marriage spreadsheet as adaptive communication

A note: the comments on last week’s post were so thoughtful and mind-opening. Thank you all.

Reminder: ask me questions! You can DM me on Substack or email me at slicejessica at gmail dot com.

About a year ago, as we adjusted to having two kids, I found myself taking on more and more of our family’s responsibilities and feeling crushed under the weight of it all. But I was determined to have a good attitude. So when one day, I cried to David, “Can’t you see I’m drowning and need more help?!” It made sense that he said, “No, there is no way I could see that.”

To prevent us from ending up there again, he created a daily questionnaire with three multiple-choice questions and one fill-in-the-blank. The answers export to a shared spreadsheet (nerds).

How busy are you?

How tired are you?

How loved do you feel?

Anything else?

He realized that relying on me to tell him when I was overwhelmed wouldn’t suffice, and I needed to quantify my own exhaustion and need every day. It’s worked. The spreadsheet also helps me distinguish between his introversion and annoyance.

One of the things I like most about Caroline and my newest picture book, This Is How We Talk (out this week!), is that not only do we celebrate adaptive communication (AAC!) but we illustrate all the other ways people communicate: writing stories, listening to music, throwing ourselves on the floor. There are so many ways to talk.

Too bad we wrote the draft before the introduction of the marriage questionnaire.

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