The Noncomplaining Project: How Do You Define a Whine?

As Hanna said in our initial entry about our monthlong noncomplaining project [2], our first task as less-obnoxious individuals is to define complaining in a way we can live with—which is to say, cutting out the complaints that are generally unhelpful without becoming Stepford Wives.

The early result of this quest for delineation between necessary and unnecessary complaint is that I spend much more time thinking before I speak. This is not really a bad thing, mostly because I am a somewhat verbally impulsive person, prone to snap judgments and foul-mouthed hyperbole (e.g., Lisa’s husband is a total dork; Gwyneth Paltrow deserves a cooter punch).

In the office, this more measured approach to self-expression means I talk less than usual, which doesn’t really alter much because the Slate offices are near silent most of the time, with the whirring of the air conditioner the only perceptible noise. I didn’t have time to write anything on Monday, the first day of the no-whine regime, so it’s not clear yet if the noncomplaining project has changed the way I blog. I didn’t have to decide whether a rant about Levi Johnston’s soon-to-be-exposed wang is a worthwhile sort of whine. Considering that this is what I do for a living, I don’t think this particular issue will be worked out in a month.

But that evening, I had dinner with a close friend I hadn’t seen for a few weeks. Our mode of connection is equal parts kvetch and spite: She tells me loony stories about her reality-TV obsessed boss and her possibly racist roommate; I complain to her about a mutual frenemy and launch into a tedious recount of the amount of work I have. On this night, we couldn’t help but fall into our usual patterns, and yet I felt buoyed by the time we spend together.

Which brings me to my first major definition of complaint: It is not a whine if it makes me feel better and is not annoying the people around me. Had I been mum on my problems that evening, I’m sure my friend would have found me entirely unrelatable and dirt boring. What’s more, she is an excellent advice-giver, so I would have not benefited from her clear-eyed problem-solving skills if I had kept our conversation focused on happy trifles. I’d like to think that she appreciates my advice as well, so we both would have been less enriched by that interaction.

After my friend left, my fiancé came home from dinner with one of his buddies. He informed me that we were having dinner with his grandmother the next day on the Upper East Side, an hour-plus subway ride away from our apartment. "Oh, really?" I said, trying to sound as neutral as possible. He chided me for not being more enthusiastic. "But I’m looking forward to it!" I explained—I was just not psyched about going that far. "Like you’re super-thrilled when we have to schlep to Westchester to see my Oma?" He had to concede that he was not. But that brings me to the second canon of noncomplaint: tone. My "Oh, really?" had the nasal up-speak of a kvetch, so even though I was completely excited to hang with my future G-I-L, it was received as a whine.

Later in the week, I was walking from the subway to the office, looking at the 20 e-mails that had accumulated while I was underground. This is about twice the usual pile-up, and I scrolled through and walked along Carmine Street, my brow furrowing more and more deeply with each step. It was a collection of requests, problems, and things to add to my already voluminous to-do list.

Normally when I get into the office after that kind of atypical barrage, I brightly declare to my always-understanding DoubleX pod-mates Noreen and Sam before I’ve even taken my coat off: "Everything is annoying me today!" But since I’ve taken my noncomplaint vow seriously, I simply say hello and sit down to begin to whittle down my list of tasks. This is the third revelation: If there’s something I know is immutable, best just to do it—and figure out who can help you to do it, if necessary—without a lot of whinging.

I do the work at the same rate I do most days, and I realize that I feel no better or worse than I do when I say aloud to Sam, "Why is so-and-so such a hose beast?" The annoyance, while not spoken aloud, is still knocking around in my head. Perhaps part of me likes this agitation, likes feeling like a martyr with so much work, and, of course, it does give me something seemingly legitimate to bitch and moan about. And that’s when I realized that this noncomplaint project will be much more than just a quelling of whines spoken aloud. It will have to involve a more substantial internal rearrangement. As commenter lorikay4 put it:

I think the idea here is to change the default setting in your brain from "if you aren't sure how to respond, formulate a complaint,” to a default that might be neutral, might be more positive, but mainly doesn't have to be something like "Can you believe this weather?" or "Where did they learn to drive?"

And that’s what next week’s entry will be about. Now that we’ve better defined what we think of as unnecessary complaints, I will discuss the books and gurus I’m turning to help trick my inner voice into being less of a kvetchy little jerk. I’ve begun to read positive psychologist Martin Seligman’s What You Can Change and What You Can’t: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement [3] and Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness [4].

As Hanna said in her last entry, we’ve both downloaded the happiness app that is a companion to Lyubomirsky’s book. I’m already butting up against my natural aversion to self-help books and have found the initial activities suggested by the "Live Happy" app to be idiotic. A smiley face keeps telling me to "savor" things, and there is literally nothing to savor about that insipid little face telling me what to do. Will I be able to overcome?

Hanna, what’s been going on with you?

—Jessica Grose

I started the week thinking I was going to outdo Jess and not complain at all. My husband, David, is my most loyal audience, and he was away. So I figured no audience, no bitching, right? Well, the complaints silently backed up in my head all day Monday, like the chocolate bonbons on Lucy Ricardo’s conveyor belt. Then at 6:30 p.m., after the baby sitter had left, a minor work crisis erupted that needed my attention, and my computer balked. Working mothers will recognize this dinnertime tableau: two pots boiling, three children screaming, one computer fritzing, and no husband around.

This was too much for the new, smiling me. When it was over, I sent the older kids to their rooms to do their homework, propped the baby in his high chair, and complained to him. For, like, half an hour. “Freaking video player and stupid homework and blah blah blah.” This seemed normal to me at the time because he’s just a baby and can’t understand a word and, in fact, seemed delighted by the whole performance. But as a long-term strategy, it’s obviously not workable. For one thing, other people will think it’s weird and dysfunctional, and for another, he will grow up. Lesson learned: Total noncomplaint, of the kind the Kansas pastor advocates [5], is not a viable strategy and makes you behave in weird ways.

I returned to the original goal Jess and I outlined, which is to distinguish between legit and nonlegit complaints, or to complain more “mindfully.” To that end, I came up with a strategy. When my husband called on Tuesday, I was determined to explain to him some of the crappy parts of my day that were legitimately crappy but not to complain about them. So I did just that. I kept my voice even and clinical and laid out all the problems at work and at home, which I will not share because they are either too boring or private. This was much better.

How so? Well, I begin with the premise that there is nothing wrong with talking about negative things when negative things are actually happening. Coating them in cheer seems suffocating, delusional, and dishonest. But maybe it’s possible to talk about them without getting that whiny tone, and that faux helplessness women are so good at. This tone is irritating to people, and particularly to husbands. Plus it makes women the butt of all Chris Rock jokes, as commenter thm61 pointed out. By talking and not complaining, I felt like I preserved some dignity and mastery over the situation and achieved the stated Jess aim of becoming less obnoxious to those around me.

Our co-editor Emily Bazelon tried something like this at home, and her son came up with a word for it: the “explaint.” The explaint is what you do when you describe a negative situation but stop short of bitching. If done well, you will get to blow off some steam but avoid the stale aftertaste of self-pity. Although you are not necessarily seeking a resolution to your problem, your (nonirritated) audience might be more receptive to helping you find one.

Complaint: I have so much freaking work to do that I will die and get buried at my attic computer.

Explaint: I have two stories due before Tuesday morning.

If this sounds too lobotomized to you, then you can instead follow the advice of the aptly named reader nashvillekvetch, whose own system for good complaining allows for useless bitching, if you need it.

Bitching just allows you to get something off your chest, complaining implies you seek a resolution. For example, I complain to my boss about a team member who is chronically late to work and takes long lunches with no consequences, but I then bitch to my colleague in another department when my boss refuses to do anything about the aforementioned tardy colleague. If I were banned from doing either, I might explode.

Jess, I had a similar experience with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. This friend and I used to work together, and whenever I see her, we launch into heavy office gossip mode: This one’s a douche and that one’s a diva and the third is always crying in the bathroom. Then, like you, we bitch heavily about workload and deadlines. This dynamic has been set for so many years that it would be weird to break it. And honestly, it doesn’t feel icky. It feels more like a deeply satisfying two-woman show.

After I saw her, I felt like I had fallen off the wagon. But then reader brochman assured me that “juicy gossip or a complaint that resonates with what others are experiencing can build community.” I think I buy that. In his book The Unwanted Gaze [6], my friend Jeffrey Rosen draws a distinction between gossip posted on the Internet and gossip among friends. The former is toxic, he argues, but the latter is done in a spirit of basic affection, since we have other information about the person to round out the picture.

I did have one unqualified good moment this week. I mentioned in my first entry how the finding of shoes is a source of major bitching in my house. Well, one morning, my son failed to find his shoes again, and I was just about to launch into my what’s-wrong-with-everyone-are-you-blind routine when I stopped myself and did what Carol Brady would have done: I turned it into a game of shoes detective and put each child in charge of a room. Within two minutes, shoes were found, and we were skipping merrily off to school.

So I picked up a few tips this week and had a few moments of clarity. But it’s time to get more systematic. I, too, will read the Lyubomirsky and Seligman books. As for the app—I’m with you , Jess. That smiley face, along with that old Microsoft paper clip and maybe Sponge Bob, belong in some inanimate hell together. But maybe by the end of this project we’ll draw up the blueprint for an app that uses a less insipid, more realistic smiley face. Neutral face, or wry but contented face.

—Hanna Rosin