The Imputed Please

Tell me about the last time you had Sunday supper with the whole family and your grandmother said, “Pass the mustard greens.” and you yelled at her “Can’t you fucking say ‘Please’ you old bitch? Would it kill you? You are always (see below) telling me what to do and I’m not taking your controlling shit any longer, you want the mustard greens you got a walker by your chair and the rest of the fucking day to waddle your sad ass to the other end of the table and get them.”

I’m guessing you wouldn’t expect a Benjamin in your Christmas card that year, and you can pretty much expect her first call on Monday morning would be to the lawyer that wrote her Will.

Without going into your relationship with your grandmother (she may be worse than JR Ewing for all I know) we do not, as a rule, require that every request be preceded by a “please” or followed by a “thank you.” We give the person making the request the benefit of the doubt, we allow them an imputed please. If someone at work says “You got the stapler?” we don’t respond “What? Are you saying I stole the stapler?”

Nope, we usually say, “Sure.” We hand it over and don’t think about it again. Same with the mustard greens.

But in a personal relationship, in our relationships with our wives, maybe our parents and our siblings, for some reason, we may not be so kind.

In personal relationships (and here I’m talking about troubled relationships) every request, every communication is fed through a check list of resentments, past bad acts, suspicion and fear. Every word is parsed for meaning, every tone is analyzed, every body position is noted and we rank them all from one to ten, with one being the worst possible interpretation and ten being the a lesser offensive interpretation and maybe number ninety-eight is the one we attribute to the guy asking for the stapler and then we promptly disregard two through ten and go with number one which is “this is more of the same shit that shows she doesn’t love, respect or care for me.”

“Get some peanut butter” becomes not just a simple request for tasty legume paste but an interpolated attack “don’t even come back without the PB. You always forget it you insensitive bastard, and your kids suffer every day because you never do what you’re supposed to do.” Skippy’s becomes a proxy for every hurt your wife has inflicted upon you and the legion of those slights you imagine she intended. It’s not just the peanut butter, it’s the rest of your fucking life and nothing is going to change.

It can be a bit overwhelming. Maybe you don’t explode. Maybe you don’t give tit for tat with some sort of passive aggressive behavior, maybe you just note it and add it to your list of resentments, but even that is adding a bale of hay to your already overburdened relationship camel’s back.

What if you simply imputed a “Please”. What if, the next time you see a note or hear a request that could be interpreted as controlling or dictatorial you simply added a mental “please” to it. “Please get some peanut butter” is an entirely different experience.

“Why should I? She’s telling me what to do and I have every right to resent it.”

Can’t argue with you there, but you have a right to a divorce too, and that defensiveness is leading right towards one. You’re reading this because you want to improve your relationship with your wife, you want to be a better man, and the bottom line is that a better man is going to impute a “Please” because anything you would do for your granny or the guy needing the stapler you should be willing to do for your wife.