17th July 2007

Give us something to talk about

posted in Work-Life Balance, Mom Rants |

peopletalking.jpgI don’t know what’s going on. My husband and I have nothing to talk about anymore.  Well, that’s not entirely true, because the two of us can tell stories about junior all day long.  But when it comes to free-flowing, mind-blowing, knock-your-socks off discussion we are in a serious drought.

The pinnacle of the conversational decline in our household came last Thursday after my husband had worked 12 hours and I was just finishing up cooking dinner after working a mere 10 hours. (Me cooking is a whole topic of discussion in and of itself, but one that’s not allowed to be talked about anymore. “Well, sweety, I didn’t marry you for your culinary skills.” Ouch.)  After my husband walked in and changed, we went about eating our dinner and discussing some of the day’s events.

“Junior hates it when I work from home”

“Oh, then don’t.”

“I know, but sometimes it’s just easier if I do.”

“Well, then do it.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You want to know what happened today?”

“What.” (Notice, it’s not a question anymore)

“Our nanny had to take her car in.”

STOP.

Which was followed by a moment of silence and a sad refrain:

“Don’t we have anything better to talk about than the nanny’s car trouble?”

Heh. It seems that the minutae of what happens every day has clouded my ability to discuss things outside of my home life.  I’m too absorbed by (in order of importance) - my son’s happiness, the nanny’s happiness, staying awake at work, ensuring I can get home in time, finding something to make for dinner, making sure my husband is happy (sorry, honey) - to worry about what the heck I can talk about anymore.  By the end of the day my life is like one long checklist and any resulting conversations are just tick marks to prove that I’m still alive and kicking.  I’m in a dry spell of being interesting.

I tried in earnest to please my husband with some stimulating conversation the other night about something he’s interested in - biking.  In case you didn’t know, we are smack dab in the middle of the Tour de France - (just when I thought sports watching had come to a nice summer slowdown.)  But somewhere between the definition of a peloton and trying to figure out if the rider Levi Leipheimer is Jewish (we like to support any professional Jewish athlete we can find), I dazed off.  I just wasn’t that into it.

We’re in need of some serious conversational therapy over here.  Even if the men in tight bike shorts have great legs; I can’t fake it anymore.  Anyone got any ideas?

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There are currently 14 responses to “Give us something to talk about”

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  1. 1 On July 17th, 2007, Busy Mom said:

    No advice. Currently discussing Tinker Toys here at the moment.

  2. 2 On July 17th, 2007, Stephanie said:

    I recently stumbled across conversation cards for couples on Amazon.com for $23.99. You can find them by typing “conversation cards” in the Amazon search box.

    Just a thought…

  3. 3 On July 18th, 2007, Scruffy Mummy said:

    Yes, I have similiar problems! And so do some of my clients (I do life coaching amongst other things). It’s funny because I’ve been thinking about things that I can do and exercises to give my clients as well around having more meaningful conversation with partners - things that aren’t too contrived. Maybe over dinner or after kids asleep each person has to pick out an interesting article from a paper/magazine to share?? I’m really want to find more ideas too!

  4. 4 On July 18th, 2007, Jamie said:

    It gets better as your kids get older but we go through the same thing, too. We are both wiped out in the evenings and when the girls are here they compete for our attention so it’s hard to get anything more intellectual out than, “Dude, I am addicted to those Lipton instant green tea packets.”

  5. 5 On July 18th, 2007, Nataly said:

    Totally know where you’re coming from - been there and get there a lot. Here’s what we try to do - at least once a week have dinner without TV, sitting down at a table (yes, that takes effort in our house!) We try to not talk about work or our daughter, which is tough, but doable for 30 minutes. Nothing groundbreaking emerges in the discussion, but we talk about movies, something he or I read in the paper or online, what our friends are up to, etc. It’s a nice relief from the usual:)

  6. 6 On July 18th, 2007, Trish said:

    Been there. I am not allowed to talk about work-he doesn’t 100% understand what I do and quite frankly I doesn’t understand what he does either. On Friday nights we will get pizza and let the kids watch a movie in our room (big treat) and we just “hang out” like we used to. We have some beers and listen to our old cds and we always end up talking about funny thing when we were dating or before we met (been together 17 years, married 11). We always find something to chat about (”did I ever tell you about the time…” etc…)

  7. 7 On July 18th, 2007, selfmademom said:

    Ok, I’m laughing and taking notes at the same time! Thanks guys!

  8. 8 On July 18th, 2007, Working Mom said:

    I write hiding in my bedroom as my in-laws are staying with us. Luckily neither of us enjoy their company much, so we talk about how rotten they are. Not much of a topic, but at least it is something we can agree on and laugh about. It is going to be a struggle once they leave. Reading this back, this is just pathetic. I got nothin’

  9. 9 On July 19th, 2007, Chic.Mama said:

    We have this problem all the time - talk about Garcon flows much easier than talk about anything else. The other topic is the day at work, which frustrates one or both of us - depending on how much I’m venting.

    Nataly has a point - no work or child talk might actually lead to a fruitful conversation!

    SMM - love the site.

  10. 10 On July 19th, 2007, L.A. Daddy said:

    One of the things I try to prevent is conversations about people. I always try to steer things away from what some mommy at daycare or what some co-worker at work said or did. I think to talk about things. Ideas. Even if we agree on something, or disagree, I want to talk about it.

    Politics, religion, family stuff, vacations, news of the day, funny stories, whatever… that’s what gets me going.

  11. 11 On July 20th, 2007, Anita said:

    Yup, this sounds familiar. Did you see the episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” where Ray and Debra finally go to a restaurant by themselves and have nothing to talk about except how creamy the butter was or somthing? We had an episode like that recently on my birthday. We got a sitter and went out, just the two of us, and just sat there in silence. It was pretty sad. Eventually we managed to start talking about life before kids and the conversation became fun, but it took a while of racking our brains.

  12. 12 On July 20th, 2007, Susan said:

    It’s nice to know I’m not the only one. Fortunately, my hubby’s expectations for intelligent or interesting conversation are low. Just as long as he can play his video games, he’s happy. But I find when we get away (either for a weekend or just a date), we eventually start talking like we did before baby (or marriage, for that matter). We still got it–we just have to find it again.

    Susan at Working Moms Against Guilt
    http://www.workingmomsagainstguilt.com

  13. 13 On August 26th, 2007, The ban » Self-Made Mom said:

    […] an effort to create stimulating conversation with my husband and expedite my recovery from a blogging overdose, I came up with a crafty plan for […]

  14. 14 On October 20th, 2007, HubbyManBuddyBossDad said:

    Thanks for this insight. I ran into your posts by Googleing something unrelated and couldn’t stop reading. It looks like my wife could say something very similar. There’s less time and more challenges every day, especially since our daughter was born, so our conversations are reduced to rudimentary fragments like “Hi, I’m at the store - do we need anything?” or “Are you OK?” (which by the way in my own dictionary stands for “Sorry I neglected you. I’m here and I still care for you.”) Before I can be a good partner I personally often feel a need to get some space and charge the batteries, which on some days is reduced to bathroom time. The problem is that by the time I’m back home I’m tired of interaction with people, while my stay-home wife is tired of lack thereof. We sometimes get worried, unable to find ourselves amidst all that and I’m glad to see that many more people share the same experience, which, I suppose, makes it normal, or at least makes me more comfortable about our relationship at this point in time. Seeing that you too worry about it and are trying to work on it touches my heart. We try to have a date every now and then but often don’t succeed. Nevertheless, we keep trying because a date always brings the good old feeling from the days when we were rich DINKs as opposed to (financially) poor SIKs and it always returns the old magic and glow in our eyes. The other thing I sometimes do and will try to do more is communicating to her via email as it stands there saved and carved in electronics and hard drives, free of every day communication-impeding noise. It gets more challenging with the kid but I’m touched and enlightened to see our struggle is more or less archetypal.
    So on behalf of all the busy, tired and life overwhelmed husbands let me hereby mention one important thing - we (still do) love you.

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