Despite having bitten my metaphorical lip countless times, in my relationships with my partner and children – until it is now simply a ragged, bloody relic – I am still befuddled by the difference between that which should be frankly expressed to members of one’s family, and that which is better left unsaid.
It is more straightforward with children. What must not be mentioned to them include their deficiencies, imperfections and weaknesses – physical and psychological (although they will have no such inhibitions concerning you). It is probably also best not to mention that life is random and unjust and that death is final. Your relationship with your children is similar to that of the propagandist to the masses, except you are not trying to exert power so much as supply compassion, encouragement and protection.
For adults, it is more complex. Talking things over, being “open”, is touted by everyone from psychotherapists to chatshow hosts as the answer to everything. But “talking it out” is quite a recent fetish. My parents and their contemporaries believed the opposite, which was that they should keep their feelings to themselves and not burden the other person. I’m not sure that their marriages were any less successful as a result.
I am periodically aware of an urgent need to express something that I am pretty sure will cause a lot of conflict. Often, I find the wherewithal to suppress it. Nevertheless, I still let such sentiments slip from time to time, usually with predictable results. However, the situation is confused by the fact that sometimes this lack of self-control leads to the airing of issues that are very important, and may even go some way to addressing them. So many touchy issues lie under the surface of any relationship, and some should just be left there quietly to expire. But others can fester if unaddressed, and find themselves emerging in the form of displacement activities such as passive aggression or an unaccountably bad temper.
The case made for “talking things through” is twofold. The first part is summed up in the epithet “A problem shared is a problem halved.” The first time my eldest daughter, Jean, heard this epigram, she responded with: “Well, that’s a load of crap for a start.” She was being acute, as usual.
The second idea is that, through communication, you get to the root of the issue that is troubling you and resolve it with mature discussion and techniques of conflict resolution and compromise. This is the sort of thing that works very well in business and international diplomacy, but is less effective in marriages.
Perhaps in long-term relationships, partners don’t express what they want to say with sufficient delicacy, adeptness or love. And even when they do, the listener may not want to hear it, or will not necessarily take it in the spirit in which it is intended, even if that spirit is a generous one (and apparent generosity can sometimes be a disguise for more ignoble motives).
Also among my (many) prejudices is that there is a habit among women to hold in high esteem men who possess the ability to understand what is being said to them without anyone actually saying it. Lacking in the necessary powers of observation or, indeed, supernatural power, I often falter in this regard. But it also explains why talking is sometimes tacitly scorned – because it can be regarded as a second-rate form of communication.
It has been my bad instinct in the past not only to vocalise a difficulty but, having done so, to pursue my point doggedly, rather like a schoolboy in a debating society. I am slowly learning that gentleness, restraint and care are much more important than logic chopping. Making it clear that you are not out to be “proven right” or to “score a point” is the only hope you have of being heard.
