Excuses, excuses, excuses

I love Violent Acres.

Oh, I don't mean that I think she'd always be fun to hang around with. After a quarter century married to Wife, I think I can recognize a high-maintenance woman when I see one, and I'm positive V is as high-maintenance as they come. Nor do I think she's any kind of saint, out there making the world a better place. She has said she isn't, and I believe it. I certainly don't think she's a safe person to share a highway with.

But in and around all the bitchiness, sometimes she nails a point exactly. And when she does that, it's a thing of beauty.

A few days ago, V posted a diatribe against excuses. Her point, in a nutshell, is that excuses insult the person who offers them. In fact, she elaborates:

Every time you whine about your lack of time or resources
or what the fuck ever, what you are really saying is, "I’m not organized
enough or smart enough or creative enough or ambitious enough or
determined enough to accomplish my goals."

And of course this is a hell of a thing to have to listen to.

The insidious part, which V doesn't spell out in so many words, is that excuses actually sap the strength and resolve of the person who makes them. Make enough excuses for why you didn't do this or that or the other thing -- with the idea in your head that you are just trying to get that other person off your back -- and you start believing you are a helpless victim surrounded by relentless persecutors. And this is a recipe for complete passivity.

I have been struggling with Wife over this point for as long as we have been married, and I am embarrassed to admit how long it took me to see what was going on. At first she would offer excuses when she didn't do something, and I would brush them off or ignore them, as if they were some kind of minor verbal tic. Then I started to get irritated by them, and I would try to deflect them by reassuring her "I'm not attacking you" or "You don't need to be so defensive over this." Sometimes, when the excuses and defensiveness got really extreme, it would actually make me mad -- where I hadn't been mad at the original triviality that she was trying to excuse -- and I would demand "Why are you trying to pick a fight over this?" Her justification was always "Well you get mad at me all the time, so I figure I had better placate you in advance," and it did me no good at all to explain, hundreds of times, that it was the placating itself which enraged me, rather than the (long-forgotten) oversight or omission which had been the ostensible trigger.

Finally, decades after I should have figured this out if I really had any brains, I have started trying to pitch the whole subject a different way. I have started telling her that if she can bring herself to avoid making excuses to me, it will make her feel stronger and more self-confident internally and this could help alleviate her depression. I also hope, to myself at least, that it will mean fewer times a week that I want to rip my own head off with frustration. But hey -- any way I can sell this point so that I actually make the sale is fine by me.

This means, that I have to disagree with V's essay on one small, technical point. V writes that:

As far as I’m concerned, there are only two appropriate
things to say when you’ve failed at a task.
1. I’m sorry. I’ll fix it right away.
2. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to let it happen again.

This list may be complete as far as the workplace is concerned, but logically speaking there is one other response which is at least possible, namely:

3. Yeah, you're right, I didn't do it. But frankly
that's because I don't give a shit about doing it; and if that's a problem for
you, then you can just fuck yourself.

As I say, that may not be a career-enhancing thing to say to your boss. But it is at any rate a logical possibility in the non-work world, and it still avoids the degrading business of having to dream up and offer excuses. You should take it as a sign of how sick I am of hearing Wife's excuses that I would even prefer answer #3 to hearing one more of them. I've told her as much, in fact, but so far I don't seem to have made much of an impression. Maybe some day.

Some how I think there is a connection with this post too, but I'm not sure I can spell it out. Let me know if you can.