hutch (03/02/83)
I think I better clarify my previous article. Penny and I have no trouble communicating. We have the expected number of arguments which keep our marriage healthy, we also talk (although not as often as we want to) about other things. What I was saying was that the philosophical discussion, the varied long, involved abstracts which we used to share during the university days when we were "merely" close friends, are less common. She seems to feel the lack more than I do, because she has less social contact outside the home than I do. We still have such discussion, but it is farther between. The thing that shocked me into writing about this was that she said that she didn't recognize the stuff I wrote as being something I would say, that it was too sensible. Opinions on my own sensibility aside, it disturbed me to find that I had a different way of talking with my wife than with the rest of the world, and that she sometimes felt it was less than fair and evenhanded. This seems not to be an uncommon affliction when two very close friends start to take certain conceptions of the other as given and unchanging. Many folk out there have told me about the ways that they keep their own communication lines open. Thanks are due to them for their concern and for having the courage to give voice (keyboard?) to their suggested ways of enhancing my own relations. Thanks, folks. Since I did hear a lot of what is obviously common sense, I will briefly summarize the responses: The majority of the respondents were women, which is an interesting switch on the public traffic. The most prevalent theme was that in order to keep the lines open, time and commitment are required. This would include making sure we had time to talk during the day, set aside, and not lettting anything else interfere. This is necessary for a friendship and even more so for a long term thing like marriage. No one seemed to think that any ground rules about topic or content were needed. This seems to be an intrusion on the freedom of expression needed for real openness. Environment was a secondary consideration. It should not have a lot of distractions, should be warm, comfortable, well lit. The most interesting thing I saw, though, was a thread of distaste for holding such dialogue across an electronic medium. I speculate that this is because there is a lot of really noisy and unpleasant stuff that tends to come up on this network; that there is a dearth of the personal contact which helps to mitigate such conflicts. It may also be that some people think that electronic mail is cold and inhuman. Thanks for all the feedback Steve Hutchison ... decvax!tektronix!tekmdp!dadla!hutch