The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections (25 page)

The situation becomes a crisis for her when her boyfriend invites two of his friends over to Lorraine’s house for dinner, and suddenly she feels like she is back in a marriage—cooking a big dinner and cleaning up afterward—which is not what she wants! She knows she has to get up the nerve to say: “That file cabinet has got to go. I love you, but I am not interested in living together. I feel like I just got my life back and you are a great addition to it, but I am not ready to be ‘wifey’ again.”

Catherine explains that Lorraine has finally found some freedom and her own voice, and now fears giving it away bit by bit. Although she doesn’t realize it, her unconscious pattern, all her life, has been to be a pleaser, a
fixer, a rescuer. She puts everybody else first: her kids, her ex, and now her boyfriend. But she is starting to realize that she has earned this new independence and doesn’t want to give it up. At first she feels selfish, but then realizes she is not. Because she failed to have a conversation about that file cabinet beforehand she is now forced to have an even more painful one. She has never liked being confrontational, but she forces herself to bring it up. By bringing that file cabinet over and having friends to her house for dinner, Lorraine’s boyfriend infringed on her space and her freedom. She’s clearly thriving living alone. Her whole house is now her “tenth room,” where she can think, create, breathe. She finally has a space she can call her own.

Now that Lorraine has finally found her own domain, she has to be willing to protect it, even from someone who loves her. “I promised myself after my last marriage that I would never let my own needs be ignored again. It’s like I woke up from a long sleep and thought:
Stay alert, it’s important to be in charge of your life.
I want my kids to be proud of me and see me as the person I am today, not for the wimp who put up with all that for years with their dad.”

Lorraine told her boyfriend he had to pick up his stuff. “If that means you want out, then good-bye,” she told him. He was perplexed, but it wasn’t a big deal. He got his stuff, but he didn’t break up with her.

Lorraine learned it’s not either/or, it’s both/and, which means she can have her space
and
a boyfriend. He can come for dinner and leave. He can sleep over and not keep his stuff there. She doesn’t have to give him a key or a drawer either. And if he pushes back, that’s fine. Conflict is part of every healthy relationship. The pearl: Being true to yourself doesn’t mean you will lose the other person. But just going along may mean you’ll lose yourself.

Rebecca says her dad liked to cook elaborate gourmet meals and would get all his kids involved in his productions. “He’d have one of us, usually me, at the sink cleaning vegetables, my middle sister at the cutting board slicing and dicing, and our youngest brother usually did the measuring and mixing. We were like a well-oiled machine.” Rebecca’s mom didn’t like to cook, but she did the shopping and the cleanup, so everyone had a role.

Rebecca has her own family now—a husband and two young children, three and five. She is happy to report that her kids love to sift the flour and wash blueberries as their mom makes pancakes on Sunday mornings. “When we’re all in our pajamas and the girls are with me in the kitchen making breakfast, I get this warm feeling that everything’s all right.”

Chuck, her husband, is thrilled that Rebecca’s a great cook (he can hardly use the can opener), but he has noticed that she seems happiest when she’s in the kitchen with the girls. He wonders, What happened to his attentive wife, the one who used to cook for him? Even Rebecca has noticed this change in their relationship. “I get so much satisfaction being with my kids that maybe I’m not paying as much attention to my husband as I should.” She understands Chuck’s complaint but confesses that she just doesn’t feel as connected to him as she did when they were first married. In fact, she is a little annoyed that Chuck can’t “find a role” in the kitchen and enjoy his family there.

What’s going on here? Catherine would point out that Chuck is feeling neglected because Rebecca has shifted her intimacy to the girls. She identifies with her father and enjoys the closeness with her kids. But Chuck is left out. Though serious conversation can happen at the kitchen table, it can’t when the table’s covered with flour, sugar, eggs, and kids. Chuck and Rebecca need to come back to the table when it’s quiet and
the kids are in bed. They can bring up memories and listen to each other. She wants to re-create the security and happy hearth her dad provided, and Chuck craves the coddling his mother used to give him with meals and praise and hugs. He also wants to say to her: “Just because you have kids, don’t forget your husband.”

Rebecca knows she is too kid-centric at times and needs to throw a little heat in his direction. They can make this work, but only if they both agree on what they need from one another and how to get it. Maybe she cooks for just him one night a week, a candlelit dinner after the girls are in bed. Rebecca can agree to give him more attention, but perhaps not on weekend mornings, when her focus shifts to the kids. She loved those family bonding moments from her childhood, and she wishes he could understand her desire to re-create them. But he doesn’t cook, or enjoy being in the kitchen, so she can’t force bonding when to him it feels more like bondage. Chuck can spend time kicking a soccer ball with the girls. The point is connecting, not necessarily cooking.

Catherine says Rebecca is “screening” and that she has to stop trying to relive scenes from her childhood but instead try to create new traditions. Her key process here is to ask herself, What am I trying to achieve by forcing the pancake mornings? Am I succeeding at creating family togetherness, or am I missing the point? She wants to connect, but she is too busy controlling and trying to create a happy scene. She needs to be aware that her screen memories aren’t shared by everyone. In fact they are making it difficult for her husband to feel included. He hates being in the kitchen, so she shouldn’t insist that he be there! Anytime you get big resistance from a family member, you have to ask yourself, What am I trying to accomplish? And if it’s connecting, you may need to find a new way to do it.

Once Chuck and Rebecca clean up the bedroom (where she isn’t attentive enough) and the basement (where childhood memories are driving her behavior) they can reenter the kitchen Sunday morning and maybe even show Chuck how to crack an egg. They can all laugh about the fact that the three-year-old is better at flipping pancakes than Daddy. The pearl here is: Now is it! Enjoy this moment, even if it’s cereal and burnt
toast. Rebecca may not be having perfect pancake mornings the way she did as a child, but she can create new memories that her kids will torture their own families with later.

Marianne is a second grade schoolteacher at a public school, and she knows that not every single story about seven-year-olds is going to be riveting to her dates. But she feels as if she must sound like the teacher from Charlie Brown, whose voice is translated into:
“Mwa mwaw, mwa mwaw!”
because her boyfriend glazes over, or worse, interrupts her or just thumbs his BlackBerry while she is telling him a story.

“The point is, he should care what happens to me during the day, and he just doesn’t seem to. My dad used to listen to us all at the dinner table, and we never were allowed to interrupt each other or we’d be punished. He was an old-school kind of guy, and he expected perfect behavior, even when we were little. So if you wanted to talk, you waited your turn and respected whoever was speaking.”

When Marianne started dating Brian, she immediately noticed (and was upset) that when she’d tell him something she thought was important he wouldn’t follow up with appropriate questions or comments. One time a waiter interrupted her, and when they’d finished ordering, Brian never asked, “What were you saying?” She was taken aback.

“It’s like he’d listen, but not hear. Or it was like he didn’t
want
to talk with me about this subject, especially when it was something really deep.
He’d be kind of quiet, and then change the subject. It felt awful to me. I felt really unheard. Even though Brian was starting to say he loved me, I knew something was wrong if he couldn’t even follow conversations that were important to me. He didn’t really
know
me.”

When Marianne tried to talk with Brian about this, he was perplexed. He’d always considered himself a good listener. That’s when she really knew she had a problem. “I see these kinds of conversations as the essence of a relationship,” she says. “Needless to say, I don’t see this relationship lasting much longer.”

Catherine says Marianne is right; the reason it’s called a relationship is because you are supposed to be relating. But there is a big clue in her story, which is that Brian avoids the heavy stuff, because, Catherine would guess, he feels uncomfortable with it, doesn’t know how to fix it, and that makes him feel helpless. Yet Marianne’s response to his signals (he changes topics, or just zones out) is to talk more and insist on his listening. But it becomes nagging.

She says, “I’m just trying to share the details of my day with you! But you never want to listen to my stories.” Brian doesn’t seem to get it, but she can’t change him by insisting that he listen, and she’s only driving him further from her. The result: They aren’t able to make meaningful conversation.

Everyone comes to a relationship from a different place, so when Marianne realizes her needs aren’t being met (after she is sure she has made herself clear), she has a choice: She can accept Brian, limitations and all, or leave, and find someone who wants to hear what she has to say. In the relationship equation, where A + B = C, A (Marianne) decided that B (Brian) is never going to be the man for her. She wants C (caring and conversing). Her pearl: Before you can build a relationship, you first have to relate.

But before Marianne gets into another serious relationship she should test out the idea that she doesn’t have to bring up every one of her students’ problems over a dinner date. Or her own dramas, for that matter. She has to check herself to make sure she’s not the queen of TMI. Marianne also needs to accept that it may not be possible to replicate that orderly dinner table
of her youth. By the way, if you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re in Marianne’s family room and basement, since she’s still Daddy’s girl and Daddy never interrupted her and always found her stories fascinating!

Hopefully, the next time she’s on a date and the waiter interrupts her story to take her order, she’ll know she’s found an attentive guy when he says: “Now, what were you saying?”

Her pearl is to remember to relate and not just recite.

Gina’s new husband, Tom, loves to eat, and she loves to cook. Seems like a match made in heaven—and usually it is. “He will call from the office to see what I’m planning for dinner,” Gina says, “and while that’s sweet, sometimes, it can become annoying, since that’s the only reason he calls. It would be nice if he occasionally called to see how my day was going, or what’s new. I know he loves me, but sometimes I feel like the hired help.”

When Gina complains to Tom about this, he’s baffled. He thinks he is paying her a great compliment. “I love you and I love your cooking,” he says. “It makes me feel so taken care of, like I’m back in my mom’s kitchen.” This is hardly sexy to Gina, since she likes her mother-in-law but doesn’t want to be made to feel as though Tom’s having sex with a younger version of his mother.

Plus, Gina wants to be loved for more than her meals. “I know I’m being extreme when I say this, but Tom is obsessed with food—and his mother! Sometimes I don’t feel like cooking, or I want
him
to make din
ner, and he seems so disappointed. I hate seeing his pouty face, but I also feel like I’m getting taken advantage of. That’s not the dynamic I’m looking for with my relationship.”

Food is just one place their friction is apparent, since they aren’t even talking about all the other chores he expects of her: taking his shirts to the dry cleaners, getting the car to the service station, calling the cable guy, etc. It’s a long list, and the only thing on it that sounds even close to loving is, “What’s for dinner?”

Catherine would tell Gina that she needs to understand she is promoting this dynamic—his neediness and her servitude—and in order to figure out why she’s doing that, Catherine would ask her to take a break from the stove and walk through her emotional house. First stop is the family room, where her in-laws are feeding her husband the idea that a wife should be a perfect helpmate.

Gina comes from a long line of Italian food lovers who all prided themselves in being great cooks, and she remembers her grandmother teaching her to make delicious meals and then hearing all the compliments her grandfather would shower on her throughout the meal. It was as if food was a way of pleasing men, so every woman in her family learned to create delicious meals.