CONSTANT COMPLAINING DONE THE RIGHT WAY

If you hear constant complaining without end, what do you do?

Tune it out? Change the channel?

Or listen and learn because we all know it’s impossible to complain all the time.

There’s something else going on, but what?

Let’s agree that it is impossible to complain all of the time without getting repetitive.

“Oh, it’s hot today. Can you believe how hot it is? It’s even hot in the shade. It’s days like this you can’t drink too much water. Why do I feel so sweaty? Do you notice how hot it is?”

Sound like a hot day to you?

Who hasn’t lived in heat without air conditioning when you take a cold shower to cool off and break into a sweat a minute later?

That was my cement jungle summer of sweat in Center City Philadelphia. Being twenty-one at the time helped.

No one wants to hear young people complain when they’ve got it all laid out in front of them.

I’d never been in that kind of heat, but everyone else had, so I acted like it was nothing to complain about the same as everyone else.

But I heard constant complaining in my head.

‘What is wrong with these people? How can anyone live like this their whole lives?’

The answer was Indoor Air Conditioning, central air, and lots of it.

A side note: At the time, I lived a few blocks away from the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, also known as ground zero for Legionaires Disease that year.

I’ve been wary of air conditioning ever since, but we don’t need to talk about that.

Clear Communication With Constant Complaining

There’s a trick taught in Army leadership school where you accuse someone of something you know they didn’t do with the hope of finding out what they did do.

I got a reminder from my wife’s hair stylist, a former Marine, and his shampoo guy.

“I heard what you said.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“I said you were the best boss in town.”

“That’s what I heard, too.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I heard that, too.”

And everybody has a big laugh.

Try this with your loved ones for fun. Results may vary.

Listening Between The Lines of Constant Complaining

From Marriage Trap, Starring Ben Affleck:

“While Garner did not grow up in a politically active household, her father was “very conservative” and her mother “quietly blue.”“

Instead of political blue, I read this as resigned to being married to an a$$hole blue.

Ben Affleck ditched the marriage trap when he decided he wasn’t ready to go ‘quietly blue.’

Is that anything like ‘quiet quitting?’

That’s what you do when your wife wants you to be a better person, when your kids need you to be a better person.

The worlds is awash in stories of drunken dads passed on the floor but still groveling a burger.

No one mistakes Ben Affleck for David Hasselhoff, but you’ve got to believe Ben got lit up more than once by his wife and kids.

And, I hope, his mother in-law. That had to have been awful.

“(Affleck) added, “The only real cure for alcoholism is suffering. You just hope that your threshold for suffering is met somewhere before it destroys your life.”“

Ben Affleck has heard his share of constant complaining. Who else?

You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it, we’ve all heard it.

And we either tune out, or turn the channel.

Now you’ve got another tool in the communication tool chest.

Complain about complaining.

“Oh.My. God. Did you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Did you hear about the woman who hasn’t spoken to her husband in three months?”

“No. Three months. Wow. Why didn’t they speak to each other for three months?”

“She didn’t want to interrupt him.”

Again, results may vary.