Toward Commitment

by Diane Rehm

  JOHN: Well, I suppose if I had to use one word to respond to your question, it would be communication. As two people move on from one point to another in the process of parenting, communication is indispensable if the process is going to make any sense.

  DIANE: And you and I did not have that. All we seem to have done was to argue, almost every step of the way.

  JOHN: Well, I think that communication did come into the process, although belatedly and with difficulty. In the early years, of course, I really wasn't there, and you were the effective parent. While I may have exerted some influence, it really wasn't a great deal. In later years, as they moved into adolescence, my recollection, Diane, is that you and I did discuss some of these issues. Don't you think there was some communication at work there?

  DIANE: Yes, but I don't think you and I talked these things through to the extent that I hope parents are doing now. There are all kinds of books and lectures on parenting today, information regarding infancy, the “terrible twos,” adolescence, right on up through early adulthood. You and I didn't take advantage of the literature available at the time, so we struggled with each other instead of turning to some external source of knowledge or wisdom.

  JOHN: Do you think that really would have made a difference, if we had both sat down and read the same manual on parenting? I'm not sure it would have.

  DIANE: But suppose we had gone to the same lecture on parenting, and an expert offered suggestions—it might have helped. But what you and I did was to knock heads.

  JOHN: I come back to my basic point about communication. I agree that confrontation is not the best way to solve these issues. There should have been a more open communication, a reasoned sharing of problems and difficulties. But I think it's terribly important to hold on to the fact that, on balance, I think we did a pretty good job. The proof is in the pudding.

  Arguing

  John

  Consider the following portrait of me as the husband and Diane as the wife. He was intellectually confident and emotionally immature. He placed great value upon words and their literal meaning. He believed that human intercourse demanded adherence to logic. As an only child who was rarely disciplined by his parents, he had little sense of the give-and-take of human relations. Without any significant experience of women prior to marriage, he had no reason to believe that he and his wife might observe different rules of argumentation. Indeed, when pressed, he would proclaim the superiority of rational discourse.

  She was emotionally experienced and intellectually unsure. Before she was even twenty-two she had lost both her mother and father and obtained a divorce from her first husband. As a girl, she had been abused and had engaged in a constant yet suppressed battle with her parents. She was in touch with her feelings, light and dark, and equipped to express them forcefully. Although intellectually gifted and curious, she was intimidated by her husband's literacy and knowledge.

  These conflicting traits and views were a recipe for recurrent misunderstandings in our marriage. The foundation for meaningful communication was fragile enough. Each of us was trying to establish a comfortable yet respected role in our relationship. Egos were easily bruised and all too often words became weapons rather than tools. Instead of shedding light, they gathered darkness. As our arguments became destructive, we both clung all the more strongly to our respective conceptions of useful dialogue. In fact, our “dialogues” frequently collapsed into destructive diatribes in which we both sought out new ways to use language to wound each other. My usual reaction at that point was simply to storm away from her, either withdrawing to my study or leaving the house.

  It has taken me, unfortunately, a number of years to understand two fundamental aspects of constructive argumentation. First, listening is more important than speaking. I was typically intent on getting my own ideas across. In an effort to find common ground, I should have been listening to Diane; instead I was busy formulating in my mind the next salvo. This, in turn, would provoke Diane to respond in kind. Arguing broke down into a series of unilateral assertions, rather than bilateral exchanges.

  Second, especially in the heat of argument, words are, at best, tentative clues to the speaker's thoughts. They are not to be viewed and used as precise indicators of a state of mind. Perhaps because of my legal training, I tended to turn any argument into an analysis of Diane's words. The more I did so, the more frustrated she became, since she felt that my approach complicated rather than clarified the problem. What I have finally begun to learn is that in such a setting, words are more exploratory than expository.

  Diane

  Arguing has always been a part of my life. As a youngster, if I saw something unfair on the playing field I would shout out my displeasure. If there was a neighborhood friend with whom I was playing hopscotch, I would make sure to watch where she landed, and immediately challenge her if she landed on a line. I was even willing to risk her leaving the game altogether if she disagreed. In my high school sorority, it was I who argued passionately in favor of, or against, the acceptance of a new pledge. I was never reluctant to express my gut reactions—and let them fly—without pausing to assess how hurtful they might be, or how they might reflect on me.

  At home, the story was a different one. There were no arguments between my parents, between my parents and me, or, in the open, between my sister and me. In truth, my sister and I fought constantly, but only when my parents weren't present, or when they were in another part of the house where they couldn't hear our squabbling. There were no opportunities to “argue” against my mother and father for a cause or a belief, or to protest what I perceived as an unfair decision. My parents ruled the kingdom, not only emotionally but physically, and that was that. Outside the house, I was able to express myself more openly, and I'm certain at times inappropriately.

  During the early period of our courtship, there was no arguing between John and me. Instead, all of our finest qualities came to the surface, as I believe happens with many young couples. Rather than search out areas of difference, we discovered our similarities. When sparks of concern arose in my mind, I quickly buried them, fearing that I would somehow jeopardize the special relationship we seemed to have, and afraid of what might happen if John were to see my “real” self. If there were points of disagreement, they were addressed in a light and playful way. But later on in the courtship, and certainly before we were married, our different modes of argumentation came to the fore.

  The aspects of John's personality that seemed to both attract and plague me most were his sense of independence and his belief that his primary allegiance was to his work. From the beginning of our dating period, I was struck by how free he seemed from the internal struggles regarding parental authority, which I continued to wage. It was profoundly revelatory to me that parents such as John's, who watched and supported rather than controlled, really existed. He hadn't gone through his life, as I had, feeling that his next move, whatever it was, could be disastrous. My feelings of independence came as a result of arguing, something I knew I could do and did well. I made others feel as if they had lost, while I felt triumphant.

  That might work in some areas, but it certainly didn't work in our marriage. Because I found myself frustrated and lonely in the early years of our marriage, I believed the only way I could make a “connection” with John was through argument, and argue I did, when I could—when he was around—which, in turn, made him not want to be around very much at all.

  Dialogue on Arguing

  JOHN: Diane, after more than forty years of marriage, I'm still learning how to argue, by which I mean to argue in a constructive sense. I've yet to fully learn that one should listen more than talk, stick to the issue, and not, as I like to put it, universalize the issue into “You never do this,” or “You always do that.” To keep one's cool, to be open to legitimate compromise, which respects the views of both parties. Married people, or those in long-term relationships, do argue about both lesser or greater issues. I wish I'd taken Argumentation 1
01.

  DIANE: [laughter] Well, I'm afraid I did go to Argumentation 101 way back when I was a kid. Certainly, arguing with my sister, something you didn't do, or not being able to argue with my parents but finding ways to resist them. So then you came along with your admonition of “Stick to the words! Stick to the definition! Stick to the narrow focus of the argument.” All that used to drive me crazy, because arguments are about more than just the issue at hand. Whether it's moving a spoon from one setting to another, whether it's putting clothes in one place or another, there's always some underlying issue. And you were belittling my feelings about the issue. You wanted to stick to the facts, and the facts weren't the only things of interest to me.

  JOHN: What you've just said stimulates two thoughts. First, I didn't have any grounding in arguing, because I was an only child. I didn't have to battle with siblings. And second, when it came to me and my desires and my interests, there was no arguing on the part of my parents. They were very indulgent. They were happy and content to let me be who I was. So I didn't grow up in an atmosphere of argumentation, as I think you did.

  DIANE: What about your playmates? Other young boys?

  JOHN: I ran around with a gang of boys, but no, I don't recall much arguing there. At school, we exchanged ideas and engaged in intellectual argumentation, to be sure. But what you and I are talking about is arguing that, to a greater or lesser degree, is based on some foundation of feelings. That's another thing I've had to learn, which I think you've taught me. It's that the words are only a hint of what the individual is getting at, that there are underlying feelings, and that part of successful arguing is to be willing to pursue and expose such feelings.

  DIANE: And what I had to learn was not to attack you, not to take the issue at hand and turn it into a “Oh, you never …” or “You always …” Not to attack you as a human being, but to try to stay within the framework of the issue. I think therapy helped a great deal. The other factor that helped was that in therapy you learned that if I presented an issue to you, you didn't have to solve it immediately. You could simply listen to me. It used to bother the hell out of me that I would try to offer up some problem of mine and you'd be off dissecting it. What you were doing was not listening to the feelings behind what I was offering. You were moving on to problem solving.

  JOHN: I believe women may be closer to their feelings and able to recognize that while the issue may seem essentially rational, there is this underlay of feelings to be pursued. That was a novel idea for me. I thought that argument was an aspect of rational discourse. In a sense, it was supposed to depart from, or even override, the feelings because it was in the rational domain.

  DIANE: Which is how you got to your famous line, “What would Aristotle think?” In the middle of an argument, I was going on and on about something, and you stood there laughing at me, and uttered that question. Which just threw me into a huge fit.

  JOHN: That was a neat way of encapsulating my approach to argumentation, which was to stress the rational or pseudorational, because that was my strength. Emotionally, I was not mature and had difficulty dealing with the more emotional aspects of whatever we were arguing about.

  DIANE: I was really the first person, then, in your life who questioned your way of arguing and, in particular, your focus on the words instead of the feelings.

  JOHN: I thought that the words and their dictionary meanings would provide the ground for argumentation. But what that leaves out, of course, is what we've been talking about: these underlying feelings have to be acknowledged if an issue is going to be fully explored and solved through dissension. So I retreated to what I believed was rational discourse, and that didn't serve your needs at all. In fact, it tended to cut off the expression of your more emotional side.

  DIANE: I guess the basic question becomes: Why do you think you and I argued as much as we did?

  JOHN: I think most couples do argue a lot. We just don't see it, or they don't care to admit it. But I've thought about the same question. I think you and I became competitive quite quickly in our relationship and in our arguments. It was a kind of childish need to prevail, to be right, to be the one who wins. In your essay, you bring out that strain in you. As I've already said, I was brought up to believe, “Well, of course Scoop is right!”

  DIANE: [laughter] You used to say to me during our courtship how much fun it was having a “little sister.” All of a sudden, what you had lacked—the adolescent rivalry and tug-of-war that normally go on in a family between siblings—began to happen between you and me. And, of course, I'd had a lot of experience as a younger sister. So I was ready to fight back.

  JOHN: In terms of my own parents, I really didn't see them engaged in argumentation, the give-and-take that is the heart of honest argumentation. Each had a separate and independent domain and tended to stay there. Not only was I brought up to believe I was always right, but my parents' model was one of nonarguing. My approach was bound to run right into yours.

  DIANE: It ran right into me, someone who had not been able to talk back to my parents but argued secretly with my sister. You and I never had any physical encounters, but the loudness of the arguments did become childish—I'm going to get you, and you're going to get me. We wasted so much time arguing.

  JOHN: I think the arguing arose from a certain defensiveness on my part, particularly when it was a matter of coming up against you, because you are a strong person. I really wasn't well equipped to engage in marital argument, and it's taken us a long time to reach the point where we can listen rather than talk, stick to the issue, and render argument constructive.

  DIANE: And when we can't render it constructive, perhaps just to keep quiet and walk away from it, cool off, and come back to it later, maybe with a little humor, which I find myself doing these days.

  Friends

  John

  Family and friends. In our daily conversation, the two words seem naturally complementary. Their very alliteration enhances the sense of closeness. A family without friends is marooned. Friends without family are adrift. Our society therefore expects the two to draw together over time into an extended family.

  I believe that Diane, consciously or otherwise, has embraced this model. On the one hand, she possesses a fierce sense of loyalty to our immediate family. Its internal struggles do not, in her view, threaten loyalty; instead they call for greater efforts to maintain the family's unity. On the other hand, Diane is deeply committed to her friends—both male and female. She has played the major role in building our extended family. As a result, she has many genuine friends in a city that discourages lasting relationships. Diane's affection for others occupies a continuum that blurs such distinctions as close friend and good friend.

  My conception of friends is less generous and therefore more restrictive. I tend to create a hierarchy of closeness. That hierarchy highlights the superiority of family over friends. Moreover, it establishes degrees of closeness among friends. Indeed, in a given group of people we know, Diane would count more friends and I would have more acquaintances. When greeting strangers, Diane sees the opportunities for lowering the bars to friendship. I, on the other hand, am inclined to keep the bars up and see what, if anything, happens.

  These differences in our approach to family and friends have often created rifts between us. In a typical case, we receive an invitation from a couple we know. Diane considers them friends— or at least potential friends—and wants to accept. I regard them as acquaintances at best, and am lukewarm about extending our already large “family of friends.” In this situation, the consequences are all too predictable. If I go, I'll be unhappy. If I don't go, Diane will be unhappy. In either case, the unhappiness is apt to spill over and distort our own relationship.

  Yet, as we have discovered, compromises are possible. If the occasion is more of a business affair, Diane may go alone. If we can agree to limit the time of attendance, I am more likely to go. If we learn that good friends will also be present, we're both more comfortable.
In short, the invitation does not need to trigger another skirmish between Diane, the party girl, and John, the recluse.

  Diane

  If I didn't have my friends, I would feel bereft. In some cases, I have felt my friends, both male and female, to be closer to me than members of my own family. Friends have always been a part of my life, from childhood playmates to adolescent sorority sisters to companions in the workplace, and now to friends of up to thirty, forty, and even fifty years. They are part of who I am and who I have become. I have absorbed parts of them in my actions, in my behaviors, in my attitudes.

  Earlier in this book, in writing about arguing and the differences between John and me, I spoke of my willingness to get in there and fight the battle. Partly through my friends, I've learned how better to hear the “other,” and to present my arguments in ways that can be heard, rather than in ways that seek to defeat the other. I've come to understand the generosity that comes from extending the hand of friendship. Those whom I have loved as friends, and those who have loved me, have taught me kindness, have helped me soften my approach, have informed my vision, both of myself and the hurdles I've faced. Without those friendships, I would be a very different person, both personally and professionally, from who I am today.