Can you stop breathing like that?
Why humans blow up trivial matters.
I woke up this morning with a runny nose. In fact, most mornings I wake up to a runny nose. Some mornings are worse than others. I have sinus issues.
The Canadian dry air causes my nose to dry up during the night. The mucous gets crusty on the inside walls of the nose. When I wake up, I tend to twitch my nose because it’s tight from the crust, so it ‘tears’ and then it tickles and that’s when it starts triggering the runny nose.
Yes I’ve spent the last 2 paragraphs describing my nose. For the last 30 over years, I’ve had these issues. Many things play into it. The weather, how my body is feeling (example, if I’m on my period), if I sneeze, etc. It’s a goner if I sneeze, it won’t stop for at least 2 hours.
Why am I still talking about my nose? Well, this morning was no different. But it wasn’t a constant runny nose. So when it’s just trickling, I don’t pay much attention to it. My body’s learned natural reaction is to sniffle to keep it in.
“I’ve counted. In the last minute, you’ve sniffled 12 times. You know I have a neurological condition where persisting sounds make me angry,” says my wife as she comes out of the bathroom. Here I was, minding my own business reading the news on my laptop so that I can send out a Media Executive Summary to my firm’s leadership, and suddenly my ‘lack of blowing my nose to prevent it from getting raw’ became the hot topic of our Tuesday morning.
What followed was a 20 minute unnecessary argument about whose medical condition is controllable and that I should BLOW MY NOSE.
Steph, what’s the point of your article? You’ve written 6 paragraphs about your nose and still no point!
The need to be right
The point is, we sometimes put too much effort and emphasis on trivial nothings. The issue was me sniffling and not blowing my nose because she wanted me to. I could have simply blown my nose. Or, she could have just put on some headphones and gone about her day. But we had to hash it out like it was the end of the world.
Increased blood pressure. Tensed shoulders. Angry tears. Bruised egos. Spiteful comebacks. The need to win. What was the point of that 20 minute argument? We both wanted to win. We both wanted to win at an argument about blowing your nose. WHAT THE HELL!?
I watched a TikTok video about someone saying “can you stop doing that?” and was met with a question “doing what?” “That sound you’re making.” “Breathing?”
It’s trivial, silly and unnecessary.
There’s always something else
Okay here’s the other point I’m trying to make.
That argument ended with her apologizing after realizing how she was too consumed in her own need for me to stop making noises than the fact that what is ‘uncontrollable’ to me wasn’t a legit reason for her.
The fact was that she woke up grumpy. It had been a hard couple of weeks before. She was hospitalized for chest pains with no true conclusive diagnosis. She’s been dealing with intermittent pains for the last 9 days. Our pup woke us up earlier than normal after we both had a late night. She probably has a full day of meetings she’s not looking forward to. I was on my period and having cramps. I hadn’t slept well and I was covering duties for a coworker who is on leave. So I had a mind full of things I knew I needed to get done today.
And here I was, sniffling. She had mentioned my sniffling a few times in our 8-year relationship. And I knew that she had an issue with persistent repetitive noises. I wasn’t doing it on purpose. It’s become so natural that I don’t notice it, until the mucous drips out of my nose.
And let’s be honest, we both hadn’t had our coffees. That alone should have been a red flag.
What I’m saying is that no matter what the argument was about, there’s other factors that play into it. The fact was that she grumpy and unwell which made her choose to take it out on me, only to be met by my work stress and cramps as a comeback.
Understanding and healthy communication
Alright, enough whining.
My wife and I have been working on and improving our communication for years. And this is something that we have to keep working on. We’re never in the same situation, facing the same problems, having the same feelings, etc. We’re human. We evolve and change.
We’ve had to learn to adapt and be agile in the way we communicate depending on the day, time, circumstance, emotion, feeling, and whatever else you want to throw in here.
But the point is… ask.
Before I launched into the full-on defense about not blowing my nose because it makes it raw, I could have asked “what is really bothering you? I’ll blow my nose but I hope you understand that this isn’t something I can truly control.”
Her response could have then been “I’m just not having a good morning and the sounds were getting too persistent.”
Proper, healthy, adult communication. But I get it. It’s really hard to strip away the emotion when communicating to a loved one. The truth is we take out the worst on the ones we love most. We become too comfortable and start taking them for granted.
Here’s a scenario, let me know if it resonates: You’ve had a long day at work, and your client was being difficult as usual. You get home from work (or come out of your home office) and see your spouse sitting on the couch playing on their phone. They, too, have been working all day. You notice an empty mug on the table — clearly it was their coffee mug from this morning. You start feeling irritated, you grab the mug (trying to make a scraping noise off the table), stomp to kitchen, flick on the tap and start washing. You’re deliberately making a ruckus to get their attention. They look up and say “what’s wrong with you?” You proceed to blame them for the state of the house, that the floors are dirty and dishes aren’t put away, or the trash isn’t taken out (it’s not even trash day!).
You fight.
We take our frustrations out on the people we are closest to. We never just argue about one thing, we argue about everything else that we’ve been holding back. If you’ve felt that your partner hasn’t been pulling their weight around the house and you’ve been stewing for weeks only to blow up about a mug that was left on the table, it’s not a very fair argument for your partner who is being blindsided by an issue they didn’t know about in the first place.
Communicate properly. Have conversations about what you’re thinking about and how you’re feeling. Seek to understand each other’s circumstances before launching into self-defense or attack mode.
Don’t stay angry
I’m the type of person that needs time to cool down. Especially if I feel tremendously wronged about something. I’m not a good debater. I don’t have a lot of ammo to use in arguments. In anger, I can’t even really defend myself logically. I get worked up very quickly because I never seem to be able to articulate my point properly so that it’s understood. Granted, the other party probably doesn’t want to understand either.
If you need time to cool down, take it. But don’t stay angry and don’t leave it unresolved. My wife and I have learned over the years how we need to communicate and how we deal with conflict. It’s a very difficult balance. She likes to hash it out and confront it on the spot. I like to recluse and take time to calm down and think.
The balance comes from knowing that we won’t leave it unresolved. So depending on the situation, one or the other will compromise. But we always resolve it.
Apologize
Don’t underestimate the power of the word ‘sorry’. And no, don’t say “I apologize”. That’s a cop-out way of saying you’re sorry by apologizing using the active verb.
“I’m sorry” seems to be one of the hardest phrases to say. Because people think it puts them in a state of humility and vulnerability. They think it makes them look bad by admitting that they’ve done something wrong.
But actually, saying sorry is one of the bravest things a person can do. To stand in humility and be steadfast enough to admit to a mistake and apologize for it. I was a proud person years ago (still am) and that pride made saying sorry really uncomfortable.
But when you start to see that the world doesn’t revolve around just you, you’ll realize that while people will have opinions, feelings, positions and personalities, their immediate instinct is not normally to cause malice. You will start to realize that relationships are really a give and take phenomenon. And that we’re all learning every day.
Let’s also face it. You KNOW when you’re in the wrong. You just don’t want to admit that you’re wrong.
I started saying sorry. It was very uncomfortable when I did it the first time. Her response was gentle and she said “I’m sorry, too.” After the next fight where I was in the wrong, I took some time, I calmed myself down, I considered what I did wrong and I said “I’m sorry.” Her response was “It’s okay. Thank you for apologizing. I’m sorry that we fought.”
She apologizes too. For me, when I know she’s wrong, I will ask for an apology when I’m ready to hear it. She’s learned over the years that her apologizing right at the peak of an argument doesn’t work. I need time and she gives me that time. And when I’m ready, she’ll apologize.
By the way, if you’re apologizing, you should also apologize in a way that acknowledges the mistake. For example: “I’m sorry for taking my frustrations out on you. It was never about the dishes.” What this does is that it opens up room for conversation and resolution. It also helps your partner see that you’re truly acknowledging a problem and you can both work together to solve it or do better.
The more you do it, the easier it will get. And trust is restored, built and strengthened over time.
Don’t underestimate the power of the phrase “I’m sorry”.
Don’t expect change overnight
You’re probably going to experience repeat offenders. You might fight about the same things over and over again. Just because someone says they are sorry about something they’ve done, does not mean they won’t do it again.
Humans are more complicated than that. Behaviours are learned and cultivated overtime. Habits are worse! If it’s not in someone’s nature to wash their mug immediately after drinking from it, then it’s going to take some time to break that habit. If someone’s priorities are not to make sure that the water carafe is filled up all the time, trust me when I say they won’t be doing it going forward just because you said so once.
Be patient with each other. We all have flaws. Change takes time. If something really bothers you, have a conversation about it. And when they start changing, acknowledge it. And if they falter, don’t berate them, remind them instead. But remember, if they say something about you, you better do it too! It’s not a one-way street.
This blog was really to call to attention to the need for communication. You all know this in theory but practicing it is the hard bit. And practicing it (in relationships) does not mean it will ever be perfect. I said this before, people evolve and change. We need to keep adapting.
But I want to close off this article by shifting directions a little bit. We will blow up trivial matters. We will find fault in the little unnecessary things just to win. We will choose to be childish once in a while instead of just having an adult conversation about it. And we’ll often let our emotions get the better of us.
But take a second to remember for a moment about all the bad things that are happening around us and in the world. And then consider for a moment whether wanting that mug washed at this moment was really that big a deal. Or whether blowing my nose could have simply resolved a snarky comment made in a bad mood.
People are dying around us, COVID-19 is still hitting the streets more than it should be. There are people who are struggling to put food on the table or have a place to call home. There are civil wars waging in countries we don’t even pay attention to. There are people who are worried if they would live or die in the next day. There’s an impending doom just across the pond with the elections coming up (I’m exaggerating but not really). Just this weekend we found out that one of our friend’s lost her full-term baby. And here we are, arguing about the most trivial matters with the people we love most.
Take a look around you and consider how much good you actually have.
Grow up.
Editor’s note: All opinions expressed are of my own and do not have affiliations with any corporate entity.
