It's Okay to Bitch, But Not to Praise

Nearly two decades ago when I was working at Nova, I worked with a lot of teachers from a variety of countries. Near the end of my first year, a couple in their 30's from Canada started working there. Both of them held Master's degrees and were pretty smart people so I was surprised that they'd settle for work at the likes of Nova. This was before the teaching bubble burst and jobs became scarce and lower paying, though it was during the start of the slow ride downward for teachers in Japan.

At that point in time, I had only been with the CH for about two years in person and was extremely hungry to spend as much free time with him as possible... which is actually not appreciably different from now, but that's rather beside the point. At any rate, when we sat around the teacher's lounge area and talked about what we wanted to do, I would remark on occasion about how I preferred to spend as much time as possible with my cute little husband. While I did not remark on this to the female half of the married Canadian couple (who I believe was named Angela) probably overheard me talking to other people about the CH on occasion.

At one point, somehow my attitude toward the CH came up when she was taking part in a group chat and I showed my usual restraint in enthusiasm toward him, which is to say little to none. Well, that's an exaggeration. I do try to keep my remarks within socially acceptable boundaries in person, though I am pretty straightforward and don't go out of my way to hide the fact that my marriage is a very happy one if there is a topic at hand which may include something related to my relationship with my CH. At any rate, I said something, and Angela snapped back nastily saying something about how we all didn't have to spend as much time as possible with our husbands.

Considering the fact that I rarely or never spoke with her because she disliked Americans on principle, I felt her response was pretty out of line. It's not like I was "over sharing" with her. In fact, I'd never directly shared anything at all with her, but, even if I did, I'm not sure why my happiness ought to be so antagonistic toward her that she'd find it necessary to lash out at me.

Angela approved of British folks on principle and buddied up to them before teachers of all other nationalities. I think the pecking order was something like: U.K., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Americans (but only if she held her nose near one). Since she wanted to be BFF ("best friends forever") with any Brit on the premises, she confided in my best friend at the time who happened to be from England. Angela told my friend that her husband was seeking an "open relationship" now that he'd spent some time in Japan and was finding that many delicate flowers were willing to open up to him. Their marriage was stressed because she didn't have a desire to stray and was angry about his attitude. In the end, she went back to Canada alone and I transferred to another branch of Nova in Kichijoji so I don't know if her husband went about pollinating all the blossoms on offer or if he kept it in his pants while his wife was an ocean away.

When I started working at my former office, I encountered another bitter woman who grew irrationally angry at me for my attitude toward my husband. This woman was American and married to a Japanese man. She hated living in Japan and felt trapped here because her husband couldn't work in the U.S. and make a decent living and she had no appreciable skills for getting work back home. She almost never spoke about her husband and was vague when anyone made polite smalltalk which involved asking her about him (e.g., what his job was). She also took a dislike to me because I was pretty gung-ho to expand my skills on the job in my down time and she preferred to read magazines and write letters in hers and she felt I was attempting to show her up. I must say that it was a pretty good indication of her self-preoccupation if she thought I spent hours cultivating skills just to make her look bad rather than doing something of use and interest to me. Between her growing resentment in my interest in gaining skills on the job and dislike of my mentioning anything about my personal life, the hostility reached a point where she simply stopped speaking to me altogether.

After those two memorable experiences with women who were openly snotty with me for being so openly happy with my husband, I realized a few things. First and foremost, unhappy people hate to be around someone who isn't experiencing the same type of unhappiness as they are. Misery loves company, but moreso if that company is miserable about the same things as it. The second thing I realized is that people are open-minded and sympathetic about any complaints people have about their spouses (at least up to a point). They can bitch about how lazy, selfish, stubborn, childish, etc. a spouse is and people will not think less of them unless they do it too often or too irrationally. However, they are far less tolerant or accepting of praise of one's spouse.

Sometimes we hear that many developed cultures are cultures of whiners and complainers. I think that the lack of social acceptance and, indeed, frequent social censure of people who are talking about their happiness is part of cultivating cultures full of people who focus excessively on the negative in their lives. It's cool to sneer, be snide, or deride people and everyone is more than happy to jump on the bandwagon for a bitch session (especially about spouses), but it's trite, childish, and possibly seen as bragging to focus on the positive. We get the cultures full of the types of people we earn through our actions.

The Pill Woman Is Back

In my former blog, I posted about a student I taught about 2 years ago who was christened "magic English pill woman." I posted about my difficulties dealing with her and with her eventual departure. I was glad when she was gone, but unfortunately, she may be back for a brief session of 4 lessons this month.

I got a call from the referral agency today and was asked if I'd take her back for a temporary stint. This put me in an unfortunate position because they said things like, "You just dropped her because of the schedule, right? It's not that you personally disliked her, right?" The truth is that I didn't personally dislike her, but I found teaching her like herding cats. She was impossible to keep on track or to get to teach in any reasonable way. It was either me trying to bully her into doing something resembling a lesson, or allowing her to speak a hodge-podge of Japanese and English that wasted both of our time.

With the agency pretty much putting me in a corner, I had to decide if I'd take one for my reputation as a teacher and keep in good graces with the agency or if I'd do what I really wanted to do and just refuse. The situation is not too dissimilar from attending one of those awful drinking parties after work because one must be seen as part of the group to be viewed favorably by the company. You don't want to do it, but you bite the bullet and just handle it.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with her. She's supposed to have some purpose in studying this time around, but she didn't have one last time. I told the agency to find our why she wants to take the lessons so I can structure something this time. I did mention to them that one of the issues I had with her before was that her attitude made it difficult to teach her. They said they believed they knew what I meant because they detected something about her when speaking with her on the phone in Japanese. They didn't say clearly what they meant, but they said, "she can't help it."

I'm going to approach her behavior as if she were a person with a serious learning disability who cannot focus or actually learn anything. I'm wary of succeeding too well with any type of lesson with her because I don't want to keep teaching her after her 4 lessons are up, but I also don't want to bang my head against the wall trying to push her to learn.

Perhaps I'll get really lucky and she'll change her mind about being my student again. After all, she complained about me last time so I'm not even sure why she's come back around my way this time. There is the very real possibility that other teachers had her before and categorically refused to teach her this time. I wouldn't find that the least bit difficult to believe.

Discretion and Valor

There's an old saying about discretion being the better part of valor. This is a saying which appears to have little relevance in current American culture as being "brave" enough to say whatever you think whenever you think it is seen as proof of ego integrity. I have seen ample evidence of this throughout my real and virtual lives.

When I was still posting on Usenet, I tried to always be polite and civil in my discourse with others and one of the brasher sorts accused me of being hopelessly neurotic and needing approval for not rudely and openly contradicting and disagreeing with people. It seems not to occur to some people that holding your tongue has more to do with trying to consider the feelings of others than seeking their approval.

This is a lesson that I've only gained through maturity and not one that came easily for me as I am straightforward (and opinionated) by nature. When I was younger, I was hopelessly blunt with everyone and I'm sure I hurt a lot of people. Sometimes, I remember some of my more strident attempts to bully people into seeing things my way and cringe. The worst by far occurred during my first job as a counselor at a halfway house for the mentally ill. One of my "charges" was a 19-year-old young woman who had been in a mental health facility off and on and, while staying in the halfway house, had gotten pregnant. She had no income, support, or mental capacity to care for a child in a proper fashion. She wasn't stupid, though she was painfully immature and had mood problems. The future of any child she produced was going to be bleak if she raised it and I tried to coerce her into not having it.

The results of my efforts were that she went to the program director (my boss) and complained so severely that he called me in for a little talk about my role as a program worker and he transferred her to another counselor. He didn't push me to accept what he said, but he did ask me if it really was my place to "enlighten" people about what was "right" or "best" for them. At that time, I was too immature to get the message and asserted that I believed it very much was my role if I wanted to "help" people.

These days, I hope that I've learned that there are many times when it's better not to say anything than to say something, even when my intention is well-meaning and not based in the arrogance that I know everything (which is what I possessed in abundance just out of college). Recently I had a frustrating experience with a student who I'm helping write college essays. Invariably, she wasn't adding all of my corrections and I thought she'd been overriding my choices with her own views of what was grammatically correct. Since I was making a final (supposedly cursory) proofread of these papers on my own time, it was starting to annoy me that she wasn't being more careful. I thought long and hard about what to say and how to say it because I didn't want to upset her, but I also didn't want to have to make the same corrections three and four times.

In the end, I decided to ask her to be more careful in the softest possible fashion. She still got upset and thought I was angry with her. However, she finally revealed to me after over a year of working with her that she sometimes entered corrections wrong because she couldn't read my cursive writing very well. She should have told me this of her own volition, of course, but she was trying to spare my feelings just as I was trying to spare hers. In the end, when she admitted she couldn't read my writing all the time, she said she was sorry for saying such a "rude" thing.

Sometimes holding your tongue in the interest of peace or other people's feelings can cause communication bottlenecks or problems. As some of you know, I had problems with my in-laws which lead to my stopping my other blog. I've had problems for years with my brother-in-law and have always held my tongue while he ran off and complained to his parents and sister at every perceived slight. While I don't think it was the wrong choice to not involve others in the conflicts my CH and I had with his brother, I do wonder in retrospect if a little less discretion might have added some balance to the views they hold of us. It's one of those things which I'll never know for sure.

I've reached the conclusion that there is a sacrifice to be made no matter how you choose to communicate. If you say nothing, you can spare feelings and keep the peace, but relationships may not progress and important problems may never be worked through. The trick is to figure out when it's best to hold your tongue and when you're better served by loosening it.