I hate them, and I’m grateful they are not frequent. But I’m on the fence about whether or not they are necessary. Friends, of course, congratulate me for them and say yes to this dramatic substitute for “Can you hear me now?” I still hate them.
Hissy Fits
Hissy fits around domestic disputes can be infuriating and trivial, difficult and silly, unavoidable and unnecessary, embarrassing and cathartic.
After the last one erupted, I paused in an effort to step back and become curious. What triggered the hissy fit?
Curiously and not surprisingly, the tiff was not about his ill-informed pee-pad-in-the-trash-can comment. I knew there was more to the trigger.
Later, when I noticed he had sawed off the “nose” of a driftwood log my mom had given me decades ago, I expressed my dismay. His self-defense—I didn’t know—led to the eventual eruption, because he should have known. He would have known had he been listening. His defense was a spotlight on the one thing that underpins most of my hissy fits and sometimes leads to meltdowns: he doesn’t listen.
I have gender bias around the are-you-listening topic, but my bias is driven by experience. Women are guilty too, but for me, it’s the men. The most important men in my life use a lot of words and expect a lot of listening, but they don’t reciprocate.
I didn’t want to write about this, but last night I picked up an old journal that’s been on my nightstand for thousands of somethings, and opened it for the first time this millennium. My eyes landed on the 1987 words “As we ‘get to know’ each other, I’m realizing we’ve lost sight of each other” about my soon-to-be husband.
He wasn’t listening well.
A few pages later: “Does he know that my personality is made up of contradictions: homebody X love-to travel; ambitious X a little lazy; generous X selfish… ? I don’t think he could even make sense of the real me.”
Because, he wasn’t listening.
Step back. Become curious.
Whenever I’m upset with someone for something they did or didn’t do, I try to pause and look at myself.
Am I guilty of the same? What is my responsibility here? What is mine?
Thousands of years ago, Epictetus wrote: “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”
How many hissy fits have I thrown about things that are outside of my control? This is a bitter pill and also a cure of sorts that brings me round to a tenet I hold dear: model the behavior you want from others.
And if my history of not being heard dates back to the last millennium, I think it’s time to check myself. Am I listening? To others, yes, but more importantly, am I listening to myself?
One of Epictetus’s most quoted quotes is “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
I’m not proud of the hissy fits, and for all their cathartic qualities, I’m not sure they served me well. Or did they? Because there is a rub that makes me suspect a systemic need for hissy fits. Today, he’s listening.
Can You Hear Me Now?
What to do then? Fix the system? But… the system is outside of me. Can I fix me? How can I be better at listening? How can I make myself heard without the hissy fits?
I don’t have the answers, but I’m open to them. I’m curious.
©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2023
When I ask him to listen he says I’m criticizing him. I have this dynamic with several men in my life: I will spend time and brainpower explaining what I know because I think they’ve asked for information and it gets no acknowledgment. Not interested. They go on with their own ideas. And I hate feeling guilty when I throw a hissy. That’s some messed up psychology.
Right? So I keep digging a little deeper into the only thing I can control. My responses.
Do all men have attention problems? And why is it that sometimes nothing works except a good hissy fit. Sigh….
My intention is to craft a better way.
My husband is neither a good listener, nor a good communicator, so I was having hissy fits on both ends of the spectrum. Truth is, with time, both for the sake of my marriage, and my own sanity, I’ve learned to pick my spots, otherwise, it all becomes background noise to him. And, btw, it’s a skill I needed when raising kids too.
No one should need to work so hard just to be heard… the 1st time.
It’s always been a problem here. Any attempt to address it always, ALWAYS ends with, “I WAS listening!” Which he wasn’t. And now we have hearing loss to contend with. Because a lot of the time, he simply DOESN’T hear me.
Sigh.
Actually, this past weekend, during our weekly family pot luck, we made pizza. I always make four 15″X21″ crusts and the families bring their favourite toppings. Husby had been busy slicing up sausages and ham and doing ‘pizza’ things as well. Then he wanted to start assembling and I said, (and these are my exact words, said right to him so he was sure to hear me!) “Don’t start yet! The families will be bringing their own toppings they can eat! We can add ours if there is any available space when they are done.”
When the families arrived and started pulling out their ‘stuff’, they pointed out that we were one pizza short. I told them I had made the requisite four and walked over to the table. One pizza was already done. Covered in pepperoni, which they can’t eat because ‘prepared meats’.
This doesn’t happen often–okay, never–but I got upset with husby right in front of everyone. It was both scary…and satisfying.
That’s the thing. When it can be satisfying and sometimes effective, why would we avoid the hissy fits. I hate them, but…
Such a good idea to question our own reactions. My husband and I will have tiffs over the fact that he’s allowed to express his emotions endlessly. When I have my own need for expression, I feel his attention waning. That always get us going.
Attention spans… They can be a problem.