So, I just finished a trip.

Day 1. Everything was fine.

Day 2. By the end of the day, one of the other flight attendants was avoiding me like the plague. Wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t speak to me. We had had a maintenance delay before the second flight of the day which had taken our layover to the absolute minimum. By the time we arrived at our layover we all were tired and there had been a disagreement/discussion among the four of us about how to handle extending our layover. What was in the contract vs what we all wanted. The contract won.

Day 3. He missed the van and by the time he got to the plane, he REALLY wasn’t talking to me and was slamming cart doors and anything else that needed to be opened and closed. To the passengers? Oh, he was sweet as pie. One of the other FAs and I asked what had happened and then asked what he had done to double check the information he claimed he had received (for my FA friends, he did NOT use his barriers…lol). He became defensive and told us he was feeling attacked by us. At this point, I just left him alone to his slamming of cart doors and throwing his temper tantrums. I did say to him, ‘I’m not sure what I said or did to offend you yesterday and I am sorry. I would like to know what it was though.’ His response? ‘It doesn’t matter at this point’. And now he wasn’t talking to two of us. It was a long, quiet day…followed by another really short night.

Day 4. He was now walking the long way around wherever in order to avoid two of us and wouldn’t even respond to ‘Good morning’ from me. I just left him alone. He didn’t want my help and still wasn’t speaking to me so I didn’t speak to him either unless necessary. I stayed out of the galley and, truth be told, acted as though he was invisible. All of this time, I had been wracking my brain to figure out what could have brought this on from him. I know I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination…I seriously could not think of what I had done/said though. Without going into all of the ugly details, the volcano finally blew. He and the other FA he had an issue with went at it. Raised voices that sooo many people could hear. I said multiple times to them that they needed to lower their voices. Yeah, they didn’t. I finally just left the area.

(Ironically, he did say to me that he appreciated that when I realized that he was upset with me that I had avoided him/left him alone and acted in a professional manner and for that he respected me. Truth be told, my immediate thought when he said that was ‘Well, one of us needed to act professionally’.)

Here’s the thing though…this all could have been avoided. When I did whatever I did to offend him, all he had to do is say, ‘Marci, I was hurt when you (fill in the blank)’.

When I look back on my childhood/adolescence the mantra of my life could have been ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all’. And so, I spent a lot of years shoving down my hurt, swallowing my feelings, avoiding the difficult conversations. To be honest, that was unfair to everyone involved because there was more than one instance where the conversation wasn’t even given the chance to begin.

If there is one thing I have learned in the past few years is that feelings aren’t right or wrong, they’re feelings and we’re entitled to them.

When you come into a relationship mid-life, you bring some baggage. That we have triggers that we don’t always realize are there until they trigger. John and I have both triggered the other and been triggered by the other. We have learned though to bring it to the other’s attention and talk about it as opposed to silently fuming. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t always easy and isn’t always pretty (we won’t even discuss how ugly my learning curve was). But it helps us understand each other and grow together.

Honestly, I think the most wonderful gifts that we have given each other are…

The ability to say, ‘I keep thinking about this and I need us to talk about it’.

That everything is an ‘us’ issue, even when it is seemingly a ‘me’ issue.

That we now look at whatever is going on through two sets of eyes, two hearts of feelings, and knowing that there is double the strength…that we aren’t ever going through anything alone.

That we are heard.

So…if you can’t say something nice, say it with utmost kindness and open the discussion to understand.