Another Helpful Metaphor in Couples Communication
Tourist and Tour Guide
A few years back the psychologist John Gray wrote a series of books about the struggles of husbands and wives to communicate in their marriages. His main metaphor was contained in the title of the first book: Men are From Mars; Women Are From Venus.
Husbands and wives certainly can have profound differences in how they communicate, but how helpful is it to use the Mars Venus metaphor? It doesn’t really offer too much guidance or inspiration. Has there actually been inter-planetary communication that we could learn and build from? As far as I know the answer is no.
I started to work with a different metaphor: Traveling to a foreign country and either being a tourist or a tour guide.
The premise is that when a husband …let’s say Jack….communicates with his wife Jill he is visiting a foreign country, Jill Land, and it might help if Jill were his tour guide.
In a parallel way when wife Jill is communicating with Jack she is visiting a foreign country, Jack Land, and may be helped if Jack is a good tour guide.
Travel and tourism have numerous associations that people may bring to the use of the metaphor.
Travel implies leaving one’s home environment and going to a less familiar place. Travel is optional and supposed to be fun, stimulating, enlightening. Even though a marine travels to Afghanistan to serve in the war there, we wouldn’t see his experience primarily as a traveler or tourist.
In order to travel one must leave the familiar surroundings, the familiar language, the familiar weather. In order to more fully appreciate all that can be learned and experienced in the foreign country one must stretch to appreciate what is different, perhaps strange and even incomprehensible.
There are two different stretches for the tourist. He or she must stretch to do the travel. He or she must stretch to get the most out of the travel.
I didn’t know that I’d like chocolate with peppers….melon with chili pepper. It is a stretch to try it. And it stretches one’s culinary palate to experience it.
I’d say something like this: Susan you could be a better tour guide to SusanLand; Don you could be a better tourist in SusanLand. Don you could be a better tour guide to DonLand and Susan you could be a better tourist.
Susan and Don have been married long enough to have raised their children and have a so-called empty nest. They find themselves living more in their own separate worlds, involved in their own spheres of interest. Sometimes they spent time in activities that appealed to both of them, but the balance of their time had shifted from shared to not shared.
Don had become a devoted kayaker, and pursued any opportunity to go out in his kayak and explore new waterways, new equipment, new challenges. Susan had become increasingly involved in teaching reading to Hispanic immigrants.
Don was not particularly interested or knowledgeable about Susan’s tutoring, nor was Susan interested or knowledgeable about kayaking. When working with Don and Susan I might offer the metaphor of tourist and tour guide and sketch out the problems and opportunities for each of them visiting the other’s realm, and having the other visit theirs.
Shared or unshared leisure activities provide a first introduction to the idea of tourist and tour guide, and one doesn’t have to stretch too far to imagining a spouse trying to welcome the partner to a realm of activity that is not familiar, not their comfort zone, not initially fascinating.
We can stretch to apply the tourist – tour guide metaphor to other parts of the couples experience.
Jack, can you be a better tour guide to Jack-land. You know that one of the destinations in Jack-land is how the natives argue only for a short period of time, and then they call a halt to the argument, and have a brief ceremony for burying the issue. Can you show your wife how this tradition started and the different ways that arguments are halted.
Jill can you be a better tourist, visit Jack-land and be curious about the origins of his tradition of not arguing or bringing arguments to a halt quickly? Can you try this way of dealing with disagreements, not necessarily forever, but when you visit JackLand?
What’s involved in being a good tourist? Curiosity. Openness. Anticipating that some things in the foreign land will seem strange.
What’s involved in being a good tour guide? one aspect is having empathy for the tourist. Understanding that the visitor may be confused, apprehensive, fearful. The visitor may get tired. The tour guide has to find a sweet spot in how demanding he makes the tour…….how steep are the literal steps. How steep are the metaphorical steps?
Some people as tour guides may not understand how much of a stretch it is for their visitor to throw themselves into the world they are visiting. They may not check in with the visitor and ask how it is going.
Being a tour guide in the real world of tourism is probably less complicated than being a tour guide to your partner. if you are a tour guide to the US Capitol, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the sights of Times Square you may need to study up but the topic of your study is relatively straightforward. When the topic for your tour guiding is yourself things get more complicated and obscure.
When the tour guide shows the US Capitol or another typical tourist attraction they are usually calling attention to things they have reason to believe their tourists will appreciate, like and enjoy.
When I am teaching one of my clients to be a better tour guide to his world for his partner I don’t assume that the tourist destinations will be so appealing.
Some people as tour guides may not be that good at selling their homeland as a destination…..
Might it be that they don’t think they have to? That the visitor should know.
Or might they have doubts about whether their land is that interesting, that compelling, that exciting. They may undersell the attractions.
The roles of tourist and tour guide need to be switched back and forth.
When one partner is a better tourist then the other can be a better tour guide. When one is a better tour guide the other can be a better tourist. Instead of a vicious circle….of which there can be many in a couples relationship we have the opposite of a vicious circle…..the improvements ricochet instead of the slippages. The experiences build positively upon one another rather than constitute erosion.