Kirshenbaum, Mira - Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay

Off-the-table-itis kills relationships. Or perhaps I should say partners with off-the-table-itis kill relationships. I’ll show you how in a moment. But first here’s the question that tests for it:

Diagnostic question #9. Does it seem to you that your partner generally and consistently blocks your attempts to bring up topics or raise questions, particularly about things you care about?

He can do this directly and openly: “I don’t want to talk about that.”

He can do this less directly and openly: “Okay, but what about ... ,” and the next thing you know you’re talking about something completely different.

He can do this threateningly: “If you keep pushing me to talk about that, I just don’t want to be in this relationship.”

He can disguise his off-the-table-itis with emotional abuse, making you seem somehow stupid or weird or in the wrong for even mentioning certain things that are important to you.

He can even take things off the table with such extreme politeness you don’t even know it’s happening: “That’s a wonderful question and I’m so happy you brought it up, but I’m really going to need time to think about it,” except that thinking about it takes forever.

I don’t want to go overboard with this. It’s not off-the-table-itis if it’s simply hard for your partner to talk about something you want to talk about. It’s not off-the-table-itis if you merely sense his reluctance. And I’m certainly not saying that if he refuses to talk about something once or twice or occasionally because he’s in a bad mood or because your timing is bad that you’ve got a problem with off-the-table-itis.

It’s off-the-table-itis only when your attempts to communicate are rejected over and over, so that you feel genuinely discouraged from ever bringing it up again.

And it’s not off-the-table-itis if your partner simply doesn’t know that he’s doing it and stops when you point it out to him. If you say something like, “You know, you never want to talk about sex,” and your partner says, “Gee, you’re right, I’m sorry. Let’s talk about sex,” it’s not off-the-table-itis. But if he consistently denies taking something off the table or makes you feel in the wrong for wanting to put it on the table, that is off-the-table-itis.

Diagnosing Off-the-table-itis

You might find yourself saying yes! right away to question #9. But I’m concerned about the cases of off-the-table-itis that people don’t realize are happening. When someone tells you consistently to shut up, it makes you mad in the short run but over time you get numb to it.

But off-the-table-itis is often done in extremely hard-to-detect ways. It’s not really surprising, when you think about it, that one of the hallmarks of people who take topics off the table is that they take off the table the possibility of talking about how they take things off the table. The subtleties are infinite. But off-the-table-itis destroys relationships anyway. To help you see it in action, here are some snapshots of off-the-table-itis:

• Suppose there are sexual difficulties between you and your partner that you’d like to start talking about. But when you say, “I’d like to talk about how we don’t make love so much anymore,” your partner gets upset and literally says, “Oh, I hate talking about that. I just don’t want to talk about it.” And he says it so vehemently and firmly that you just feel squashed. That’s off-the-table-itis.

• Every time you talk about how you feel about something, he sighs or he changes the subject or he reads the newspaper or turns to the TV or pets the dog or is busy lighting a cigarette or gets something to eat or does anything else to move away or shut you up. That’s off-the-table-itis.

• You’re both working far too hard and have no time for each other, and yet you’re not bringing in enough money to cover your overhead. The only way you can solve this is changing your lives in some important way. But whenever you bring this up your partner constantly throws the conversation into one distracting sidetrack after another, so that you keep skirting around talking about what you’re supposed to be talking about while these distractions mean you never actually do talk about it. That’s off-the-table-itis.

• You agreed that giving each other feedback is a good idea, but whenever you give your partner feedback, although she says she wants to hear it, she criticizes so many things about the way you do it and when you do it that you feel forced to drop your efforts. That’s off-the-table-itis.

• The man you’ve been seeing for the last year seems interested in having a relationship with you, but he never says I love you and in fact is never really affectionate in any way outside of sex. You try to bring this up and he listens politely and then tells you how interesting, fascinating, intriguing everything you’re saying is, how much you’re giving him to think about, and he promises to think about it but he never gets back to you, and when you ask him about it he always says politely that he needs more time to think about it. That’s off-the-table-itis.

• Your partner’s in charge of paying bills and as far as you can tell she’s been doing a poor job. And that makes you angry and nervous. You say, “We really need to talk about the way you pay bills.” She doesn’t refuse to talk about it, but she acts so miserable that the experience is an ordeal and you’re sorry you ever brought it up. That’s off-the-table-itis.

• Whenever you talk about anything important to you, your partner sits there and says little, but there’s an impenetrable, stony quality to his “listening” that overwhelms you with the sense that your words are reaching his ears and yet he’s never allowing them to get inside his head. That’s off-the-table-itis.

• You talk about some need or problem you have. Your partner responds by telling you what’s wrong with you for having that need or problem. He can do it in a gross way with some general putdown. Or he can do it subtlely by suggesting that whatever it is you’re expressing is a sign of some kind of psychopathology or childhood trauma or being “just like your mother” or some other problem you have that has nothing to do with what you’re wanting to talk about. That’s off-the-table-itis.

• You come home from work and want to talk about your job because there’s so much going on you just can’t sort it out by yourself. But your partner gets restless and impatient after five minutes. She tells you point-blank that she’s just not interested in all the office politics and career issues that so preoccupy you. She points out that her father did extremely well in his career without any help from her mother. That’s off-the-table-itis.

I could go on and on with examples like these. But it’s important for you to develop a sense of all the not-easily-detectable ways people we’re in a relationship with can shut down communication. You don’t always know it when it happens. But you do feel something. You have to play back in your own mind what whizzed by you to see clearly how what you just felt was connected to your partner’s taking off the table what you cared about. In fact, the more successful your partner is at taking things off the table, the better he is at making sure you don’t know that he’s doing it.

Going Too Far

It’s time for the guideline, but we’ve got to be careful. Off-the-table-itis in its milder, more occasional forms is like the common cold: a huge pain in the neck but not necessarily fatal. So if your partner’s taking things off the table weakens in response to your efforts to put them back on the table, that’s a good sign. And if the more important something is to you, the less likely your partner is to take it off the table, that’s a good sign. And if there’s only one or two hot-button issues that your partner takes off the table, that’s a good sign. But here’s where you have to draw the line: