The Baggage of Communication

My family’s way of dealing with conflict was to engage in passive-aggressiveness. We were taught not to rock the boat, not to start fights or even voice negative feelings. My father was a violent man when provoked, and he was easily provoked; though there were only a few times that he actually physically hit any of us (and no, I’m not excusing it, just stating fact), conjuring fear was his favorite answer to someone else confronting him. Passive-aggressiveness was the only way to express those feelings without having to cringe and tremble over the consequences. There is a long history on that side of abusive, alcoholic homes that dealt with tension the same way.

Add onto this the obsequious methods of communication that most women learn, and you can see how I would fall into that pattern for a long time.

ManPants, on the other hand, grew up in a family where you have to speak loudly to be heard. Even then, your clearly-stated feelings will often be dismissed, but if you don’t say it with force in the first place, everyone else will carry on without you.

It doesn’t help that his family bears some sexism as well (I’m sure my own family is plenty sexist but I haven’t spent enough time with most of them to realize how). This plays out most clearly in teasing of the women for their emotions or thoughts, or calling them crazy – nominally a joke but too often repeated to be. The deference of the women in his family can become too much; for example, his grandma will frequently say she likes something but then, as soon as I say I don’t, she claims not to either. And they speak in that people-pleasing way, the same way I do, where sentences that could be statements are questions, where the voice lifts at the end of statements as if we’re asking, where all kinds of hedging phrases like “I think” and “I guess” are inserted to make it known that we aren’t speaking from any position of authority.

So I felt a subtle but inescapable pressure that pushed me further in that direction too. It was easier to avoid that old nemesis of mine, conflict, than to speak my mind and risk dissension. It was easier to be verbal waif than to insist on the importance of my own words in spite of anything ManPants might say.

I’m doing my best now to climb out again, or at least be aware of how I am – and whether or not I am – communicating effectively. As I mentioned in the previous post about our chore-sharing, I did my best to stand firm in that conversation with him, to not equivocate in words or manner. I wanted those thoughts examined and respected, so rather than acting like I needed his approval, I stated my case and stuck to it as much as I could.

ManPants is actually my model for this, since he rarely minces words.

After the conversation, ManPants said I was being mean. Oh, he laughed when he said it, but he continued to smilingly insist that my manner was cruel.

Honestly, it felt cruel. Not leaving room for him to express a different opinion, as I usually do and have been trained from birth to do, was like building a small wall between us and only peeking over to see how he would try to break it.

But it felt powerful, too. The importance of what I was saying could not be denied because I refused to deny it. The importance of what I was saying was reinforced by the lack of submissive phrasing. Rather than ending the conversation in frustration, as I so often do when I argue with ManPants, I left it feeling like my part had been seriously considered.

If perceived harshness is the cost of being taken seriously, it is a price I will happily to pay.