How to Avoid the Three T-Traps in Your Marriage

by Mark Rogers

Part of what you inherit from your parents, whether you like it or not, are three T’s that can be terrible traps for your marriage. The three T’s are "settings" or "temperaments" that feel like they are hard-wired into you, but they aren’t. They feel so natural to you that you don’t experience them as being conscious choices at all, but they are.
Why are they traps?
They can make your marriage miserable, when no one is doing a single thing wrong. There’s no attack, no conflict, no misbehavior, no miscommunication. There’s just a mismatch of expectation, at a level that’s almost pre-verbal. They are traps that are as easy as quicksand to fall into, and just as difficult to extract yourself from.
So how do you get out of quicksand? The best way is not to fall in! If you know where these traps are, you can avoid them by taking a different path in your behavior. But it will take some work and understanding.

T-Trap #1: Temperature
Where is the thermostat supposed to be set?
The "thermostat" referred to here is not the one on the wall or in the car, though you certainly can have plenty of conflict about such things.
The "thermostat" that is the Temperature Trap is the expectation about how much passionate intensity is supposed to be fostered by the relationship. Do you like to have conversations that take you on an emotional ride? You like your thermostat set high. Would you prefer to have your interactions be calm, "cool" and collected? You like your thermostat set low.
Nearly always, couples are attracted to someone whose emotional thermostat is set differently from their own. That difference is persistent, pervasive, and produces conflicts about nearly everything, since how you talk about things – coolly or with drama – influences how you talk about most anything that matters to you!

T-Trap #2: Timing
How fast are you supposed to go?
"Fast" can mean how quickly couples talk, walk, respond to their name being called, finish a story or give directions, or a hundred other interactions that are common to couples.
You can define your "speed" of talking by how many words you can utter in a minute, but you can also define it as how long a pause you take after someone else finishes speaking before you respond. "Fast" talkers may respond in a tenth of a second, while "slow" talkers may take as long as three or four seconds before speaking. This rate has more to do with the part of the country you were raised in than anything else, and it can be changed only with concentrated effort.
How quickly you walk from one place to another is both cultural and familial. How closely you match your mate’s pace, versus expecting your mate to match yours, can feel like a monumental power struggle.
How soon you finish a story that you start can dramatically affect how patient your listener is at the end. And who is to say how long a story is supposed to take?
Pace or speed of interaction is both temperamental, cultural, and familial, but a mismatch between couples in pacing will lead to many incidences of frustrated waiting or resentment at being hurried during the years of a marriage.

T-Trap #3: Teasing
Some families express affection by teasing. Some express resentment by satire, and some camouflage their anger in ridicule. It can be hard to know which message to respond to when you didn’t grow up in the family, as no one’s mate ever did.
If you learned early in your family life that a thick skin allows for lots of good-hearted but aggressive engagement, you can feel right at home in a rough-and-tumble exchange of verbal blows.
But if decorum or diplomacy characterized all communications you heard as a child, then the tactlessness of teasing can not only grate, it can even wound, and perhaps deeply. And knowing when you can tease and when you shouldn’t may require the utmost in diplomacy.
Knowing just how much teasing, irony, satire or ridicule to include in your affection may take years of fine-tuned acclimation to a family dynamic. Some jokes may be just fine, because they aren’t personally relevant, while others might be offensive because they bump into hidden sensitivities. Some nicknames can be fraught with affection, while others feel loaded with what gets interpreted as abuse. Unless you grew up in the family, you might not know which ones qualify under which category.

Avoiding the T-Traps
Make sure to have explicit conversations about these three dimensions. You can work through these things, but only by talking them through.
Recognize that your way isn’t "‘right," just more natural to you. Be willing to compromise.
Don’t defend your family culture. Instead, aim for what you both want to be the culture of your couple relationship. Make sure you can live with the agreement, but aim for agreement rather than winning.
Accept that your mate won’t be able to change their "settings" on these T’s esily. (Neither will you, in all likelihood.) Expect to have long learning curves and extended adjustment periods.