"Canary In The Coal Mine"

Inspired by chapter 19

For as long as humans have around they’ve been using sentinel species in order to warn them of impending doom before it’s too late. Now that you’ve read this I am going to guess that your first thought went to envision a "canary in the coal mine". I case you don’t know what that refers to let me explain.

Before the days of modern technology coal miners used a canary in a cage as a means to determine if it was safe to stay in the mine. They knew that if the canary died, they too would die soon from the gases that build up during mining operations. 

Speaking of gas…

In the Afterward to “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”, John Gottman introduces us to a concept I had to write about called “The Marital Poop Detector”.  This “detector” is an early warning system within your marriage that lets you know that something isn’t quite right in your marriage but unlike the canary in the coal mine, if you use this method regularly then no one has to die. 

So in order to use this “poop detector” one needs to be mindful and in-tune with their spouse. If they notice such things as their spouse becoming distant or a need to be alone there is a good chance that something is wrong. If you detect this quick enough then you can use this method to open the bridge of communication in order to take action and root out this problem before it festers into something more deadly for your marriage. A key aspect of this method is making sure to approach your spouse in a loving and empathic manner as not to create an accidental argument or defensiveness.

In addition to this Gottman suggests going through a list each week to take a mental inventory on the health of your relationship. This is as follows:

1. I have been acting irritably.
2. I have been feeling emotionally distant.
3. There has been a lot of tension between us.
4. I find myself wanting to be somewhere else.
5. I have been feeling lonely.
6. My partner has seemed emotionally unavailable to me.
7. I have been angry.
8. We have been out of touch with each other.
9. My partner has little idea of what I am thinking.
10. We have been under a great deal of stress, and it has taken its toll on us.
11. I wish we were closer right now.
12. I have wanted to be alone a lot.
13. My partner has been acting irritably.
14. My partner has been acting emotionally distant.
15. My partner’s attention seems to be somewhere else.
16. I have been emotionally unavailable to my partner.
17. My partner has been angry.
18. I have little idea of what my partner is thinking.
19. My partner has wanted to be along a lot.
20. We really need to talk.
21. We haven’t been communicating very well.
22. We have been fighting more than usual.
23. Lately small issues escalate.
24. We have been hurting each other’s feelings.
25. There hasn’t been very much fun or joy in our lives.

If you go through the list and find four or more check off then you know your canary is going to be dying pretty quick so get out of dodge by talking to your spouse! In addition to this it also allows you to within you to see if there is something you need to get off your chest in order to keep your relationship healthy. 

I really wish someone would have referred me to this book when I first got married because this could have saved both my wife and I a fair amount of grief given that communication can be a weak point within our marriage and the key to this detector is to ensure the lines of communication never fail. To illustrate the importance of communication within marriage, let me end this a portion of one of my favorite talks by Spencer W. Kimball:

Certainly if we fail to live his teachings, we lose communication with him.

In South America we saw once an example of broken communication lines.

We were riding far out in the northwest of Argentina. It was cattle country. The road was straight and narrow for numerous miles, and on either side was a four-wire barbed fence. Parallel to the fence line was a series of poles on which were strung the wires for telephone communication to the world. Upon each telephone pole was a crossbar, and strung from crossbar to crossbar were the communication lines.

As we traveled along where the grass had been heavy but now was burned, we found where some of the telephone poles, being in the wake of the fire, were burned off near the ground. Someone had carelessly thrown a lighted cigarette from a car window. It had ignited the grass, the telephone communications were ended or limited, and communication was down.

Nearly all the poles for a distance were scorched or burned. Some had been burned off the first few feet from the ground and were hanging by the top part in the air from the wires they were intended to support. Dangling in the air, these sagging wires had let the poles touch the ground as they were swinging in the wind, each time creating static on the line.

The poles had been set to hold up the lines, but here they were sagging.

Many a time during the three years that I was in charge of the work in South America, I tried to get long-distance calls through to these distant places. When the connection was made, almost invariably there would be static, and the words were cut in two and grating sounds were heard. In my mind’s eye I could see the telephone line on the Salta Road swaying in the breeze, hitting the ground and occasionally breaking connection.

I thought that telephone lines and telephone poles are a little like people. They are built for one purpose and sometimes serve another. They are designed to be firm and stout and to give support; but in many cases they are leaning and swaying and sagging until communications are greatly impaired, if not actually cut off.

In my experience I find that in a large number of marital cases, the problem is lack of communication; the wires are down, the poles are burned, husbands and wives are jangling, and there is static where there should be peace. There is growing disgust and hate where there should be love and harmony.

This typical young couple, only a few hectic years into their eternal marriage—only two children away from the eternal vows they had made in the holy temple of God—were each going a separate way. Their ideas of life were different as to spiritual matters (as well as many others)—one wishing to move along almost to what the other thought was fanaticism and the other moving along in a path that the other spouse thought to be almost apostasy; and both were wrong.

They talked about it and lost their tempers and drew farther and farther away from their common goal. Both were good people basically, but they needed unburned telephone poles and untangled wires of communication that were now sagging. Their inability to communicate in reasonableness led to anger, hard words, misunderstandings.

In time, each found another person and set up different communication lines for sympathy and understanding and comfort; and this disloyalty led to physical adventures that resulted in adulteries and two broken homes and disillusioned spouses and crushed hopes and injured children.

And all this because two basically good people let their communication lines get down and permitted the security poles to drag the ground. This is not one couple, it is tens of thousands of couples who started out in a blaze of glory, sweet felicity, and an interresponsibility and with the highest of hopes.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1972/04/keep-the-lines-of-communication-strong.p22?lang=eng