Now, let's say, for example, your spouse gets you upset. What is the right thing to do if your spouse gets you upset? As we begin our marriages—and marriages usually start with dating, dating, dating, talking, being vulnerable, expressing your thoughts and emotions—as the dating gets further along and you get engaged, you start to express deeper emotions, more vulnerable thoughts, and deeper feelings. Then you get married, and you're so excited that you're finally going to have a partner with whom you can share the rest of your life. That doesn't just mean you're sharing the same house or the same kitchen. It means you're sharing conversations, talking and discussing, listening, thinking, feeling, and doing everything together.
Now all of a sudden, your spouse gets you nervous. So since we've been talking for the last six months, you automatically think you're going to tell her how you feel or tell him how you feel: “Why do you always come home late?” Because you've been expressing all your feelings until now, you think, “So let's keep expressing our feelings.” And all of a sudden, he doesn't respond right, or she doesn't feel right about what you just said. And you're like confused. Because I thought we're sharing our words and we're sharing emotions. The answer is, once again, that's the wrong way to go about it. He comes home late. Now, if he has some kind of pattern or something is abusive, that's a different conversation, a different class. But he does something wrong. You know what you do? You respond with silence.
Now, I want to give a little example. The only problem with giving this example is that my wife's mother is in the room. So I'm going to do my best. But don't worry, I'm not going to say anything wrong. I, as you might imagine, am a pretty expressive person, right? That's what I'm doing right now: expressing. I talk, and I have emotions. I used to realize that every time something happened in my house that I didn't like, I would say, “So why did this happen? Why didn't this happen? What happened? What's the thing?” And I thought it was a great idea because everyone tells you before you get married, “Communicate, communicate, communicate.” So I was doing a mitzvah (commandment) of communication. Somewhere, maybe 20 years in, I realized it wasn't exactly working. I don't know when. At some point, I realized this wasn't so effective.
But sometimes I have a lot of emotions, and I'm an emotional and passionate person. Sometimes I have a lot on my mind. So I came up with this idea that I thought was the dumbest idea ever. I thought this idea would not be effective. But it really was. Whenever something happens in the house that bothers me, and I really want to say something, and maybe even get upset, I literally bite my lip. I do that. I take my lip and bite it.
Originally, I thought this was a very dumb idea because when you're biting your lip, you're visibly not so happy. We could tell that you're upset. So biting your lip is not going to help. But it was so effective because no words came out. So I didn't have words that I had to clean up, words that I had to walk back, or words that I had to apologize for. I bit my lip. Yes, you could tell I wasn't so happy. Within a few seconds, maybe a few minutes, the frustration goes away, and there's no mess to clean up. Nothing was said. So even though you could tell I was annoyed, “What's the point?” It still worked, because behind the annoyance was silence.
How many times have you said something to your spouse and then turned around and said to yourself five minutes later, “What was I thinking? How do I think that this is going to be effective? Is this really going to work?” Sometimes you have experience to show you it's not going to. You tried to say the same thing 374 times, and yet not once has your spouse heard you. So just stop talking. It's not working. It doesn't work. You know it doesn't work.
Every now and then, if it's something very serious, very intense, or something that lasts long, obviously you have to speak up. I'm not about, chas veshalom (God forbid), abuse, not even emotional abuse. Of course not. There are times when something needs to be said. There are times when you need to protect yourself and protect your emotions. But most of the time, if you're in a normal marriage, most of the things you're going to say are not going to be effective. They're just going to create spilled orange juice on the floor.
In fact, I think you should do that. The next time you're upset at your spouse, take a cup of orange juice and just spill it all over the floor. Your spouse would say, “What are you doing?” You would say, “I don't know, but I'm doing something that makes as much sense as speaking.” When I spill the orange juice on the floor, I have to bend down and have a mop, and I have to have a rag, a washcloth, water, and soap. It's a whole ordeal. That's very dumb. Speaking is just as dumb. It creates the same mess, the same washcloth, the same whole ordeal to clean up. So just stay quiet. But I know you're frustrated. Just stay silent. Something went wrong. Something didn't go the way you expected today. Silence is incredible.