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Authors: Gretchen Rubin
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at least five positive marital actions to offset one critical or destructive action, so one way to strengthen a marriage is to make sure that the positive far outweighs the negative. When a couple’s interactions are usually loving and kind, it’s much easier to disregard the occasional unpleasant exchange. I had a feeling, however, that it would take more than five marital actions, on both our parts, to offset the negative force of our snoring exchange.
Fighting right made a big difference to my happiness, because the failure to fight right was a significant source of guilt in my life. As Mark Twain observed, “An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.” When Jamie did something annoying and I snapped at him, and then I felt bad about snapping, I blamed it on him. But in fact, I realized, a major cause of my bad feelings wasn’t Jamie’s behavior but rather my guilt about my reaction to his behavior; fighting right eliminated that guilt and so made me happier.
One day when I repeatedly failed to fight right helped me to see this point clearly. For Presidents Day weekend, we went on a little vacation with Jamie’s parents. My in-laws, Judy and Bob, are wonderful grandparents with whom to vacation—helpful, easygoing, with a reasonable tolerance for chaos—but they like to have plenty of time when traveling, and in our rush to get out the door to meet them, I let myself get too hungry. Just as we were leaving the apartment, I realized I was famished, and I gave myself a quick fix by digging into an enormous heart-shaped box of M&M’s that Eliza had gotten for Valentine’s Day.
Eating all that candy made me feel guilty and a little sick, and I couldn’t keep from making nasty remarks. The worse I behaved, the guiltier I felt, and that made me behave worse.
“Jamie, please get those papers out of my way.”
“Eliza, stop leaning on me, you’re hurting my arm.”
“Jamie, can’t you get that bag?”
Even after we arrived at the hotel, having made a wrong start, I couldn’t shake my bad feelings.
“Are you okay?” Jamie asked me at one point.
“Sure, I’m fine,” I mumbled, temporarily chastened, but my bad mood soon reasserted itself.
That night, after Eliza and Eleanor went to sleep, the adults could finally have a sustained conversation. We drank our after-dinner coffee (even after years as part of this family, I still marvel at Judy’s and Bob’s ability to drink espresso with caffeine after dinner) and talked about a recent New York Times article about VX-950, a hepatitis C drug in trials.
We cared a lot about those trials. Jamie jokes about being a “broken toy” with his bad knee, his impressive scar from childhood surgery, and occasional back spasms, but his major broken part is his liver. He has hepatitis C.
As chronic and potentially fatal conditions go, hepatitis C has somegood points. It’s not contagious except through direct blood contact. Jamie has no apparent symptoms and found out that he has hepatitis C only through a blood test. One day he’ll develop cirrhosis and his liver will stop functioning and he’ll be in very big trouble, but for now, he’s perfectly fine. Also, when it comes to health problems, misery loves company; if a lot of people share your ailment, drug companies work hard to find a cure. About 3 million people in the United States have hepatitis C, along with 170 million or so worldwide, so it’s an active area of research, and Jamie’s doctors estimate that new, effective treatments are likely to be approved within five to eight years. Hepatitis C has a very long course—of the people who develop cirrhosis, most don’t get it for twenty or thirty years.
Thirty years sounds like a very long time, but Jamie picked up hepatitis C through a blood transfusion during a heart operation when he was eight years old, before screening for hepatitis C began. And now he’s thirty-eight.
The one treatment now available, pegylated interferon plus
Fighting right made a big difference to my happiness, because the failure to fight right was a significant source of guilt in my life. As Mark Twain observed, “An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.” When Jamie did something annoying and I snapped at him, and then I felt bad about snapping, I blamed it on him. But in fact, I realized, a major cause of my bad feelings wasn’t Jamie’s behavior but rather my guilt about my reaction to his behavior; fighting right eliminated that guilt and so made me happier.
One day when I repeatedly failed to fight right helped me to see this point clearly. For Presidents Day weekend, we went on a little vacation with Jamie’s parents. My in-laws, Judy and Bob, are wonderful grandparents with whom to vacation—helpful, easygoing, with a reasonable tolerance for chaos—but they like to have plenty of time when traveling, and in our rush to get out the door to meet them, I let myself get too hungry. Just as we were leaving the apartment, I realized I was famished, and I gave myself a quick fix by digging into an enormous heart-shaped box of M&M’s that Eliza had gotten for Valentine’s Day.
Eating all that candy made me feel guilty and a little sick, and I couldn’t keep from making nasty remarks. The worse I behaved, the guiltier I felt, and that made me behave worse.
“Jamie, please get those papers out of my way.”
“Eliza, stop leaning on me, you’re hurting my arm.”
“Jamie, can’t you get that bag?”
Even after we arrived at the hotel, having made a wrong start, I couldn’t shake my bad feelings.
“Are you okay?” Jamie asked me at one point.
“Sure, I’m fine,” I mumbled, temporarily chastened, but my bad mood soon reasserted itself.
That night, after Eliza and Eleanor went to sleep, the adults could finally have a sustained conversation. We drank our after-dinner coffee (even after years as part of this family, I still marvel at Judy’s and Bob’s ability to drink espresso with caffeine after dinner) and talked about a recent New York Times article about VX-950, a hepatitis C drug in trials.
We cared a lot about those trials. Jamie jokes about being a “broken toy” with his bad knee, his impressive scar from childhood surgery, and occasional back spasms, but his major broken part is his liver. He has hepatitis C.
As chronic and potentially fatal conditions go, hepatitis C has somegood points. It’s not contagious except through direct blood contact. Jamie has no apparent symptoms and found out that he has hepatitis C only through a blood test. One day he’ll develop cirrhosis and his liver will stop functioning and he’ll be in very big trouble, but for now, he’s perfectly fine. Also, when it comes to health problems, misery loves company; if a lot of people share your ailment, drug companies work hard to find a cure. About 3 million people in the United States have hepatitis C, along with 170 million or so worldwide, so it’s an active area of research, and Jamie’s doctors estimate that new, effective treatments are likely to be approved within five to eight years. Hepatitis C has a very long course—of the people who develop cirrhosis, most don’t get it for twenty or thirty years.
Thirty years sounds like a very long time, but Jamie picked up hepatitis C through a blood transfusion during a heart operation when he was eight years old, before screening for hepatitis C began. And now he’s thirty-eight.
The one treatment now available, pegylated interferon plus
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