An Argument About HAND SOAP that Almost Ruined Our Day 😡
Marriage is when a morning person and a non-morning person marry eachother.
I am not a morning person.
A few years into our marriage, after a fair amount of mornings that didn't go well, I made a “no questions before coffee” rule.
My husband wakes up speaking full sentences; I can't understand this kind of aggressiveness. HE cannot understand my groggy/grumpiness.
We've mostly worked through our morning differences, but not that long ago, we ALMOST got into it over hand soap first thing in the morning.
I was shuffling past him to the coffee machine when I saw a bag of foaming handsoap on the counter. We have a shared “Store List" in our reminders app on our iPhones. Everyone in the household can put things on it as we run out. I had put “hand soap” on the list, and my husband had picked some up when he'd stopped at Target the day before.
Thing is, we have one regular soap dispenser, and the rest are foaming. So usually I buy regular hand soap and use it full-strength in one and dilute it for the rest. Plus, I feel like they're charging you for WATER for that foaming handsoap!
As I shuffled past the bag of foaming hand soap on the counter, I said, in a not super chipper way, “Next time, get regular handsoap.”
He snapped back, “FIRST thing out of your mouth…CRITICISM."
Because he lives with me, he knows that criticism is damaging to relationships. Not because I sat him down and taught him (ew, he would want to scratch my eyes out about that), but because I have standards for how and when I'll communicate with people.
Everyone in my house has heard me say things like,
“That sounded like criticism. What do you need?”
“I'm getting defensive, can you say that in another way?"
or, “As long as you want to teach me a lesson (blame and criticize), I have to walk away.”
I model having firm, kind, and clear boundaries around my own standards, and boy, do they pick up on it.
What didn't work about my husband's response this particular morning was that, instead of not entering the attack/defense cycle, he jumped right in and criticized the perceived criticism.
In my uncaffeinated state, I was thankfully slow to respond. The pause is POWERFUL in moments like these, and I realized in mine, I was genuinely confused.
You see, I didn't mean my comment as criticism. I wasn't annoyed, irritated, or frustrated….which was probably hard to tell since I wasn't fully awake yet.
I realized that to perceive my comment as criticism, he had to also perceive me as perturbed.
I turned from the coffee machine to him and calmly said, “On an anger/frustration/irritation scale, I'm at a 1.5 out of 100 right now. That was really just a, “Hey, for next time.”
His body relaxed.
I slowly turned back to the coffee machine.
And we went on about our day.
Girl, YOU KNOW HOW THAT COULD HAVE GONE IF I'D HAVE SNAPPED BACK WITH, “WHAT. IS YOUR PROBLEEEEMMM???” instead.
We could have had an icky back-and-forth that poisoned the next hour, the next interaction, the next few days, etc.
It's a slippery slope.
Coming up with these things to say in the moment isn't hard. No one gave me the scripts for what to say, but when you understand WHAT'S UNDERNEATH THE STUPID FIGHTS, they're very easy to get out of.
Would you like to ride a relationship roller coaster today? No, thank you very much.
We have a free place to start if you're tired of the stupid fights on repeat. Check out the How to Not Get Stuck Workshop first.
The next step is the relateWELL Membership. This includes a deep dive, but easy-to-listen-to 3-module course on the biggest communication roadblocks and what to do instead, as well as all our other workshops (including tools and systems for dividing household and family-related tasks in a way that doesn't leave one of you feeling like a resentful grumpy-pants, a workshop on how to navigate sex-drive differences, a system for chores and discipline that's easy to stick to and reduces chaos, and more.) Click here to see what's included.
The membership is like having a Marriage and Family Counselor in your pocket for 3 months for $28 per month. It's silly inexpensive on purpose.
I believe everyone deserves happy relationships. This year we've helped over 5000 families with relateWELL and our Family Rules, Chores, and Systems for Discipline Workshop, and I couldn't be more thrilled about it.
As always, let us know what you need. Happy to help you get off the relationship rollercoaster :)
