The Real Story

As you're aware, Jean came out to visit us this last week. They were on a trip out to meet my brother's fiancée and to help another brother and his wife move, and they decided to swing up and pay us a visit.

Following their own advice, my mom called ahead to clear the visit with Stena and to make arrangements for where they would stay (with us, in this case). Jean also mentioned that she wanted to help out with a project that we had stalled on, and my wife was only too glad to accept.

As the visit got closer, the stress of the visit became clear to me. We were coming back from a weekend family reunion the same day that they were showing up. The day of the switch things became even clearer: Stena (who had booked the tickets) was unclear about when the flight was actually arriving back home and underestimated out transit time from the airport. Read: "My parents were arriving at our house an hour before we were."

Fortunately we have a spare key, and they were gracious guests and let themselves in and started cooking dinner for us (thanks guys!). It was great to come home to a cooked meal, but for Stena, who is working on being a better hostess and homemaker, it started the trip off on the wrong foot.

I was at work the next day, and when I came home I could tell that Stena was out of sorts. I persuaded her to join me for an evening "constitutional" (a not uncommon occurrence when we visit parents). It only took a few minutes of walking before she spilled everything that was frustrating her.

My advice (from reading her blog posts) was to talk with my mom about it. But she was worried that she would regret what she said the day after she said it--she didn't want the conversation to be interpreted as a series of hard-and-fast rules. I told her she was overthinking it, but realized in retrospect that she was right. Women aren't made to talk to women about conflict--that's what guys are for.

After Stena went to bed I stepped out onto the porch with my mom and in short, concise sentences described how Stena was feeling. My mom went on the "sincere-defensive" ("I had no idea I was doing that!") and I calmly explained that I was just doing my job as described in the blog by talking to her.

Two days later I'm sitting in the car with Stena (who I haven't told about the back porch conversation) and she says "I'm so glad I didn't talk to Jean about what I was feeling. I must have just been stressed out that first day because she's not doing any of the things I thought she was doing." I just smiled.

The rest of the trip went fabulously. On the last night I suggested they sit down and talk honestly with each other about how they thought the trip had gone (ostensibly for the blog). I wish I'd recorded it because it would have made an excellent podcast. Stena brought up the things that had bothered her early on and how she realized that Jean wasn't actually doing them. Jean brought up our conversation on the back porch and I exited--[stage left, curtain].

30 minutes later they approached me and told me I should write the blog post, and I agree.

Lesson learned: Boil down what you want to say to the bare bones, say it without overexplaining, and then end the conversation. Third-party conversations work even better because they can't overexplain because they only have bare-bones details.

But then again, multi-party negotiation is what I do for a living. Maybe you've had a different experience?