My wife walked into the bedroom the other day and says, “Here sweetie, I brought you your cotton balls.”
I’m not sure if she could see the confusion on my face, but I was caught off guard. “Cotton balls, why did you bring me cotton balls?” After I finished speaking, I got it. She was pranking me and had gotten me good. Laughing, I said “Gee, thanks honey. I really appreciate it.”
The cotton balls are to me what ‘fingernails on the chalkboard’ might be to you. When you open up a new bottle of medicine, such as Advil or Tylenol, there is a cotton ball inside to provide padding to the contents. In removing the ball, the cotton fibers create a most unpleasant feeling of a soundless screeching that sends shrill chills into my body. It’s horrible. And yes, I know it’s odd.
It’s a part about me that brings great confusion to my family, and great joy when they surprise me with a joke like my wife did. I can’t explain why I feel this way about cotton balls, but I do.
How the cotton ball affect applies to communication in marriage
I recently interacted with some friends who were struggling in their marriage. They were in year 2 of marriage and fighting often. In the heat of the moment they were reacting to each other as though they were being shot at with a gun. However, they were defending their own words as though they were as soft and innocent as cotton. The reality was they were completely missing the impact of their words. It was obvious to me as a bystander, but not to them.
In relationships it’s a given that we will have conflict with one another. Most of the time we become aware of this conflict because of an offense and ensuing reaction. We all desire to be in a relationship where we talk about the impact of the conflict in a proactive manner, but our normal and untrained, off-the-cuff responses are usually more like war than peace.
If your spouse were to arm and load a gun and point it at you, most likely you would create a rush of emotions that would cause you to react a certain way. Upon seeing the danger, the survival nature in you as a human would kick into gear and defenses would be raised immediately. This would happen in response to a gun because weapons are dangerous.
Application for your marriage
Our words and actions in relationships are the ammo to the gun in conversations. We speak openly in relationships where we trust and want to be with the other. This freely given and received speech illuminates our biases, prejudices, and judgements about ourselves and others (including you).
The ageless rhyme, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is so untrue it’s laughable. Words do hurt, and we usually don’t know they’ve hurt someone until we see the reaction. We are judged on the perception of our words, not on our intent. It’s the challenge in marriage to learn the impact we have on our loved one, not to rest on the laurels of our good intentions.
The above couple I referenced were both using words they thought to be innocuous, but were heard and felt by their spouse as harmful and offensive. Words that you might use that are intended to joke, be playful, and have fun might not be that soft cotton ball you intended it to be. For the most part, cotton balls are harmless. Yet for some they represent feelings that are tough to understand or have difficulty coping. It might not make sense to you why someone gets hurt by your words, but defending your intent of launching a cotton ball doesn’t change the impact on the other.
