My Lexicon of Bliss and Happiness

You know what really grinds my gears? When I’m annoyed beyond rational thought and the person I’m ranting to is trying to help me fix it.

No seriously, I dislike it so much that my wife (still calling her Bertha) and I came up with our own special vocabulary for it: Oreo Moment.

Don’t ask me why we called it Oreo Moment. I don’t remember.

But let’s not that detract from the importance of these two little words.

So…How did this come about?

We discovered something, Bertha and I, through the course of a consistently occurring situation. One of us would blast through the door in a huff and begin a world-class speech about something that happened at work/subway/bakery/whatever, that really pissed us off. The other would listen intently so that we could be that wholesome, 80s sitcom version of a spouse who cares. And when the moment was right, the listener would chime in with their brilliant solution!

Case dismissed, right? Well, no, not really.

In fact, not at all.

The opposite actually.

The ranter would naturally reject the solution because clearly THIS problem was insoluble. Which is clear to anyone who lives in this decade and isn’t stuck in the 80s, a decade best known for its shoulder shrugging. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Wait, you don’t want my help?!?!

No, she didn’t. Or I didn’t. Depending on the ranter.

Sometimes, it seems, it’s better to let someone get stuff off their chest and not try to fix it for them. Stunning discovery, yeah I know (text-sarcasm).

But how to know when to help and when to let the temporarily insane person shout themselves happy?

Enter my lexical world

The real game-changer for us was the vocabulary switch.

Rather than a lengthy explanation about how we’re feeling at the moment, we created our own vocabulary as a short-hand for:

“Don’t interrupt. I’m sure you’ll agree that what I just experienced was obviously stupid and I’m totally in the right. But just in case you don’t agree…just don’t interrupt.”

It helped immensely to diffuse the miscommunication that happens when you mean something but can’t necessarily articulate it.

Has someone written a theory about this, or is it just your thing?

Believe it or not, there’s actually a fairly well-established psychological basis for this, though most of it is centred around business jargon.

Creating vocabulary within your couple, business or organisation can be positive in a bunch of ways:

First, it identifies you as an insider through ownership of the terms. Specific to a marriage or relationship, it strengthens the connection between you. Think of when you have your own inside jokes. Works the same way with friends, colleagues and coworkers.

Secondly, it makes your communication more specific. Through practice, when Bertha and I say “Oreo Moment” both of us know exactly what is needed from the listener. Every time it’s said and the conversation goes well it helps to cement the meaning between the two of us, thereby eliminating the need for a more nuanced explanation — also known as confirming social norms in academic circles.

Magnum P.I.

Bertha and I have created a bunch of these and it’s made our lives considerably easier. The number of times we find ourselves talking past each other — sending messages where a different meaning is received — has been significantly reduced.

Last example, my favourite, is a Magnum Moment.

We’d be deciding something such as the restaurant to eat at for dinner. I’d be throwing out ideas and each one got shot down, admittedly with a fairly logical reason most of the time. But that’s still annoying and discouraging and makes you want to go: “Well you decide then if you’re so stupid/smart!”

Magnum Moment is now our short-hand for divergent thinking. Or, in less pretentious terms…brainstorming.

In a Magnum Moment, we both throw out our ideas first. And then we go through idea each together.

Simple, right?

Yeah, that one took us 3 years to figure out

Steal this article

Feel free to confiscate and use the vocab Bertha and I use. I’ve yet to copyright them.

And for your own personal relationship saving phraseology:

any time you walk away from a discussion or argument thinking the other person just wasn’t listening, it might be worth a closer look.

Chances are, you both had different ideas about HOW to talk about whatever the topic was. That can be as important, or even more so, than WHAT you’re saying.

Till next time, enjoy making more work for those poor people at the Oxford English Dictionary

Disclaimer:

if usage of these terms has the opposite effect and inadvertently leads to the downfall of your marriage and a dependance on Oreos and Magnums, I hereby shall not be held responsible.This blog post or article or whatever you want to call it is not meant to be comprehensive, well-researched, prescriptive or anything other than a sharing of experiences heavily coloured by years of experience in sociology, psychology and education. Use it for what you wish, share it when it feels good, and for the sake of all that’s holy don’t sue me if it doesn’t work out!

(nervous laughter )

Much obliged