A caller into a recent podcast complained that she took all the photos of her family and that her husband never took any photos. She was very upset and said that when it came to her funeral someday, there would just be three photos on repeat during a slideshow.
The podcasters spent 20 or so minutes reading into her words as to what she was really upset about: that she had to carry this “duty” singularly like many other duties it’s assumed wives will take on, that she feels like she doesn’t exist because there is no evidence of her anywhere, that her husband doesn’t really see her, and so on. There were probably 3-4 different things they felt she was REALLY saying, none of which were simply that there wouldn’t be photos of her at a funeral.
It reminded me of this video that went viral years ago. I remember watching it and laughing, even though it plays on a tired gendered stereotype. I hadn’t thought about it in years but this podcast made me think of it and I saw it in an entirely different light.
We’re talking about the wrong things.
We’re entirely missing what matters.
And we go round and round in circles.
Whether or not the hosts of this podcast guessed correctly what this woman was truly upset about, you can imagine that she may finally take the conversation to her husband and yell that she’s sick of always being the one to take photos and how there’ll be no pictures of her at her funeral. It will have some impact, and some conversation will follow.
But like the podcasters, I don’t think that’s what the real issue is. And unless she talks about that real issue with her husband, they’ll keep having the same fight, over and over, in new and different ways. This time will be about the photos, next time will be about the anniversary he forgot, after that it will be about the broken gate he’s never fixed, and round and round they will go.
The video makes light of the nail in the woman’s head that the man feels is the obvious reason she’s suffering, even though she says it’s not about that (but describes things that are highly likely to be because of a nail in the head). Maybe the video got it all wrong. Maybe we’re talking about the nail, but even after it’s gone, everything is still a mess.
We need to start figuring out what our upsets are REALLY about and having conversations about THOSE things, not the decoys. Otherwise, what are we even really talking about?
