Controlled or controlling

The massive revelation started out with a simple, even mundane question that the wife asked the husband: "What do you want for supper tonight?"
 
For the last 16 years, the wife had been routinely deciding what to make for supper with minimal input from her spouse, but in the last few weeks, something had changed. The wife wanted more guidance, more involvement, more leadership from her husband.
 
The husband started to panic, and used his usual line for avoiding 'supper responsibility':
 
"Make whatever you want, it's fine!"
 
The wife bristled.
 
"What's the big deal? Why can't you tell me what you want for a change? Why is it so hard for you to tell me what you actually want to eat tonight?!?!?"
 
To his credit, the husband actually thought for quite a while before responding, and then told his wife that he found the whole question of what to make for supper incredibly stressful.
 
"What if I pick wrong and then I'll feel like a terrible failure? What if people don't like it and then I get blamed for supper being a disaster? What if I tell you what to make, and then you don't want to do that? I'll feel hurt and rejected, as though my opinion doesn't count or matter. It's much easier for me to opt out, and let you control things."
 
To her credit, the wife actually thought for quite a while before responding, and then told her husband that she could see they were stuck in that familiar, horrible pattern of 'control or be controlled'.
 
"But there has to be another way, where two people can actually get past all the horrible controlling stuff and simply have a conversation with each other. There's got to be more options on the table than just 'control or be controlled'."
 
The husband and wife thought about it for quite a while, and then the wife got an amazing idea: "Instead of trying to control each other, why don't we use this as an opportunity to get to know each other much better?"
 
The husband had no idea what she was talking about, so the wife started the 'real' conversation, and asked her husband to join in as soon as he got the hang of it.
 
"Let's say, I ask you what we should have for supper, and instead of giving me a closed solution, like sushi or soup, we instead have a discussion about what would actually suit us both tonight.
 
"Let's say it's hot, so you don't feel like eating a big bowl of soup, or stew. You want something cold to eat. In your mind, you might be thinking 'sushi', but then I tell you that it's been a long day, and I need to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible cooking tonight, so then we both know sushi is out."
 
The husband started smiling and nodding. "Yeah, I see how this could work. So then, we'd also have to discuss how much of the housekeeping money is available for supper tonight. Maybe you needed to buy the kids something unexpected for school, or you're saving up for a new pair of shoes or something, which means that supper also has to be cheap and cheerful – not minute steak!"
 
Now it was the wife's turn to smile and nod. "Exactly! Then, we throw into the mix the fact that the kids haven't eaten a vegetable for three months, and that we should really try and up their intake at supper time. So now, what are we looking at?"
 
"We're looking at a supper that's cold, that doesn't take a long time to prepare, that's quite cheap, and that has a lot of vegetables in it, that everyone likes."
 
"In other words, tuna salad!"
 
The husband and wife smiled at each other, and realized that as well as solving the age-old question of what to have for supper, they'd also discovered a formula for really starting to understand each other.
 
As the new spirit of honesty and understanding continued to swirl around them, the husband came out with a startling revelation: "I like tuna," he said, "but honestly, I hate most other types of fish, even though I know you put a lot of effort into trying to make a fish dish that I might actually like."
 
"I noticed. How come?"
 
"My mum made some banana fish thing when I was little, and I had to eat all of it. I still haven't gotten over it…"
 
Ok, no more experimental fish recipes. She got the hint. But at least now, she actually knew why.
 
 
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Check out Rivka Levy's new book The Happy Workshop based on the teachings of Rabbi Shalom Arush