We all do it. Say what we think is clear only to find out it wasn’t clear at all.
This happened to me the other day. My husband and I were talking about buying a new mattress for our bed. (It’s time. Our other one is 17 years old. I know, that’s like, illegal. But with six kids splurging on a mattress just wasn’t a priority.)
But I digress.
So we talked all morning about what mattress we wanted. And I gave my input. He had to run errands so he said he would stop by a nearby mattress store and “look.” If you’re married, you probably know already that a man’s version of looking is way different than a woman’s. Our looking can go on for days, weeks even, as we talk about it, research it and get input from our friends. Not most men I know. Most of them go in for the kill, bag it, tag it and walk out with it.
That afternoon while my husband was “looking” I went on a nice long walk. I was halfway through my walk, enjoying the lovely fall weather when something occurred to me: he is going to BUY that dang mattress. And I’m never going to see it and it might not be the one I would’ve picked and then I just won’t be happy and… my thoughts ran away so fast I nearly cut my walk short and went home to call him.
But I didn’t. I reasoned with myself and finished my walk. When I got home he was there, spraying the yard for mosquitos because it might be fall but they didn’t get the memo that their season is over. “Did you buy a mattress?” I asked. I was trying to be okay if he did because, in his defense, I had given a lot of input and then empowered him to shop for us. It would be my own fault if I didn’t take the extra step to communicate that I would want to actually see the mattress he got.
He smirked at me. “I’ve been married to you a long time. Do you actually think that I would just go buy a mattress and not include you in that?”
I smiled back at him, united by 21 years of miscommunicating and, sometimes, learning from it. This time my miscommunication worked out but it doesn’t always. Recently we miscommunicated about something and I told him that it was time that we just accepted that, in our busy, disconnected lives of work and family and home and kids and selves we were bound to miscommunicate. The point was not whether we did, it was what we do after. If we could show each other the grace to communicate beyond the miscommunication. We’re still figuring it all out. I suspect we always will be.