The kitchen, apparently, is a battlefield.
Former TV chef Juan-Carlos Cruz, host of the Food Network’s canceled cooking show Calorie Commando, was arrested recently by Santa Monica police for solicitation to commit murder. Cruz allegedly asked several homeless men to kill his wife.
About five miles from my home, a Colorado woman was just sentenced to 4½ years in prison for poisoning her husband’s dinner salad with foxglove leaves. Foxglove produces the chemical digitalis, which can be deadly. She had urged him to eat his roughage. Despite its bitter taste, he ate part of it. The guy didn’t die, but suffered severe stomach cramps and a racing heartbeat.
Knowing this, I cringed when my wife snapped at me for leaving the cupboard door open after selecting a mug for morning coffee. The moment I sat down at the breakfast table she glared at me.
“That’s a pet peeve,” she scolded. “Close the door. You always leave it open.”
Her ire took me by surprise. I thought she was kidding. She wasn’t.
I looked across the kitchen to the open cupboard. In plain view were three shelves stacked with coffee mugs, a hodge-podge condominium of souvenirs acquired throughout decades of world travel. I didn’t see anything wrong.
“You see an open cupboard,” I replied. “I see a lifetime of great memories.”
Our disparate views of this one, specific image cause me to think about pet peeves.
What others does she harbor? Should I share mine? Should we internalize things that bug us and let them smolder, or air them out and talk about them?
I posted a Facebook question and asked my friends. Two suggested it was unwise to mention them. Only two shared theirs. One is a fanatic about having a precise number of utensils–knives, forks, and spoons–in each dishwasher basket. Another pretends he’s off doing one thing but instead sneaks away to play Wii video games.
To me, the answer is obvious: bring these things out into the open and talk about them.
Relationships strengthen and deepen based on the size of the discussion arena pertaining to what matters. The arena’s size depends on two things, information and emotional importance. If something bothers you, it’s emotionally important. Like me, the other person might be clueless that he or she is doing anything disturbing.
While I am ambidextrous, I drink write, eat, and hoist a coffee mug lefthanded. The cupboard I must open righthanded. From that act forward, every successive action is to the left. The coffee pot is to the left, the table and chairs are to the left. I offer this detail not as an excuse but to explain a logical behavioral flow.
I often write and teach that we find in life what we look for. Look for the irritant, see the irritant. Look for the memories, see the memories. While my wife and I viewed and shared a common image–the open cupboard–how we chose to process what we saw was radically different.
To my wife, she was right seeing what she did. To me, I was right seeing what I did. We both were right, but because of its emotional importance to her, her “right” was more important than mine.
The habitual insistence on interpreting things over and over exactly the same way is called a “reflexive loop.” Life is better (to me) when I don’t do that. But just as my habit of leaving the cupboard open was an unaware action, my wife zeroed in on looked for it. Because she looked for it, she saw it. If she hadn’t made such a big deal out of it, I’d still do it. Not out of malice, but simply because I was unaware I did it at all.
Like any couple, we have our coexistence quirks and some I’m well aware of. I like an occasional cigar, she despises them. I love my horses, she doesn’t. Nor does she like my tropical fish but that’s okay; I detest her goffin cockatoo. And have for 25 years.
All up, all in, do things like this–or should things like this–really matter? Should pet peeves ding a relationship?
Of course not. The cumulative good that grows from a relationship’s ever-widening window–the frank sharing of deeper feelings and more information–far outweighs intrinsic quirks that are only annoying if we choose to see and let them fester. I’d rather know something changeable exists than create spite or irritation by being unaware.
I make it a point now to close the cupboard door.
My wife’s salads are healthy and delicious, and our coffee mugs still remind me of a lifetime of great experiences. But now I visit the mugs in private.