Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-11-27 - 12:07 p.m.

His and Hers

In my last few years in management, we pushed hard on having "shared vision." It sounds like another hokey management term. Okay, it IS another hokey management term, like thinking outside the box or shifting your paradigm or whatever the flavor of the year is - but it also makes a lot of sense.

Shared vision means that you think and talk about the question "What would it be like if it were perfect?" and that the dreams you dream have some similarities. Because if you have different dreams in your head, then you're not going to be pulling in the same direction.

It works on the small scale, too. Today, BF had said he would do a few things around his house and then come over, hang out and eat turkey leftovers. The girls and I had watched a movie together last night and really enjoyed it, and we wanted to watch it again and we all thought BF might enjoy it, too. I asked him mid-day if he thought he'd like to watch the movie, and he was noncommittal, didn't want to think about it right that minute. So we didn't return the film, and I planned a meal of Thanksgiving leftovers for us and leftovers with extras for the girls. See it happening? My vision: the four of us will sit down together for dinner, and then watch a movie together. I have this all planned and I'm pretty much figuring this is how the evening will go.

I don't know what he had envisioned but it wasn't that. He couldn't tell me exactly when he was coming, so I ended up feeding the girls dinner by themselves. Then he appeared and I did a second shift of dinner for the two of us, and after dinner he said no, he did not want to watch a movie tonight. He played PlayStation with the girls and I played at my computer, and then after I put them, to bed he turned on the Sci-Fi channel and watched part of a B sci fi flick. (Yes, she said bitchily, after he'd said "no" to our movie.)

So. This made me crabby, so whatever else he had on his agenda for later in the evening wasn't going to be on mine, oh no. But he knows we're not clicking, and he wants to know what's wrong. I can't find the right way to tell him. If I say it's the movie, then it sounds as though this movie counts more than it does. If I say it's dinner...it's not dinner, or the movie. It's that the evening did not go the way I had it planned, and I didn't have any fallback except getting uselessly cross about it.

Had I noticed early on that I had a picture in my head, and showed it to him, he might have seen it didn't look like the one in his head. He could have said he didn't want to come early for dinner, and I would have eaten happily with my girls. He could have said he envisioned a late dinner together, and I wouldn't have stalled the kids off until they were cranky. He could have said he didn't think the movie sounded interesting and the girls and I would have watched it together earlier and taken it back. But I guess I didn't tell him clearly that I had those things in mind, and he didn't tell me that he didn't.

It's not that this evening was any big important unusual evening. It's just the little plans and assumptions that I don't even see I have until I whack my shins on them. It isn't that I want to lie in wait for him, or that I don't want to tell him what I'm thinking. I know he doesn't lie in wait for me, to mess up my plans, either. We just spend a lot of time in our own heads, painting our own pictures and never showing them until we've already put on the final coats. I'm afraid I often use quick-dry acrylics, too.

I do have a point here. What would it look like if it were just the way you wanted it to be? Today? Tonight? This Christmas? Retirement? Your lives? I think if we ask the question often and share our answers, we're less likely to be on the puzzled side OR the cranky side of the equation. I think, anyway.

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