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A recent article entitled “Honey, Do You Have To…?” in the Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Bernstein explains that a marriage can break up over a pat of butter.  She writes:

When Jim Caudill’s first wife sat him down and explained that she wanted a divorce, she had a long list of complaints: He didn’t help enough with the kids. He didn’t do his share of the housework. They were more devoted to work than to each other.

Then she brought up the English muffins. “She said, ‘You never butter them to the edges, you just pat it in the middle,’” says Mr. Caudill, a 59-year-old winery marketing representative in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Mr. Caudill was stunned. But gradually, the message sunk in. “The weight of a small thing can be onerous,” he says. “It’s a symptom of a larger need.”

Don’t sweat the small stuff? Don’t kid yourself.

After reading that excerpt I thought, if you don’t like the way your mate butters the muffin, butter it yourself!  But perhaps Jim Caudill’s wife would rather let him butter it, so she can have a reason to be mad at him.  I think relationships break down, not from the small stuff, but from our attitude toward it.

I once heard Wayne Dyer talk about his book “The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way” and he shared a story I will remember forever.  He was staying at a hotel in the winter.  He likes to jog every day, but this hotel didn’t have a gym.  Since the hotel was a circle shape with an atrium in the middle, he decided to use the hallway as a jogging track.  He had gone around the track a few times when another guest exited her room and saw him coming toward her from down the hall.  With an irritated look on her face and condescending attitude she said something like, “What do you think you’re doing?”  He answered, “I’m jogging.”  Wayne used this anecdote to show an example of a woman looking to be offended.  Why should his jogging bother her?  He theorized that this woman gets up in the morning and subconsciously intends to find something to bother her, and on that day she placed her irritation on him.

I remember when I was pregnant and an acquaintance and I went to a Big City Moms event for expecting women.  We shared a taxi home and on the way we each called our husbands to check-in.  My husband was having drinks with a friend.  So was hers, but she was annoyed.  “You’re STILL out?  I’m coming home now, can’t you come home now?  They only had appetizers at the event.  Can you pick up dinner for me?”  I know that social schedules have to change when we are expecting, but to be annoyed simply because your mate is out a little longer than you are?  It seemed petty.  We live in Manhattan, it’s not hard to order dinner from one of the five take-out restaurants on one’s block.

I believe that being offended is a choice.  Sometimes we have good reason to be offended (like if your mate was supposed to pick you up from an event but forgot because he was out drinking with a friend), and other times, we have to use our wisdom to know that our partner’s actions are not about us at all.  How your husband butters a muffin or tells you the same story for the third time, or how your wife leaves the cap off of the toothpaste, can either be an annoyance, or something you smile at because it’s just part of who your mate is.  Therefore, it’s not about you.  So just butter the muffin yourself, nod to the story you already heard and don’t share toothpaste.

What small stuff bothers you?  How do you get past it?  Do you think the small stuff should matter?

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Balance & Fairness, Roles & Responsibilities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.