Friday, March 18, 2011

I or We?


My daughter Sandy and her husband, Ken, have been together about a year. Yesterday, he started talking about how he had to take his kids and go to New York to visit his family, especially his grandmother. "I really need to go. I haven't gone to visit for a long time. I thought I'd take the kids. I'm going to ask my mom and dad to go too."

Sandy told me she sat there getting madder and madder because he was saying, "I" and not "We". She thought he didn't want her to go, that maybe he was ashamed of her or something. After a few minutes of this he finished with, "So, do you want to go? You don't have to if you don't want to."

She said, "I'm going to tell you why I am agitated. I thought you were just telling me you were going. You didn't' say "we", you said "I", over and over."
He apologized and made it clear he had always wanted to take her to New York. "So, do you want to go?" he asked again.

Sandy was still a little upset. "Well of course I want to go! We're a family and it's a family vacation, so of course I want to go!"

She told me this morning that right after she said that to Ken, she thought to herself. "Wait a minute, I don't want to go!

She only wanted to go when she thought he didn't want her to go. Now that she knew he wanted her to go, she didn't want to go.

And you men say you can't understand women!