Power of Duct Tape

When I first started to practice Laura Doyle’s Intimacy Skills, the easiest skill for me was to “duct tape.”

Basically, this is a simple skill of not reacting or responding right away to anything he said or did.

Just staying quiet for a moment, helped me pause.

Pause… and think.

Pause… and listen.

Pause… just for the sake of pausing! Not everyone wants to hear my whiny voice!

This approach was helpful for me because this gave him the space to release whatever emotions he wanted to express.

Also helpful for me not to react right away.

Because you know what…?

Most of what he says, he doesn’t meant it!

In my experience, it’s 99% true that whatever he says in the heat of moment he often doesn’t even remember it afterwards…

So what would it take it seriously and use up my precious mental space for that? Right?

This useful skill, duct tape… here’s my success story I’d love to share.

One day he got a speeding ticket that he didn’t agree with.

So, he requested for a hearing.

Well, it just so turns out that he was going to be out of country on the court date.

He had requested for a virtual hearing or another date, and the court was going to mail us the notice.

The mail then arrived but he was already out of country, so I sent one simple text, “the new date is in March!” “Ok!”

We were juggling so many other issues with housing, schooling, work, etc.

At this point, we both knew that he was going to be out of country again in March.

2 months passes… I had totally forgotten about this court date.

March 1 comes and he texts me “Oh by the way, when is the court date?”

I tell him I had totally forgot about this, and texts him the screenshot of the notice, with the court date of March 6.

He emails the court house, requests yet again another date or virtual hearing.

On March 3, he texts me “They said they could take 14 days to process my request. I wish this was dealt with as soon as the notice was mailed to us.”

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!!

“He’s blaming me! But I texted him as soon as I got the mail! It’s his ticket, he is responsible for following up! I’m so busy with all these other issues; why do I have to babysit his problems, too!? I better defend myself!!!’

Old me would have responded “But I texted you back in January!” and this would have led to our blowout argument.

New me:

Pause. Read his text carefully. Is he blaming me? No he’s actually not blaming me, he purposefully wrote “I wish this was dealt with sooner” but no mention of blaming me. So I don’t need to defend myself. I’m thankful he didn’t straight out blame me.

Pause. Is there anything I messed up here? How did I communicate with him in January? Did I really send the text to him like I thought I did? (Scroll to find that my text was one simple “The new date is in March” without any email address for him to contact.) And I also totally forgot about this the last 2 months. Hmm, maybe there’s something I messed up here as well.

I texted back to him: “I’m sorry I’ve forgotten to follow up with you on this since January.”

His response: “It’s upsetting to me. That ticket was unfair. Our insurance could go up. But we’d pay the ticket now or we could be in trouble. There’s nothing else we can do.”

Very calm, still no blame. No blow out arguments. No ugly me that lists excuse after excuse.

Yes we are both disappointed, but we did not ruin our night.

I invite you to experiment with the duct tape. You don’t lose anything by pausing for a moment before reacting.

But you could lose a lot more by responding too quickly!