The main way spouses can be in agreement is to hear and understand one another correctly.
This morning, I was just returning from the yard into the screened porch on the back of our house when my wife was coming into it from the house.
"Would you open the door for me?" she said. She was carrying a cup of milk and a plate containing her English muffin.
I stepped back to hold open the door I'd just come through.
"No, I mean
this door," she said.
I stepped forward instead, but by now she had already gotten out okay.
"Would you turn the fan off for me?" she said.
As I neared the door into the house, she added, "Put it on speed two."
I proceeded to the controls for the fan in the house, realizing on the way that if I turned it off it wouldn't have any speed at all, so—
"No, no," my wife said, "Turn
this fan on."
But by now she had set her cup and plate down and was already at the controls for the porch fan.
"I thought you said to turn the fan off," I explained.
"No," she said, "I said turn the fan on.
You need to get your brain out of your ears."
Great metaphor, that! We have all experienced mishearing words—or misinterpreting words correctly identified—because our brain has imposed a contrary preconception or assumption onto the interchange.
My brain's contribution in the scenario reported above seems to have been, first, to assume that "the door" was the one that I was touching, especially since the door
she was touching was already open, and the door I was next to is stiff and would certainly be difficult or dangerous to get through holding a glass in one hand and a plate in the other.
Next, apparently, the correction of "the door" from the one I was near to the one farther away from me set me up to interpret "the fan" similarly, especially since my wife is a stickler for not leaving electrical equipment on in a room you're just leaving. And, of course, if she was referring to the fan in the room that she was leaving, she certainly wouldn't want me to go turn it
on. In any case, the fan on the porch never entered my mind at all.
And so on.
Clearly, my brain was working away. It didn't mean to be plugging my ears, but to my wife trying to communicate her wishes to me, that was effectively what it had been doing.
If I'm to make my own contribution to world peace through better agreement with my spouse (as was suggested at the end of yesterday's post, "
Ready for adult content?"), my brain is going to have to quit contributing so much. Or contribute better.
So, let's replay the scenario:
"Would you open the door for me?" she said. She was carrying a cup of milk and a plate containing her English muffin.
"This door?" I asked for clarification.
"No, this one," she said.
I stepped forward, but by now she had already gotten out okay.
"Would you turn the fan off for me?" she said.
"The fan inside?" I asked for clarification. "No," she said. "This one. Put it on speed two."
Ah, turn it on, of course. I stepped to the controls for the porch fan. Unfortunately, they're different from the controls for the fans inside the house.
"How do you turn it on?" I asked.
"Never mind," my wife said. By now she had set her cup and plate down and joined me at the controls for the porch fan.
"You need a new brain," she said.
