Trauma and Plastic Straws

 So my husband and I had a fight about the ban on plastic straws.

Not really - nothing we do can be called a "fight" unless it's taking place on the Playstation, where he likes to chase me with a stick on Minecraft, trying to kill me in a way that is slightly challenging for him and a strange kind of childlike tag thrill for me.

So no, it wasn't really a fight, but it was the closest we get. It was a discussion where we were not understanding what the other person was hung up on and where we both ended up hurt and mad. 

Here's how it went. He brought up a meme he'd seen on the absurdity of banning plastic straws and not any other plastic products. I got defensive and started looking up the reasons California banned plastic straws and reading them to him. He stated again that just banning plastic straws was insufficient. I talked about how it was at least a first step toward addressing a major issue. He left to wash dishes, frustrated, and I stewed at my seat, shaken, until we could put our preschooler to bed and talk about what went wrong. 

Any outsider looking in would probably have felt slightly awkward at the feeling of conflict in the air and also scoffed at the silliness of our hurt feelings over this "debate." But what's at the heart here? Let me try to show you.

We sat down to talk about why we felt crappy about it, and what we said was the same thing at the heart: neither of us felt heard; both of us felt that our views were not allowed to be voiced. Over a plastic straw ban? Silly, you may say! 

Any issue can be silly and also completely misunderstood by the other person. 

My sweet hubby knew that we both felt the same about this issue: plastic is a problem, is causing a buildup of microplastics in drinking water, soil, and the ocean that cause major health problems for people and kill wildlife straight up. The government, polarized by angry people who refuse to give on either side or research the size of the issue, issues insufficient laws that do not fix the problem. We agree on this. He was pointing out a meme that seemed to match our agreement on this. He then tried to tell me this is what he was saying, and I didn't get it.

I, on the other hand, have a problem with memes made by people who just sit on their computers scorning the government and environmentalism without being open to learning about the problem. This was informing my reaction. I also hate when people seem to make snap judgment calls and scorn an idea without researching it and finding out WHY the idea/issue exists or why a law was made. Again, a factor informing my reaction. I looked up the research to answer his questions on why the heck CA would make this stupid decision, but he didn't seem to accept or understand. 

So we talked about it. I explained why I felt hurt and confused, and he explained why he felt hurt and confused. We both said we felt like we had no voice. Open to figuring out why the other person had felt this way, we took turns and listened. Afterwards we hugged and thanked each other, and I cried. There was a lot of emotion. Why?

We are dealing with trauma. 

An important person in our life had shut down our voices through the years whenever he felt challenged. We were manipulated, shamed, and deeply wounded. My man's voice is just starting to come out with people besides me - he's tearing walls down that were built as a child. I'm starting to put medical/psychology terms to what my experience has been and how that trauma has affected me. And sometimes, we have discussions about things that others would consider trivial, and we walk away triggered. So we use our voices, which ARE valuable and ARE important to be used, and we tear down the newly scaffolded wall between us by humbly, honestly explaining exactly how we feel and why. And we thank each other for listening, for being safe, for embracing messy intimacy instead of turning away, wounded, building scar tissue and more walls, pretending we're fine. 

We've learned much about intimacy recently, and that is part of why we do what we do... but in reality, our relationship has always been about finding the problem between us and working it out. I'm so very, very grateful for that. 

So we go forward. There will be more plastic-straw-like discussions that trigger the trauma in both of us. There will be anger and hurt. Then afterwards, there will be honesty, humility, gentleness, and understanding. We will go forward, hand in hand, and we will continue to have the peace that God has gifted us in our relationship. 

And hopefully, as we journey on, God's amazing forgiveness and love will be what shines out of us - not merely our opinions on plastic straws.

 

 

 

Photo credit: Thoa Ngo on Unsplash.com