THAT'S MEN:Differing attitudes to time can cause conflict
I HAVE a reputation for being late and this has sometimes led to me being referred to, cruelly, as “the late Padraig O’Morain”.
It isn’t that I don’t worry about time. I think about it constantly but this fact on its own doesn’t get me to the church on time.
A recent entry by Suzanne Phillips on the healing together for couplesblog set me thinking again about this issue. She suggests that differing attitudes to time are behind much conflict between couples.
As I read, an image popped into my mind which had nothing to do with couples but which illustrates how radically attitudes to time can differ.
In the movies, and at one time in real life, when a plane was landing a guy who had what looked like a ping pong bat in each hand waved the plane in to its final berth after it had touched down. I haven’t noticed this happening for a while so I don’t know if these guys still exist.
But on my first trip to the US, around 1989, I noticed that the guys with the ping pong bats waved them frantically as if to say, “Hurry up, hurry up, I haven’t got all day.”
On the way back we landed at Shannon. They too had a guy with ping pong bats. But he waved his slowly, very slowly, as if to say, “Shure what are you rushing for, take your time and don’t be always in a hurry.”
Two different cultural attitudes, though also a reflection of reality when US airports had queues of planes waiting to land and take off, the likes of which we have still not seen in Ireland, even during our pretend boom.
Imagine transporting these attitudes to a couple. One is waving the ping pong bats frantically and the other doesn’t know what all the fuss is about. The potential for conflict is obvious.
In fact, Ms Phillips writes that once two people become committed, each feels entitled to become possessive and judgmental about the other’s time.
Examples she gives are: “You were out teaching all day – why do you need a ladies’ night out?” “How can you waste a beautiful day watching football from morning to night?”
Certainly, counsellors would recognise arguments about time as a constant factor in relationship conflict.
I wrote in a recent column about arguments between partners who feel neglected or threatened (as in criticised as well as in more serious ways).
Disagreement about the use of time is clearly fertile ground for arguments about neglect or about threats to the relationship. And the more judgmental one partner is about how the other uses time, the more likely it is that conflict will ensue.
People get stubborn about time. You may criticise my use of time but that will only make me dig my heels in.
Something about the way a person uses time is unique to that individual. This doesn’t seem to matter too much when people are madly in love. Then all these differences are amusing, even endearing.
But once people live together, expectations change and a common expectation is that you will use your time in the same way that I use my time because I, of course, am the expert in such matters.
When people have children the whole picture changes.
Time that was devoted to themselves or each other must now be diverted to the children and if parents are not prepared to do this, the consequences can be dire for the children and for the relationship.
So the use of time is a crucial factor, rarely addressed in advance, in the wellbeing of relationships.
I have no formula for fixing this except to say that partners who are in conflict would do well to consider how much of that conflict is about time – and then to ask whether they need to change their attitude towards time or the way they use it.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas.
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