personal & contemptuous comments.
Solution to the challenge
What one needs is practice. Be mentally prepared for all such small situations. When situation arise, you need to step out of the situation and force yourself not to get into an emotional hijacking. So now, instead of avoiding, you’re actually looking out for such small situations and practising the three step process.
This is obviously easier said than done. Having said that, it is like any skill development. Initially, you will fail. It will require a lot of conscious effort to stop failing. Gradually you will get better as the skill gets internalised at a subconscious level. You will learn to associate such situations with an immediate smile, followed by stepping back, de-escalating and hearing out.
Once, you get to this stage, you can look for signs of thaw and use that as an opportunity to reinforce the relationship stronger (just as you would add to your winning investments!)
As far as I’m concerned, I’m still work in progress!