My apologies,” Matt said to a conference room of clients, “but I have to head out to another appointment.”
Leaving a room full of high-profile executives was not the smartest career move. But it was after 5:30 pm, and Matt had promised his wife, Courtney, that he’d be home in time to help make dinner for the kids and put them to bed.
As Matt raced through traffic in a zig-zag pattern, he tried to make a few business calls, but most offices were already closed for the day.
The stress monkey he felt on his back paired up nicely with the madness of rush hour traffic he faced in his daily commute.
Not to be outdone
Although Courtney didn’t have to deal with rush hour traffic, she had her nerves amply frustrated as well.
Courtney worked from a home office space above the garage. She’d built a thriving little jewelry brand in less than two years, but she had to do everything on her own.
Whether it was negotiating a deal with an overseas manufacturing company or coming up with new design concepts for the fall collection or trying to figure out why the new ink printer cartridge wasn’t working, it was all on her to do.
As an extrovert, Courtney missed the adult conversations and brainstorming sessions she used to have at her corporate job. But when she and Matt decided to have a baby — which ended up being twins — one of the parents needed to stay closer to home. And Courtney nominated herself for this job.
However, Courtney’s daily struggle was getting her work done while there was a circus of activity inside the home. The ringleaders were her two rambunctious boys who held the babysitter hostage. When they got bored with that, the boys would then terrorize the parade of delivery guys dropping off shipments for Courtney’s business, and the crew of subcontractors working on their home renovation project.
Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash
Even though she was a progressive thinker, the guilt Courtney felt about trying to be a good mom while building her business would leave her in tears some days. But Courtney did her best to suck it up because they needed the additional income to make ends meet.
Trying to help
Whenever Matt came ripping through the front door at 60 mph, he looked as if a pack of wild animals had been chasing him through the town. And considering the number of urgent emails and crisis calls from staff and clients demanding time-sensitive responses, it was an apt analogy.
As soon as the twins saw dad arrive, they’d jump on him before he could even set his briefcase and jacket down. While the boys begged to play outside with dad, Courtney needed his help in the kitchen to make dinner.
After supper, Matt would take the boys up for their nightly baths, teeth brushing, room cleanup, and bedtime reading. The boys fought this part of the routine with increasing resistance. And they’d become experts at finding ways slow dad down from getting the job done.
But eventually, Matt would get the kids tucked into bed and come back down to do the dishes, while Courtney squeezed another hour of work into the day.
Matt was trying his best to be a good husband and do what he could to share the household chores and kid duty while building a startup business.
The conversation, or lack thereof
Around 8:00–8:30 pm, Matt and Courtney would finally get to sit down on the couch.
It was supposed to be a dedicated time when they could catch up with each other and discuss the things they needed to coordinate on regarding the house, finances, kid’s school, doctor’s appointments, in-laws, etc.
However, they were both so tired and exhausted by this point in the evening that they couldn’t talk, much less think clearly. Like a radio station slightly off the dial, their voices were unclear and had a lot of static. And their mental frequencies were not always in synch.
Inevitably, one of them would say something about how much they had to do that day. And the other would mistake the remark as a complaint or critique of their contributions to the family.
Then they’d get defensive and present a counter-argument about the sacrifice they’ve had to make. And before Matt and Courtney knew it, one of them had offended the other, and an emotional well of pent-up anger would come gushing out.
Unfortunately, these fights would happen at a time when they needed each other’s love, support, and encouragement the most. But they’d often go to bed angry, wondering, “Is this the life — the marriage — I signed up for?”
And they’d get up the next morning and start the whole cycle all over again.
The 5 stumbling blocks
Interestingly enough, many couples fight after work — around 7 pm-9 pm range. There are several reasons why this happens but listed below is an overview of the five most common issues.
#1. Our emotions come out of the basement
Our jobs can take a lot out of us. We use a tremendous amount of energy and stamina to get our work done. But we also spend a sizable portion of our brainpower interacting on the phone or in-person with customers, clients, bosses, vendors, and co-workers.
The social norms of work require that you keep your professional persona up and your emotions in check, if not suppressed. The way most of us deal with that challenge is by putting our feelings on pause, or pushing them into the closet, or locking them in the basement while we go about our workday.
But somewhere between our professional work mindset and our personal home life, our emotions demand to get out of the cage to express themselves.
In an ideal world, we’d take some time alone to be with our emotions. We’d go out for a meditative walk while we process the day and let off some of the steam.
But in reality, this is not how the end of day sequence plays out for many couples.
Most of us go from negotiating our day at work with our emotions in-check to having them unhinged by traffic jams and agitated by domestic skirmishes.
#2. The challenge of getting into the right gear
When couples finally get a chance to catch up at the end of a hard day, they’re often in different gears.
As much as they try to shake it, many spouses still have work on the brain or pressing deadlines hijacking their thoughts.
Photo by Siavash Ghanbari on Unsplash
Couples often misread their spouse’s emotional state after work and jump to the wrong conclusions. They assume their spouse is mad with them about something when in reality, they’re just not present yet.
Unfortunately, misinterpreting our spouse’s mood can trigger emotions that ramp up like a military arm’s race.
#3. The debate of whether to share everything or nothing
Whether it be a friend, co-worker, customer, stranger, or spouse, we are all guilty of doing this thing where ask people — “How are you?” — without being clear what kind of response we want.
And when someone asks us this, we think in our head, “Do you truly want to know?” And “How much time do you have?”
This conversation starter can be particularly challenging for some couples at the end of the day.
When our spouse asks us, “How was your day?” it presents a dilemma: Do you give them a simple, one-word answer like “good” or “fine” or “bad?” Or do you take them through a live-action description of your day?
Trying to do something in-between is challenging because it doesn’t capture all the situation’s nuances and subtleties. And these details matter significantly to the story’s quest and conflict.
And attempting to explain to your spouse the background, names, roles, and motives of the characters involved in the dramatic events of your day takes time and entails re-visiting the stress.
So we usually opt for a vague and ambiguous answer that communicates little to our spouse.
#4. The switch of male and female archetypes
There are many books written about the universality of how we all have masculine and feminine characteristics in us. These writings make the argument that we’ve been socialized, conditioned, and trained to assume one of the traditional societal roles according to our assigned gender.
These established roles dictate coded behavior like “men are supposed to be strong and tough” and “women are supposed to be elegant, refined and proper.”
Men who talk about their emotions too much get called “wusses” or that “P” word; therefore, most men learn not to speak about their feelings. And women who come on strong and are “unladlylike” get called a “coldhearted “B-word.”
These beliefs are unfair and unhealthy, but they still operate in our culture all the same. And these scripted roles can infect the way spouses engage and interact with each other after work.
A typical scenario that couples often face is that the man’s role is to assume his masculine, non-emotional mode all day long at work. But when he gets home, he taps into his more emotional, contemplative side. He tends to pine over issues and feels terrible about tough decisions he made, such as firing someone at work who has a family.
And women often feel social pressure to stay in their feminine mode all day long, where society expects them to show their emotions and be nurturing. But what many women crave at the end of the day is to let their tough side out and not be emotional.
Nothing is wrong with either of these modes. But they don’t always mesh well with their spouses at the end of the day. Couples can find themselves out of synch with each other as they shift out of their traditional roles into a different side of themselves. This role reversal can sometimes create tense conversations, if not a volatile situation, after work.
The husband wants some time alone to be more in touch with his feelings and emotions, and the wife wants to kick some ass and take names.
The husband and wife can then get frustrated with each other’s tonality. So they pick and poke at each other until one of them explodes. And that’s when things get said that hit below the belly or cross a line.
Couples play out this same skit so frequently that the resulting fights are predictable.
#5. The competition over who’s day was worse
Many couples get into a competition about whose day was more difficult and which spouse deserves more sympathy, compassion, and care than the other.
This competition is silly, unhelpful, and unproductive to relationships. But yet it persists as a part of many couples’ daily routine.
Couples in a competition can also try to manage their spouse by guilting them that they’re doing more or suffering worse. But when guilt enters the relationship equation, resentment and distrust of one’s intentions become part of the daily conversational dynamic.
. . .
The two marriage-saving techniques
There’s no doubt that Matt and Courtney were in love and perfect for each other on so many levels. But they kept encountering these five stumbling blocks every night after work.
These obstacles were impeding their their relationship. And if they didn’t get a handle on it, their arguments would eventually go too far.
When Matt and Courtney asked for my advice, I suggested two critical tweaks to their nightly ritual.
#1. Establish a decompression zone
The pace of modern-day life has made balancing the issues of work, family, health, finances, and self nearly impossible. Inevitably, one or more of these areas will suffer.
But the one area that typically takes the biggest hit is the self-check-in.
You can survive a short term deficit of not checking in with yourself. But if this deficiency persists for too long, the unattended problems will fester and turn into anger, resentment, and bitterness. And it’s unsustainable to go this way without encountering problems with your your spouse.
The solution is to give yourself some time each day to get in touch with your feelings, process your day, and collect your thoughts.
In an ideal world, activities such as exercise, dancing, painting, poetry, writing, music, yoga, etc. are the best ways to get your mind off work and your frustrations of the day out of you.
But most working couples with kids will tell you they don’t have time to indulge in these types of luxurious activities.
However, just a mere 20–30 minutes after work will make a giant difference in your relationship. While this time may be hard to find, it’s a lot easier than fighting with your spouse for hours, getting your nerves frayed, and losing sleep.
Both spouses need to commit to giving each other this self-check-in time to decompress and shift gears. But this time must be devoid of distractions, and not an excuse to squeeze in more work, emails, or social media time.
#2. Summarize your day into four bullet points
Most couples don’t have a useful framework for engaging with each other at the end of the day. They either say too much or too little.
One effective way to have a more productive conversation is by setting up the daily ritual of having each spouse give four short bullet points about their day.
Two of these bullet points should describe two high points of the day, and the other two should define two low points. These points can be about any wins or losses of their day—business, family, or personal.
But no more than four bullet points.
The purpose of these bullet points is to allow your spouse an opportunity to summarize the emotional highs and lows of their day.
By hearing about the peaks and valleys of your spouse’s day, you get to learn more about what they’re wrestling with and trying to accomplish or resolve.
Each bullet point should be no more than 1–3-minute descriptions. If you must, you can do a further breakdown of the topic much later in the evening. However, the first part of this discussion should be an edited summary and overview of the day to help get you and your spouse in-synch and on the same page.
Having a time limit prevents one spouse from dominating the conversation or guilting the other, which is a source of much marital angst. And having each spouse present only four points helps reduce the competitiveness of trying to add up whose list of woes for the day was longer.
While it may sound like these four bullet points are there to limit or police the other’s behavior, it’s quite a relief for spouses not to have to go over every single issue of the day — just the highs and lows.
Just two techniques
For the last two years, Matt and Shelley have been watching out for the five stumbling blocks and utilizing this two-pronged technique of 1) decompressing for 20–30 minutes and 2) summarizing their day into four bullet points.
And they, like many others, claim it has done wonders for removing the after-work marital traps they kept falling into every night.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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