“You left me by myself with your brother last night.”
You’re standing at the kitchen counter, waiting for the coffee to finish. Of all the things your partner could have said about dinner, this one surprises you. You remember exactly why you got up from that table. “I went to get you a glass of water. You asked me for water.”
I believe you. I’m also wondering how a perfectly decent thing you did on Saturday night wound up serving as your alibi on Sunday morning.
There’s a little Ross Geller in this moment. On Friends, Ross can get an entire argument going with five words. “We were on a break!” I suspect some of you just took a side. That’s part of the fun of watching Ross and Rachel have that conversation from the couch. You can debate what constitutes a break all the way through the commercials. It’s a much rougher experience to be Rachel, trying to tell somebody you love what it felt like to learn he slept with somebody else, while he keeps referring you back to the terms of the agreement.
Most of us have a version of that line. Yours might be considerably less dramatic. It might be about water.
Which part of dinner are we talking about?
Imagine your brother spent a good chunk of dinner making jokes about your partner’s job. She laughed at the first one. By the third one she was peeling the label off her beer. She looked across the table at you. You gave her a little smile and looked down at your plate.
From your seat, that smile meant something like, Yeah, I wish he’d give it a rest, too. From hers, it looked an awful lot like you thought he was funny. Getting up for water happened ten minutes later. You could take her through every step of that trip to the kitchen and still have no idea she’d been thinking about your face.
This is where I get interested as a couples therapist. Each person has picked a moment the other can barely remember. Somehow, within a minute or two, they’re both answering for the whole marriage.
What did you hear her say about you?
I have a soft spot for the person doing the explaining. Maybe in your family, if you got one detail wrong, the rest of your story got thrown out. Maybe you spent half of dinner doing little things for your partner and you’d like her to have noticed one. It hurts to remember yourself making an effort and hear that she remembers being alone.
Then there’s the possibility that you wish you’d spoken up. You had a pretty good idea what she wanted when she looked over. You also knew what your brother would say if you challenged him in front of your dad. At forty-seven, you can still hear the particular way he says, “Oh, come on.” Discussing the water is considerably more comfortable.
Last week I wrote about rehearsing both sides of an argument before it happens. Something similar can happen while the other person is standing right there. She’s said one sentence. In your head she’s already called you a lousy husband, and you’re halfway through telling her how unfair that is. Meanwhile she’s at the counter wondering if you even heard your brother.
The part you can own
The Gottman Institute describes defensiveness as a way of protecting yourself when you feel accused. One response they suggest is taking responsibility for your share of what happened. I like how small and specific that share can be. You might genuinely disagree that you left her alone all night. You can stand behind “I heard the joke and I let it go.”
There’s also a reason to give her a minute to describe what happened on her side. In two diary studies by Jean-Philippe Laurenceau, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Paula Pietromonaco, people recorded everyday interactions and how close they felt afterward. Feeling that the other person had understood and cared about what they shared helped explain the link between opening up and feeling close. I think about the risk your partner took when she mentioned dinner. She could have finished her coffee and quietly decided to stay home next time. She gave you a chance to know something.
Try going back about five seconds
You can try this even if you’ve already given a stirring defense of your trip to the kitchen. Set your mug down. Ask the question you don’t know the answer to yet. “Hang on. Which part of dinner are you thinking about?”
If she says, “I looked over and you smiled,” stay there a second. You might say, “You saw me smiling while he was saying that about your job? Oh, hell. I can see why that hurt.” Then tell her what you wish you’d done. “I heard him. I wish I’d told him to knock it off.”
There’s room for your side in this conversation, too. “I get weird around my brother when Dad’s there. I keep hoping if I sit still long enough, he’ll pick on somebody else.” That’s something she might actually want to know about the man she spent Saturday night sitting across from. It also gives you two something to work out before the next dinner. Does she want you to say something at the table? Would she rather you call your brother yourself? She may have an answer you haven’t thought of.
I can watch Ross make his case for the hundredth time and still laugh. At my own kitchen counter, I’d like to catch it a little sooner. The next time you hear yourself saying “Technically,” see if you can remember the look on your partner’s face right before you started explaining. If you missed it, you can still ask.
If the two of you keep having a version of this argument, you can learn more about working with me in Kansas City. One place we can start is the five seconds each of you remembers differently.
Find the pattern. Change what comes next.
