Say What You Mean

My husband and I had an argument last night.  It was nothing serious, one of those silly ones that we’ll sooner forget than anything, but in reading and commenting on Courtney’s post about cohabitation issues today, I realized that it represented the hand of society toying in some small part with our individual relationship.

The whole thing was a misunderstanding, a moment where ManPants thought I was trying to say something without actually saying it.

After 6 years of marriage, it amazed me to think that he couldn’t recognize a moment when I was being completely honest, with no subtext to read.  To be completely fair to him, I am often unintentionally vague about what I want, and have only been learning in recent years to quit prevaricating. 

Yet looking back on it, I see a gender role filter too, an expectation that ManPants was interpreting our interaction through.  There is a belief that women never say what we want , expecting instead to have our desires read in the unspoken parts of our words *.  For some reason, this expectation seemed to be particularly strong last night, so strong that nothing I said could break through it.  While I don’t consider society the sole causation of our little conversation, it certainly played a role.

I wanted to play Guitar Hero, but ManPants wanted to watch one of his t.v. shows.  The Wii and the DVR are both hooked up to one television, so one of us would not be able to do what s/he wanted at that moment.  It was an easy choice – I didn’t want to play Guitar Hero that badly, so I went and read blogs and looked for mp3s on Amazon instead.

This eventually reminded me that he had wanted to download some Bruce Springsteen songs for Guitar Hero, and that those songs were supposed to become available for download yesterday.  Lest I forget (which I would do, I knew, for weeks or months or possibly forever), I immediately got up and said something to him.

"You really want to play Guitar Hero, don’t you?" was his answer.

"No, I just wanted to remind you before I forgot."

"If you want to play Guitar Hero, we can right after my show is done."

I laughed, "It’s fine.  I don’t want to play Guitar Hero.  I just wanted to remind you."  I had already lost my desire to play and was enjoying what I was doing online.

"It’s fine.  We can play," he responded.

"If I wanted to play, I would say that I wanted to play," I told him several times. 

But he kept saying, "I think you want to play but you just don’t want to say it."

Eventually, I said, half-jokingly, "I think you want to play but aren’t willing to say it!"

But the conversation continued intermittently like this.  No matter how much I said I didn’t want to play, he continued to say that he would be willing to join me if I did.  And I continued to laughingly respond that I thought he was the one who wasn’t willing to simply say what he wanted.

Finally, I gave in.  "Fine!  Let’s play Guitar Hero!  Since you want to play it but won’t admit that you want to, I’m making the decision that we’re going to play and you can’t say no!"

We played Guitar Hero.  He could tell that I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I normally do, so we only played three songs.  Then he said, "You really didn’t want to play Guitar Hero, did you?"

"No.  That’s why I kept saying that I didn’t," I grinned.
(*There is a corresponding stereotype that women must find hidden meanings in men’s words that I find equally ridiculous and inaccurate.)
Cross-posted at What If