Are You Like Me or My Wife?

The other night my wife called me out on being grouchy.  I can’t remember exactly how she put it, but it was something like “You’re normally the perfect husband, perfect father, and perfect person, but you seem slightly off from your normally perfect self.  Are you okay?” Yes, that’s exactly what she said.  It was either that or something like “Why are you being so grouchy?” That’s the difference between men and women.  No real husband could be that direct: (dumb husband) “Why are you being such a witch?” (wife) “So you won’t be surprised when I turn you into a frog.”  The fact that my wife could be so direct with me shows… she’s not a husband.  It also shows that she feels safe saying that because either she feels superior to me (and this was a form of judgement) or she knows she’s safe because I will just take her type of directness.  I believe it’s the latter (whether it’s self control or suppression is still in the air), but there are times where the former comes out and she sees herself better than me like when I help with the laundry and I don’t ball the socks like she does; I fold them over (you know, like a criminal). 

When you think about it, if someone’s being grouchy and you call them out on it by directly calling them grouchy in a not so nice way like my wife did, logically you’re setting yourself up for Mr. Grumpy to turn Mr. Angry.  Fortunately, despite my mood (I was definitely grouchy), I maintained self control/suppressed enough and responded the way I teach – with questions.  The two most common responses, however, in a situation like this for a normal person would be to either yell at the accuser or to go on a spiel overexplaining themselves in an annoying way.  Fortunately, I’ve trained myself to respond better than that (at least in this moment; I can still sometimes do those).  In this situation, I went with two option questions to better understand her perspective: “Do you think it’s strange I’m grumpy after the week we just had or am I being weak?” “Would you say that I was very good to give up doing what I wanted to do in order to take the kids swimming like they wanted even though it meant going to a public pool (aka a chemical and dead skin swamp) in January, which meant I’d have itchy legs for at least a week no matter how much cream I put on?” (I’m allergic to pee water and other people’s Band-Aids.) “In my grumpiness, did I ever go overboard dealing with the kids or did I maintain self control?” and “When you made your major mistake this week, was I gracious to you or did I point the finger and treat you harshly?” In every question, she confirmed that I had shown self control despite it being a very trying week.  She was, however, annoyed that I wasn’t fine.  This situation led to a very good learning experience for me as it confirmed a major difference between my wife and I – things stick to me.  It also led to the overall point: Every bad situation can teach us something.  

Because my wife has ADD and she was raised differently than me, she’s very reactive and her moods flip very quickly and potentially quite dramatically.  She’s not bipolar, but ADD and bipolar can be confused for a reason.  The same big emotion my wife can have to welcome someone to our house is the same big emotion I can receive in the other direction when the company isn’t there.  That was one of the earliest lessons I learned from her and her family who were very well liked at our old church because of how friendly they were.  As big a friendliness as they could offer, there was a balance at the other end at home.  Now when I meet anyone who’s really bubbly, my first thought is I bet the partner gets the opposite end whether yelling and/or tears.  This is almost always the case unless this friendly person keeps this big emotion for only attacking themselves. 

Side Note: My wife’s quick recovery often makes it easier for me to recover quicker as well, but we can both be left baffled by the speed with which the other recovers.

My wife’s reactiveness means she’s quick to get angry and then quick to calm down.  She’s quick to yell, and quick to recover.  Meanwhile, I’m a suppresser, which means I’m slow to anger, but then even slower to return to calm if there’s any anger because emotions stick to me: “I’m glue; you’re rubber… oh, shoot.  This isn’t the ideal set up.”  Suppressing is like my body does it’s best not to get angry because it knows how long a journey it’ll be to return to normal town if it does.  This week was one serious challenge after another, which meant I never got a chance to recover and my mood was highly affected by it.  My wife’s emotional flipping arguably makes her better at difficult weeks like this because she’s getting out her emotion in the moment and then fine again.  She’d be upset then fine; upset then fine; upset then fine whereas I’m holding back as best I can trying not to explode, and each experience that week made it harder not to explode because I never had a chance to recover; it was all sticking to me.  Hence, I was left grouchy.  

Side Note:  This time last year I could blame a grumpy moment on the addition we were working on, which also gave my wife more patience for me.  Now that we’re several months past it, her patience isn’t the same for me and I can find it hard not having a single massive thing to blame; it’s just life.  Sometimes having something to blame can be helpful, but at the same time, I like not having a soul crushing experience going on in the background (there’s good and challenge in all situations).   

My wife’s emotional expression versus my suppression side is also a good indicator of who is more logical in their approach to challenges.  For instance, for me, when there’s a problem, I want to resolve it and figure out how to prevent it in the future (hence this lesson).  Meanwhile, my wife has already moved on and couldn’t care less about resolving or finding ways to prevent it.  She’s done with it… for the moment.  When the same thing happens in the future, she’ll get just as angry, if not more because of its similarity.  At the same time, however, she still recovers almost as fast.  Me? Not even close.  If we face the same thing we’ve already addressed, my patience is greatly reduced.  I want to learn and improve, and not keep facing the same things. 

If you asked my wife, she’d say she can be frustrated by my suppressing side, especially since it can be frustrating to have me not recover at the speed she does.  Her emotional responses are what everyone in her house did growing up, so being with me has definitely had its challenges for her as she’s left wondering: “Why is this still bothering you?” or “Why do you want to address this? My emotional issues with it are gone.”  When you’re ADD and/or emotional like this, it’s hard to care about things unless you’re emotional about it because you get distracted, but then, when you are emotional about it, you have a hard time actually addressing it because you’re too emotional to properly address it, which can cause stagnation.

As frustrating as my suppressing side can be to my wife, she will also say that it has been very helpful for reducing the amount of conflict in the household.  She’s glad our home isn’t the expressiveness she had growing up (I think that’s a nice way of saying we don’t have as much yelling).  With friends, she jokes she had to marry a therapist and… it’s funny because it’s true, but she’s waaaaaayyyyyy ahead of where she was emotionally when we first started dating.  What’s interesting is her sister was always a little more ADD and emotional than my wife, and her husband is very different than me.  He’s an engineer, so I’m cooler (or dumber).  He’s always just brushed off the emotion and never addressed it.  Overall, they’ve had less direct conflict because of this, but in the long run, because they haven’t addressed anything, nothing’s changed.  It’s interesting to see how different our relationships look now almost 20 years later.  What baffles me, is my wife’s brother-in-law is less affected by his more emotional and chaotic lifestyle than I am affected by my more stable one.  It’s as if he’s built an immunity or stamina for it while I have developed a sensitivity to it.  Where he’s been building a tolerance, I’ve been building an intolerance.  It’s like emotional lactose problems… minus the need for a bathroom.  Even though my wife is better now than she was twenty years ago, which means she’s way better than her sister, I have less tolerance for any of the more emotional moments she has even though they are less extreme and less frequent.  My lifestyle is by far healthier, but I don’t handle it as healthily as he does… although that becomes a question: Is it healthier to have an intolerance if you try to improve the situation or to have a tolerance and be unaffected even if it gets worse?     

To add to this, I’ve found getting older I’m developing an intolerance to what seems like growing incompetence in the world as a whole.  I would argue this is normal for men as we move past this “I need to change the world” mentality to “The world is screwed.”  This can especially be the case for people like me who, as a young person, planned on changing the world and have been left without having made a dent like whacking a boulder with a pool noodle made of cotton candy in the rain.  I remember as a kid wondering why my dad cared so much about the state of the city and world… now I get it.  When I was a kid, my world was mostly about me and my little world at school, which is largely based on a child’s limited brain development.  Throw in having hobbies, and fun with friends, and who cares about the world, especially when you ultimately trusted your parents to take care of you and limit what bad things could happen.  Now I know exactly why my dad got so angry at the world’s stupid choices.  This intolerance for stupidity means I can also have less tolerance for my wife’s mistakes because my tolerance level is lower in general.  On the flipside, I think I can have more tolerance for my kids’ mistakes… if I haven’t been around them all day.  If I have… my self control is pushed to the test.  Fortunately, when there are three girls, they can be very good at entertaining themselves when I need space.

So we’re back to the original question: Why are you so grouchy? As a whole, I find myself getting grouchier with age, but the more important question that I should address is do I get grouchy or am I simply a jerk? The difference with being grouchy is there is a reason for this mood.  Being a jerk means you’re being yourself.  My wife knows I’m not a jerk, but she still doesn’t have a lot of tolerance for me not being fine when she’s fine.  She can still be fine if I’m not (i.e. it’s not happy man, happy wo-man), but it’s still annoying to her.  To her credit, after calling me out for being grouchy, she did ask if there was something she could do to help.  And what do most husbands want? Space.  What do wives NOT want to give? Space: (wife) “You need to talk.” (husband) “Do I need to talk or do you? Talking is only going to delay my recovery.”  Ultimately, a wife can have an influence, but we’re all responsible for our own mood.  The best influence my wife could’ve had here would be to affirm that it was a hard week, that I handled it well, and then offer me space.  Accusing me of being grouchy would not be high on my preference list – shocking.  

The important thing to understand from this lesson is how we process things will have very strong affects on how we handle things, and that not everyone reacts as we do.  My wife being emotional is very different than me who is a suppresser and it’s our differences that can make us better or drive each other crazy.  It’s all in how thankful you want to be for what you have.  Using last week’s lesson, God wants our differences to draw us closer while the devil wants to use it to tear us apart, which means not all things feel good, but all things can offer lessons to learn.    

This week may you consider if you’re more like me or my wife and what that means for you.

Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)