The Chronicles of Critics

Posted by fxckfeelings on January 16, 2014

More than ever, in this age of comment sections and endless e-feedback, everyone feels entitled to share their opinion without stopping to judge whether it’s really deserved, harmful, or beneficial. It’s easy to dismiss your average Youtube commenter when he types “U R Gay” for the thousandth time, but it’s harder when the critic lives in your own house or even your own head. The fact that the feelings are sincere seems like reason enough to express them, and the lust to punish is hard to resist, but the things we often feel critical about are things that both can’t be helped and can be made much worse by constant critique. So give yourself the time to judge whether your critical impulse is the result of prejudice and irritability, or a signal that it’s necessary to protect yourself, whether that means keeping quiet or just off-line.
–Dr. Lastname

I often wind up fighting with my wife about money, since she loves to spend it. I can’t really complain that she spends too much, though, because, at the end of the year, she’s more or less within budget. At the same time, she’s so emotional and impulsive about her decisions, and some of the things she buys are just so frivolous, that I can’t help telling her what I think, which she says is very insulting, and then she acts like the injured party and we don’t talk for a week. My goal is to have a reasonable talk with her about how she spends money.

If it annoys you that your wife spends money without thinking about it, then you might want to look into the logic of confronting her about her spending without really thinking about it. If you can’t keep your mouth shut, it’s hard to expect her to do the same with her wallet.

Just because your partner’s spending habits rub you the wrong way doesn’t mean you’re obliged to bring up a difficult, unpleasant subject. Especially since doing so has a history of accomplishing little aside from annoying the crap out of both of you.

You’ve done a good job of monitoring family finances so you can assure yourself that your wife’s spending is not endangering them. Meanwhile, your constant bickering about money is going a long way towards endangering your marriage or, at least, punishing everyone involved.

Of course, if she was overspending and the issue was unavoidable, your most effective intervention would be to avoid a fight and instead set up a joint meeting with a financial advisor, who would lead you through an evaluation of your earnings, expenses, and long-term need for savings and a budget while discouraging the embarrassment of personal nastiness. In other words, even if you had cause to worry about your financial security, fighting wouldn’t be the best way to manage your wife’s behavior.

When it comes to finances or anything else, learn to choose your battles if you don’t want to get embroiled in a lot of useless Vietnams, then ask yourself why your wife’s spending habits are such a trigger. Remember, your goal isn’t to stop her from making you uncomfortable, but to avoid unnecessary fights, even if her spending gets under your skin.

It’s painful to suppress how you really feel, but, in this instance, it’s worth holding your tongue if it means avoiding a useless fight and holding your marriage together.

STATEMENT:
“ I can’t stand certain of my wife’s spending habits, but I’m good at doing the books and I know we’re OK. I’ll always keep an eye on our family finances but I’ll find ways to keep my mouth shut and my attention elsewhere whenever I’m aggravated by an issue that isn’t important.”

The more I think about getting a vasectomy, the more I feel like a selfish idiot. My wife and I have a kid we’re crazy about and she says she’s happy whether we have another one or not, but I keep going back and forth. If we have another kid, I feel like I’m taking love and opportunity away from our first child, and that’s an awful thing to do for our own selfish reasons. If I get a vasectomy, I’d feel terrible later on if something bad happened to our kid and we had no one—but that’s also a selfish way to think. I feel paralyzed and unable to make a decision that doesn’t seem selfish. My goal is to figure out the best thing to do.

Adding up the pros and cons of a decision is not the same as adding up the positive and negative feelings. Some people, particularly when they’re depressed, have negative feelings about everything, including parenthood and good deeds, so they add up two plus two and always get negative numbers. That’s what you do by making yourself completely responsible for all possible bad outcomes of your vasectomy decision.

Good decision-making, on the other hand, is more like a risk benefit analysis, weighing potential material and moral benefit against harm. Not having another child will provide more resources for your family as it is now, and spare you the risks of having a child with problems you can’t tolerate. After all, there’s a lot about a kid’s character and temperament that you don’t control, so having one is a roll of the dice, and some kids are very, very hard to raise. On the other hand, having another child, if he or she is anywhere near as nice as the one you have, may bring another good person into the family and enrich your lives together.

Instead of giving voice and strength to compulsively negative thoughts, judge your actions using your usual moral principles, much as you would judge the actions of a friend. That won’t stifle the internal voice of scathing self-criticism, but it will express your belief in your experience and values. And if you judge your actions as consistent with your values, stand up for yourself by talking back to the self-critical voice.

What your compulsively self-critical impulses would like you to do, of course, is punish yourself; the worse your punishment hurts, the more it gives you relief. Your goal, however, is not to gratify those impulses and thus strengthen them, but to respect yourself when you’ve done nothing wrong, regardless of how guilty you feel.

Standing up to ungrounded self-criticism will not make you happy in the short term, but it will strengthen your ability to act according to your values over time. Then, when you make decisions, you won’t feel so much happy or sad, but proud.

STATEMENT:
“I can find nothing but cowardice and selfishness in my thoughts about a vasectomy, but I know how to judge my actions, and I know I’ve done nothing wrong and much right. I will continue to judge my actions by my experience and values, regardless of how instinctively I feel deserving of blame.”