Is it Better to Keep the Negative to Yourself?

“In our marriage, it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, demoralizing, or tedious, unless it was unavoidable…for what is the purpose of sharing your misery with another person, except to make that person miserable too?”

--Joyce Carol Oates, in The New Yorker, December 13, 2010

I’ve been thinking about this statement since I read it about a month ago, and about the implications it has for my marriage.

I have historically tended to share everything--positive and negative--that goes on in my life. My husband, on the other hand, rarely brings up the negative. I’ve been playing around with keeping the negative to myself and you know what? It’s not as hard as I thought, and I think it might be very good for our marriage.

I’ve always thought, “What’s a husband for, if you can’t tell him your troubles? Then you have to tell them to someone else, and then you’re closer to that someone else, and that doesn’t make sense at all.”

But there’s a third option. Keep your troubles to yourself, at least some of the time. No one needs to hear all the time how sad I am about my husband’s dad dying, how scared I am that this IVF procedure won’t work, how thinking about my brother’s death can still practically stop me breathing, how I don’t really know what to do with my career, how sometimes I’m scared I’ll never figure out how to be really and truly happy again (I know it’s possible; I’ve been happy before).

My husband’s usually right about things. Maybe he’s right about this, too.