The other night I was talking to a friend who is going through a terrible divorce. She sat across from me at my kitchen table and confessed that early on she knew there would be trouble but convinced herself she could fix things it somehow (hey, we’ve all been there). Then one Saturday morning, she heard an episode of This American Life about breakups that featured Howard Markmam, the psychologist at University of Denver who figured out that by studying couple’s facial expressions while arguing, he could predict the likelihood of them staying together. Markham and his colleagues looked at a variety of facial clues such as eye-rolling, sighing, and tone of voice to determine if a person’s true motive was driven by malice or by love. My friend said her soon-to-be ex husband exhibited facial cues that were more malicious than loving, (confirming her suspicions) and because of them and a variety ways he’s chosen to be unkind, now they are splitting up.

All this got me thinking about how husbandblogger and I fight. I’ll admit, I’m definitely an eye-roller. But husbandblogger does something I don’t think Dr. Markham has studied: just when I’m about to make a really important point, or I’m coming around to kissing and making up he has no qualms about farting. Sometimes it’s a small fart and other times it’s as loud as a Whoopi-cushion fart. And I know it should make me laugh but it actually makes me even angier. I think, “How can you fart on my big important point.” Or, “How can you fart if you want me to come up and kiss you?” So I want to ask Dr. Markham, can our marriage survive the use of gas?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 4:09 pm and is filed under grosser than gross, fatherblogger soundbite. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.