An Argument About… I Don’t Know

Note: Only the Marriage Counselor Minutes entries are taken from a recorded audio source. Ones like this are just from memory.

I came home at lunch today and was welcomed by Stephanie and Justin. Stephanie is my 7-year-old stepdaughter who was at her dad’s for 2 weeks. They always greet me at the door. Nichole was on the computer playing Facebook games. I asked her how she was today. She said she was okay, but bored. The kids grabbed my attention and I ended up playing with them a little. Nichole said there was leftover pizza in the fridge.

After a little bit, I heated up some of the pizza and heard Justin playing with his toy Batman laptop. The Batman on there has a rough voice like the cartoon and I mentioned to Nichole how his voice is more like the recent Batman reboot than the previous Batman movies. She agreed.

Me: What if Christian Bale had to actually do that with his voice whenever he was in Batman uniform? Like they didn’t do any audio processing on it and he had to do that.
Her: Heh.
Me: He’d have to do like the death metal singers. It’s probably easier to do for music because you can yell and that voice is probably easier to yell with than talking normally, and for whole dialogs. Imagine Christian Bale trying to do a death metal voice the whole movie!
Her: Well, it wouldn’t be the whole movie because he only has that voice when he’s Batman.
Me: Yeah, but he still has a good amount of dialog throughout the whole movie as Batman. Can you imagine him laboring just to talk like that? It must be hard. He’d look so lame looking like he, Batman, is having a hard time just talking. Like he’d be visibly putting in a lot of effort each time he talked! It would look so funny!
Her: …
Me: And Bane has a surprisingly high voice. You know, I was thinking. Batman’s supposed to be good at strategy. I mean, he doesn’t have any super powers, so what makes him stand out from normal people are his equipment, martial arts abilities, and intelligence and strategy. I mean, maybe not in the movies so much. I mean, Bruce Wayne isn’t portrayed so much as being really intelligent. He was born into riches. He just has his anger going for him. But I think Batman is supposed to be intelligent. That’s like his whole thing. So he, more so than anyone, especially being skilled at martial arts, should be about finding his opponents’ weaknesses and exploiting them. And Bane’s thing on his mouth looks like an obvious weakness. I mean, I doubt he would wear that just for the heck of it, and anyone fighting him would at least consider that he depends on it, so you’d think that Batman of all people would target that first and focus on that from the beginning instead of toward the end of the movie.
Her: …
Me: Right?
Her: …
Me: Hmm. I’m trying to think back to the last therapy session and apply what was talked about in that to this situation, but I can’t think of which one this is.
Her: What are you talking about?
Me: …Um… The therapist said to do certain things for certain situations…
Her: You were just rambling! What am I supposed to say?
Me: Uh… I wasn’t just rambling…
Her: You were rambling about 10 different things. Batman’s voice and death metal and Bane. What am I supposed to say to all that?
Me: Um… I guess… what other people say when someone talks about things?
Her: I’m not interested in what you were talking about!
Me: You’re not interested in Batman?
Her: No.
Me: But you wanted to see the movies.
Her: So? That doesn’t mean I care about it.
Me: Well, you don’t have to care about it to talk about it.
Her: I’m trying to play my game and you’re just making another attempt to demand my attention.

I left her alone and had my pizza. I laid on my bed for a bit. I looked through the list of emotions and tried to pick out ones that I felt from the ordeal. I picked out many of them. I wondered if this would be a good event for us to list the emotions we felt like the therapist asked us to, but decided it wasn’t the best time. Then I got up and went into the kitchen and saw her doing the dishes. She seemed to be upset in general. She was getting on the kids for everything and seemed like she was mad at me.

I remembered that the therapist said to ask “what’s going on?” as a way to give opportunity for the person to respond. I asked that in what I felt was a caring voice and she ignored me, then went into one of the back rooms. I remembered that the therapist’s exact words were, “You seem stressed. What’s going on?” She didn’t exactly seem stressed to me, so I wondered if I should exchange it with some other emotion that seemed more appropriate. Then I remembered she said not to list specific emotions, so I looked on the list to see if “stressed” was on the list. If it was, I knew that I would be able to use another, but it wasn’t, so I didn’t. I decided on an idea and when she came back in:

Me: You seem like you’re having a bad time. What’s going on?
Her: Why, ’cause I’m not giving you 100% of my attention?
Me: No, just your tone of voice and body language. What I’m observing. You seem like you’re having a bad day. So, what’s going on?
Her: It doesn’t matter.

After a bit of silence I said, “Well, I’m sorry you’re having a bad day. I hope it gets better.”

Then she walked away. I left her alone, but told her I was going back to work, since I was home for my lunch to see her. I wonder how it will be when I get home after work.