Off My Noodle

Monday, May 19, 2008

Throat-Clearing, Ring Twisting, Foot Tapping, Oh My!

Before I got married, my mother sat me down to have “the talk.” I wasn’t looking forward to this, but I decided to grit my teeth and hear her out, even though I thought I knew what she was going to say. Not only that, I was sure I already knew better.

“Judy,” she began in a serious tone, “there’s one thing you need to understand about men.”

I nodded somberly, wishing I were anywhere, even having a tooth extracted by a Zulu tribesman using primitive instruments, rather than have to have this tete-a-tete with Mom about intimate relationships. She leaned forward and said, “Whenever your husband comes home and brings you flowers, just smile and say ‘Thank you,’ even if you don’t like them. Once, Daddy brought me flowers that I thought were ugly. I thought he’d want to know what I really liked, so I told him. He was so afraid of making another wrong choice that he didn’t bring me flowers again for 23 years.”

This revelation was more chilling than I ever imagined. While all the experts claimed that open communication was a key to marital success, here was Mom, married to my father for 40 years, telling me to just keep my trap shut, perhaps dooming me to thousands of bouquets of limp daisies during the decades to come. And there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it without risking my marriage!

Mom had learned her lesson, and so when Dad brought home jewelry for her birthday or their anniversary that didn’t match her style, she quietly returned it all. Poor Dad. Defeated in the gift-buying department, he began enclosing checks in the anniversary and birthday cards, as if the occasion were just another bar mitzvah. I took note of this while growing up, and thought I would subvert the problem in my own marriage by “coincidentally” leaving pages torn from jewelry catalogs around the house, with my selection circled in fat, black marker. After all, a man’s ego is a sensitive life form – why take a chance and damage it so cavalierly by rejecting a gift when you could drop subtle hints?

Relationship experts also suggest that when you have something uncomfortable to say to a spouse, you do so in an empathic manner. Frankly, this hasn’t worked so well for me.  For example, after three months of unsatisfactory flowers early in my marriage, I decided to try this line:

“I understand that getting this many flowers for $9.99 at the gas station seems like a real bargain.  But I would really love it if sometimes you could purchase them in a floral shop, since the petals don’t fall off so fast.” My bold attempt at empathy was met with a hurt look, and just as Mom predicted, the bouquets stopped. But part of my message obviously had weasled its way through when a few months later, slightly more upscale bouquets came home, with a Big Gulp soda thrown in for free.

I know I’m not alone. My friend (I’ll call her “D") once said to her husband, “I know that this jacket from high school has sentimental value, but if you look carefully, you’ll see it is also unraveling and is moth-eaten. Would you consider letting me get you a new one?”

When “D” told me that this idea had bombed, I just rolled my eyes. “Anyone who’s been married more than six months is entitled to surreptitiously ‘help’ antiquated or embarrassing spousal clothing ‘disappear.’ It may even be a law.”

The eye-rolling I practiced above, in fact, is one of the many powerful non-verbal cues we have in our arsenals when words miss their mark. But it’s not the only one. In fact, spouses have a nearly endless supply of possibilities, which come in handy when in public. A partial list: rapid foot-tapping, kicking a spouse under the table (not too hard, lest people notice the spouse limping out of the social hall), eyebrow furrowing (not too vigorously, lest you upset the normal pace of synapse firing), holding one’s breath (not too long, for obvious reasons), knee jiggling, nostril-flaring, taking the leftover donuts to work to avoid tempting the dieting stay-at-home spouse, and exchanging “Isn’t our kid a genius?” looks when your little darling has uttered something precious with guests around. Oh yes, there’s also beard-stroking, winking, throat-clearing, frozen smiles, ring twisting, arm crossing . . . 

(This column adapted from Jewish Life magazine.)

Posted by judy @ 10:01 AM • (1) Comments