You Just Don't Understand

I felt compelled to share some of the most insightful pages from the book I am reading:

Oprah Winfrey has said, "My biggest flaw is my inability to confront people. After all the shows I've done, the books I've read, the psychologists I've talked to, I still allow myself to get ripped off to the nth degree. It takes me days and days of procrastination and agonizing before i can work up the nerve to say anything, Sometimes I think I'd rather just run out and get hit by a truck than confront someone who is ripping me off."

One man described to me what his former wife called the I-like-chicken-backs phenomenon. When his family ate a chicken for dinner, someone had to eat the back, and in his family it was always his wife, who assured the others, "I like chicken backs." But, as this man commented to me, nobody liked chicken backs. She had convinced herself that she liked chicken backs and broken egg yolks and burned toast- to be accommodating. But years of accommodating built up to mounting frustration that they both believed had contributed to their eventual divorce.

For many women, openly opposing the will of others- or what they perceive to be others' will- is unthinkable. Ironically, it may be easier for some to think of leaving. This was the case of a woman I will call Dora, who did not realize, until it was too late, that opposing her husband's will would not bring the house down. But the cumulative frustration of never getting her way did.

A source of frustration for Dora was a series of used automobiles. It was she who drove to work, and she who took the car to the garage, but her husband, Hank, who chose the cars they would buy. Hank always went for cars that were cheap, interesting, and continually in need of repair. After Dora was nearly killed by a run-down Tenault with unfixable brakes, they were in the market for yet another used car.

Hank fixed his sights on a fifteen-year-old Alfa Romeo that a mechanic he knew was getting ready to sell. Dora wanted to take advantage of the chance to buy a late model VW from a friend who was leaving the country. Determined to reach a decision by consensus, she tried every verbal resource she could think of to convince Hank that it made sense to buy the boring but dependable VW rather than the dashing old Alfa Romeo, but he would not be convinced.

If this had happened at any previous time, Dora would have acceded to her husband's wishes and cursed him in her heart each time she drove the Alfa Romeo to work- or to the garage for repair. But this incident occurred when their marriage was already on the rocks. With so little to lose, she bough the VW from her friend and steeled herself for the torrent of anger she was sure she'd incur. To her amazement, Hank never spoke a word of remonstrance. When she told him what she had expected, he told her she had been foolish: She should have just done what she wanted from the start if she felt that strongly about it. He couldn't understand why she felt she had to have his blessing to do what she was certain was right.

No matter how dissatisfied people are with the results they are getting, they rarely question their way of trying to get results. When what we are doing is not working, we do not try doing something totally different. Instead, we try harder by doing more of what seems self-evidently the right way to proceed. But when styles differ, more of the same is usually met with more of the same from the other party as well. As a result, far from solving the problem, our efforts only make things worse.