Day 69: Checking My Assumptions

Last week, I hit upon a GREAT decorating idea.  It was to name each of our guests' tables with a surname of one of our ancestors, and I immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was such a great idea that Chris couldn't help but be enthralled by my brilliant thoughtfulness.

I brought up, brimming with confidence, of my ingenious concept, only to encounter a skeptical Chris.  He was't rude about it, of course, he never is.  But he was full of hesitation and eventually alerted me to the fact that naming a table after one family but not another may come across as unfair and even potentially offensive to some of those family members.  

 Source: Despair.com

But of course, I wasn't in the mood to listen; I had made the assumption that he'd love it, and so I wasn't ready to accept anything but an enthusiastic approval from him.  I pouted and said "OK" in that staccato brittle tone that all women use to tell men that no, it's really not OK.

No? Your womenfolk don't do that?  They must be better than I am, then.  But more likely, it's just that you have not yet learned to decipher the subtleties in the tone of our OK's.

After a while, though, I came around and ceded--out loud in front of Chris, too, and not just in my head--that his conclusion was a logical, reasonable one.  Then I reflected on the value of checking my assumptions about the preferences, thought patterns, and emotions of my partner.  Assumptions are necessary, yes.  Without them, we would be so frozen in states of incomplete information and unmade decisions that we'd not function as proper members of society.  When this assumption-making gets too out of hand, though, things can get quite discordant.  

The trick, I think, is not to be asking and checking with your partner every second about if every decision you make that impacts him is indeed okay, but to be respectful about making them, and to be accepting when your assumptions, in fact, turn out to be wrong.  

Comments

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ah...more evidence that even though wedding planning is a pain in the ass, it's good practice for the conflict resolution skills and compromises necessary for a good, health marriage!