Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

One-sided Conversations

Conversation should flow in a marriage, it should indicate your interest in your spouse’s life—her day, her ideas, her thoughts. When conversation becomes one-sided, there is a problem. Once I realized that the way to get my husband into a good mood was to ask him about his day, I should have known just how lopsided our marriage was, for he rarely asked me about mine. My day was of no interest to him. This was especially true after our daughters were born and my day became a reflection of theirs. I would recount the simple flow of a day, walks taken, foods eaten, books read, and as I spoke enthusiastically I would see his eyes glaze over. He was not listening, he was not interested in the minutiae; he only wanted milestones. Then, not wanting to lose his attention completely, I would ask about his day. Not as a ploy, at first, but to hear about how the “other side” still lived, what someone totally focused on his career encountered throughout his day. He would prick up, talking about his day and the things that had happened. Then I would go glossy—he would give such a detailed recounting that I would lose interest. Not only was he still focused on himself and I was focused on our daughters, but interest in each other’s stories had waned. It seemed that over time the things that interested us differed, and so our interest in each other diverged.

Whenever I had an idea, I would share it with him—he was my partner, the person who I wanted to think things over with and share my thoughts. He would offer advice and suggestions, too often. Not that they were wrong, but they seemed to give him ownership over my ideas, not the proffering of support, but the dispensation of advice and steps to take. (I understand, now, that this is a key difference between men and women, but from a day-to-day perspective, it was—is—still demeaning.) So, my saying I had an idea about a cleaning cloth, became a list of things to do to sell the idea and make money. Over the years, and many quirky ideas later, I have found out that I am not a doer, but a thinker—and so is he. But that is not what he wanted—wants—he wanted me to go out and do those things. Why? It was mainly for financial reasons, to make money so I could support him, and his plans and ideas. Is that bad? I think so. It wasn’t my creative energy that was encouraged, but my potential as a money pipeline. More hurtful still, there was certainly an element of his dissatisfaction with who I am, it was not enough to think up ideas, I needed to make them come into being.?I needed to change who I was to make things happen, things that he wanted.

The imbalance in conversation became more apparent when I realized that he was hoarding his ideas. While he encouraged me to tell him things, and I naturally did so, still enthusiastic to share ideas and thoughts, he, on the other hand, would keep his ideas and plans to himself. He said that he didn’t want to talk about his ideas until they were fully-developed. Was it because he did not want to present himself outside of this image he was trying to maintain of his being all-knowing and infallible? Perhaps he was incapable of sharing, or of admitting that he could use some help? Whatever the reason, the silence really began to disturb me. What did it say about our marriage? It did not seem that we were equals if he treated my ideas as needing assistance from him, while his ideas, his whole internal world, existed beyond my reach.

I’m not sure why he did not share, why everything had to be kept a secret. This surely exacerbated our communications problems, not only were we reluctant to talk about day-to-day issues, but one half of the couple wasn’t even willing to share his internal world. What did this leave us with? Two people who began to internalize their conversations. The ability to share atrophied.

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