Emily Falk

And my grandmother, Bev, is now 100 years old and she's one of my very favorite people.

So she's over at my house for dinner and I went over to her.

I left, you know, the pasta going and handed that over to my partner to handle.

And I took her hand and I walked her outside and sort of in the dusk, I was feeling like a little bit of a sense of relief.

Like I was feeling like, okay, we're getting outside, we're getting a little quality time together.

And I felt like I had made the right decision until she turned to me and she said that even though she really liked coming to my house and seeing my kids, who are some of her very favorite people, she said, we aren't really spending time together.

And, you know, it really struck me when she said that because, like, I really didn't want her to be right about that.

Like, of course we're spending time together.

What do you mean?

Like, you're over here making dinner for all of us and, you know, we're outside together now.

So what do you mean we're not spending time together?

I definitely initially was like, no, you're wrong.

Like, we do spend time together.

Look, what are we doing right now?

It's the same kind of defensiveness that I feel when, you know, somebody calls me up and says, like, why haven't you called me?

And it's like, well, we're talking right now.

What do you want from me?

So, I mean, yeah, I definitely felt some defensiveness in that moment.

Yeah, I think this is an incredibly common experience where, you know, we point out something that somebody could be doing better.

Like, for example, you know, maybe your partner could be taking out the trash or your kid could be doing their homework or somebody on your team at work could be responding to your collaborator a little bit more quickly.