A FEW OF our husbands read How to Win Friends and Influence People and offered to pay us a dime for every time they broke one of the rules, such as Never tell someone they are wrong directly, and Start with questions to which the other person will answer yes. We said we did not want to help because we did not want this persuasion directed at us. Although maybe there were things to appreciate: Don’t criticize and Pay little attentions.
SOMETIMES SPREADING TIME with our husbands and one another brought out the worst in us. And occasionally the best. From time to time we said Why certainly and we felt Of course not. Sometimes we felt so familiar, too familiar, and our own words frightened us when they came from our mouths, as did the actions of our hands: it is those we are closest to that we can harm the most. And occasionally, during a fight, we were quiet, and we waited out the silence until our husbands could no longer stand it.
OCCASIONALLY THIS TECHNIQUE did not work; our husbands could go without speaking, in the humming uncomfortable for days. We lost, and we showed them how we needed them more than they needed us. Some of us had parents who lived for decades at this low simmer, some of us had parents who might, on a good day, a holiday, say, or for the birth of a grandchild, finally play a loving tune on top of that hum, but they never, ever, forgot the solemn chord.