Midstokke: Working together, apart
Like many couples, my husband and I work best together when we don’t. I hear there are couples that like doing things together – together, like in the same room with each other and in collaborative action, but in our home, this would likely result in bloodshed.
The problem is primarily related to my fundamental belief that my husband is just a more muscular extension of me and that all of his movements, motivations and meanderings ought to follow my own impulses. I thought our wedding vows implied that, but it appears they only cover a sort of matrimonial health insurance.
Another contributing factor is my husband’s assumption that we can communicate our way to the same conclusion (his) through a series of call-and-response questions.
“Where would you like to store the tile?” he asks.
“In the right corner.”
“Or maybe the left corner?”
“I have to work there. I need it in the right corner.”
“I could also put it somewhere else.”
By this time, I’m thinking of a lot of other places that tile could go, none of them appropriate for publication.
I believe all banjo duets are based on this timeless format of the marital conversation, which is why they get faster and more furious with each round.
While I had assumed this communication challenge was sacred to our union, I’m beginning to suspect it is ubiquitous to construction. This week I watched my husband and some tile guys not resolve a problem by staring at their phones and barking email dates at each other in an attempt to determine who had the last word in ordering the wrong part. This is far more essential than determining an actual solution.
Meanwhile, roofers were replacing snow-breaks on our new roof – they had come crashing down, damaging the roof and leaving heaps of snow piled against the wall.
“I know those got screwed on tight,” said the roof guy. Apparently not. Then he blamed the new guy. I’m sure the new guy has someone to blame, too.
If there is no one available for finger-pointing, there is the alternative approach of stonewalling. Staring at a fresh hole in my fresh plaster wall one day, I asked the crew how it happened. The three men standing there silently shook their heads and stared at the ceiling, as if perhaps not answering me would make the thing disappear just as magically as it had appeared.
And this is all a pre-emptive description to the latest pessimistic reduction of complexities of the world to the curmudgeon statement, “You know what’s wrong with the world today …”
Generally, I try to avoid such simplifications to global issues or political intricacy. But six months into building a house, I think I have the answer: Defending ourselves against the problem seems far more important than resolving it.
The siding crew blames the framers for not building a plumb wall, who blame the concrete guys for not pouring a flat floor. The painter blames the dry-wall crew for shoddy work, who blame the framers, who blame … and on it goes. Our tile diva is arriving on site in a couple of weeks and I can hardly wait for his litany of problems-caused-by-other-incompetents.
I assume one part of solution to this is listening. Of course, listening must involve some aspect of believing what the other is experiencing (“unconditional positive regard” is the fluffy term used for this in circles of corporate communications development and humanistic psychologists). In a phenomenon of widespread social gaslighting, we are constantly telling each other that a perceived experience is not shared, and thus invalid, even unreal.
Perhaps it is naive of me, but I would like to believe if we take time to understand what others are experiencing, like how impossible it is to trim out a wonky door or how hungry children are without subsidized school lunches, then we’ll work in ways that are cognizant of the broader impact of our decisions. Maybe we’d even collaborate to solve problems in ways that meet everyone’s needs or something crazy like that.
My husband must understand this, likely because he has to spend the rest of his life with me and the buck can only be passed so many times. When I stepped into the bathroom to work, the tile was stacked neatly in the right corner, right where I needed it. Now we can go on blaming the framers for everything from the tilted walls to the climate crisis.
Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com.