When There’s Something Else Going On Behind the Conflict

A wife e-mailed me to share her version of the latest spat she had with her husband:

We were driving home from church with this friend of ours in the car, and suddenly my husband turned the car around and started going back the opposite way. I felt a bit annoyed inside at the sudden turn with no notice, and said, “Where are you going?” He did not answer me right away, so I asked again. And he answered with this scathing tone of voice something on the order of “if you would just wait a minute you would see where I am going.” (He says that he heard “Where the hell are you going, dummy!?”) And we were off. Same old dookey, different day. I was just dumbfounded that we could go from being so close and intimate to having one of our old battles in the space of about thirty seconds. I felt like if he would have just said, “I’m going to turn around and look at that car that is for sale,” the whole thing might never have happened. . . . I was so incredibly sad after this incident. I could not stop crying for hours. I am not a woman who cries all of the time. But I was just so disappointed. I was just sobbing and I told him that I felt like things were never going to get better. 

Let’s consider the facts and details she provided: One, they were on their way home from church, where they apparently had been “close and intimate.” But, two, by the time they had reached home, she “could not stop crying for hours” and was claiming “things were never going to get better.” What in the world could have happened? Her reaction makes it sound as though her husband had just confessed to a drug addiction he had been keeping from her, or maybe he admitted to having intimate feelings toward another woman. But no, it wasn’t anything like these, was it? Instead, all he had done was turn the car around without letting her know or telling her immediately why. This is why I wrote in response:

This was a difference of opinion on a personal preference. He preferred to turn around and then show you why he turned around instead of tell you. You preferred that he tell you why he was turning around. I can defend your side of the equation. Why not just say, “Oh, a car for sale. I want to turn around and see that”? I get it. But to turn this episode into a reason for despair and depression is to allow this event to symbolize something far more than it is. This is not a moral transgression on his part. This is about a husband making an unannounced U-turn. Why not trust him and see what happens? Literally, ride it out! 

Most reading this will recognize that there are likely other factors at play here. “Close and intimate,” goodwilled couples are not erupting in anger and tears, claiming the sky is falling, just because one of them makes an unexpected turn on the way home. In fact, some may even get excited at the change of norm. “Oooh, where could we be going? What might he have in mind? Are we going to go out to eat instead of just going home to make sandwiches again?” But not this wife. Instead, she became pessimistic about his decision, and also about the marriage as a whole. Why is that? 

And he interpreted his wife’s question as “Where the hell are you going, dummy!?” Then after not responding initially, he eventually responded in an unloving manner. Something else was clearly going on behind the scenes that quickly escalated this seemingly minor scene into a daylong battle. What was it?

Allow me to speculate a little. Though some of this may not be completely accurate for this couple, I have seen this in many other relationships. 

She made the comment that if he had simply said beforehand he intended to turn around, “the whole thing might never have happened.” Why does she use the word “might”? What she admits to here is the scenario that her husband could have said, “I think I just saw a car for sale on that lot that I’d like to get a closer look at. I’m going to turn around at the next light and go back to check it out real quick,” and she might have been okay with that. Interesting. So could it be that her husband knew her well enough to know that she’d tell him not to turn around because of taking their friend home? Did he predict that she would have said, “Do this another time”? Or, “We don’t need to get a car, this one is fine”? Because of how similar situations had gone in the past, did he believe that the only way he was going to be able to check out this car would be by not giving her a heads-up?

I have seen this in many relationships. Most women are very in tune to how much they care for everyone and everything in the moment. This is true of her and is part of her pink design. Women care. They love. They love to love. And they are also wonderful at keeping the family calendar and keeping everything organized and everyone intact. The family could not survive many days without her! However, the back-sided weakness to this strength of hers is that she often feels she knows exactly what is best in the moment and therefore should determine the course of most actions. Over time, some husbands go quiet and make the intentional decision to simply go along with her every time, to keep the peace.

Every so often, though (perhaps with the husband wishing to check out a new car), he wishes to make a decision about something of interest to him. Knowing how things usually go, he tabulates in his mind, “If I say what I am thinking, she will immediately counter it,” and quite often he is correct. In fact, when the above wife said, “the whole thing might never have happened,” she was confessing that she knows she probably would have told him not to turn around. Her expectation would have been that he went along with her decision, which would mean there would have been no conflict.

In a nutshell, he desired to feel respected by his wife. Specifically, he needed her to appreciate his desire to serve and to lead their family, instead of what typically happens, where she might let him check out the car for sale but more likely would insist that he just go straight home as planned. He did not share this with her, though, as he should have. Instead, he responded in a curt and rude manner, which left her feeling unloved. Then as she put it, “And we were off. Same old dookey, different day.” They were on the Crazy Cycle: Without love she reacts without respect. Without respect, he reacts without love. 

It wasn’t about unexpected turnarounds and car shopping after all. It rarely is.