This morning my husband and I were making breakfast together, and he started teasing me about what can only be described as my random flighty-ness. I know that I can sometimes be random, but I didn't realize how many blanks I leave for my husband to try to fill in to form a complete thought and hold a conversation with me. Actually, I'm not really sure how he holds a conversation with me after this morning! Now that I've been enlightened, I can change it. I can, but I'm sure I won't. I joked earlier today that apparently I should come with a decoder. I'm usually fairly articulate, so I don't know why I drop the ball with my husband so much. My Mom gave me some idea as to why, and I'll address that after I give some examples that occurred here over a 24 hour period.
Example 1: Yesterday I went down to my husband's home office, and handed him something. He explained to me how the incident appeared to him: "My wife walked into my office, handed me a page from the photo album, indicated with some strange sign language that I needed to grate some cheese, and walked away with no further explanation. " (That translates to I knocked on his door, he was on a conference call so I handed him a page with 2 photos on it. I mouthed "You need to scan this.", and made a back and forth motion over the paper with my hand to demonstrate, and walked away. Since he was talking on the phone, he apparently could not read my lips at the same time, and instead got "You need to grate some cheese." from my charades.
Example 2: While eating the breakfast we made together, we were quietly eating when I started with *silence* "So, do you think it's like 15 or 20%?" *silence* (Yes, no lead in, no further explanation. )
Example 3: "Finally I got one of those cooks to say something about that thing!" Followed by walking away to go write something down. (There were no cooks present, just a baffled husband. Also, there was no explaining what that "thing" was.) And yes, I said that directly to him. I wasn't just mumbling to myself (which also frequently happens.)
I had to laugh when my husband pointed these moments, and more, out to me. He was doing it kindly, and in jest, not to be mean. My mom explained a theory about why I might just start off in the middle of a conversation, or give less than optimal information when explaining something to my husband. She pointed out that after you're with someone for awhile, you start to think the same conversation is running through their head that is running through yours. You do start to think alike, sometimes people get to the point where they finish each others sentences, so it makes sense that you might start to act like they know what you're thinking about. Then, you might start off in the middle of your thought, because they must be thinking the same thing.
Is this idea a lot like the thought that people start to look like their pets? It's not that my husband actually can guess the topic and fill himself in on the missing pieces, I just expect him to just know what I'm talking about. I expect him to know what my insane, poorly executed, made up sign language means. It's not like he actually DOES know what I'm talking about or trying to tell him. So I guess it's not the same thing, because people DO actually look like their pets sometimes. It's not just in our head that they must look like them. As many times as we do actually think the same thing, usually it's when some outside stimuli makes us think about that and we just know what the other person thinks of that situation.
How close do we get to our spouse? How alike do we become? Do we just start to assume we share a brain after awhile? After 11 years, this is where we are at. What is it like for folks after 50 years? Maybe a few years from now I'll just be referencing my dreams as if he's had the same dream. I already pretend he wants to eat the same thing I'm interested in eating. When he comes over to me, and says "I have a question." I usually follow with "Oh yes, Chinese sounds wonderful!" It's almost never a question about what we should eat, but it is a nice try on my part.
i remember a story once where you woke up after having a dream in which your husband left you. You were so angry with him, you didn't talk to him for the whole day, even though it was a dream and he had no idea what he did wrong! Finally you did explain to him, but remained angry.
ReplyDeleteI remember that! It took me until the next day to shake that dream off. I didn't want to be upset, but I couldn't help it. He was so horrible in that dream. I should say, nightmare.
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