Finally, I realized I had to address it, so I turned it into a joke. I would say, “I’m sure you’ve noticed the state of our building. Well, this didn’t happen overnight. It took years and years—and years—for us to get it to look this way. Ha-ha.”
It didn’t lessen the amount of peeling paint, but at least people would laugh. And it gets directly to my point about the monkey house. If you’re going to live in one, you at least have to keep reminding yourself that it still does stink!
Know What to Get Off Your Chest and What to Take to the Grave
“GET IT OFF YOUR chest” is one of the all-time worst clichés. If you have done something shameful, the logic goes, you should confess and be forgiven.
Hold it right there. Think about it. Would revealing your mistake hurt others? If so, then hold your tongue. It may make you feel better to tell someone you’ve cheated on him, for example, but it makes the other person feel miserable. That’s not fair. He did nothing wrong, and yet he has to suffer while you get to feel cleansed.
I know a woman who said of her husband: “If he cheated on me, I would hope he had the maturity to keep it to himself. Let him suffer with the secret. It’s his penance for doing what he did.”
I’m with her. You hear people say, “I’ll feel better if I tell my spouse I was unfaithful.” Of course youwill. But maybe you’re not supposed to feel better.
On one Project Runwayhome visit, I was struck by how the designer’s parents’ divorce was still weighing on her. Her mother and father had been separated for years and years and came together for the occasion of this home visit to celebrate their daughter’s success.
I thought that was lovely, but I also felt so sorry for the designer’s mother. She was reminding her daughter of what her father had done, and you could tell she was still suffering years after the fact. Then the father walked in, happy-go-lucky and carefree. Clearly, when he revealed to his wife that he was a cad, he felt purged and had his catharsis. Meanwhile, his wife was destroyed by it.
That’s why “getting it off your chest” isn’t necessarily a good idea.
As you probably know, if you are familiar with any recovering addicts, those in twelve-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous typically try to make amends to those whom they have hurt. But in my experience some people don’t pay attention to the second part of the step: “Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”
I know someone who received an amends call that informed her that her friend had stolen from her for years. The friend said, “Sorry!” And that was the end of the amends.
Well, not good enough. My friend was furious, while the thief felt totally relieved that she’d unburdened herself of this secret. Who was really served by this? The victim had to suffer more, and the perpetrator was vindicated. If the apology had to happen, it should have been followed up with a great big check to make up for all that had been stolen.
When you’re thinking of volunteering advice, you also need to ask yourself this question: Will revealing my feelings on this subject actually help?
My friend Richard Thomas was in David Mamet’s play Raceon Broadway, and one night in 2009 Anna Wintour was in the audience. Richard called his teenage son, Montana, who is obsessed with fashion, and said, “Anna Wintour’s here! You should come over.”
“I’m afraid,” the boy said to his father.
He had reason to be. Anna took Richard aside after the show and said, “I have a note for you about your performance. You’re dressing very poorly. You need a much more expensive suit.”
The suit was Prada. How much more expensive does it get? I can’t believe that a costumer, a director, and all these other people would let an actor out onstage in a starring role if he didn’t look great. She apparently couldn’t help herself from expressing an opinion. In a case like this, if you have a criticism, you really should keep it to yourself.
This question of what to say or not to say is a running theme in my family. One tense holiday season, we had a family conversation about what we could do to have a better time together.
“We could all say a lot less,” I suggested. “Everyone in this family shares entirely too much.Before speaking, let’s ask ourselves if this is something people really need to know.”
As I anticipated, the Gunns nixed my strategy.
There was one night when we were visiting my mother and all hell was breaking loose. She was going after my sister about the inevitability of some problems my sister was having with her son. “I spotted it at a very early age,” my mother bragged.
Not even remotelyhelpful. It just pushed a button in my sister that caused her to lose it. She was sobbing and ran out of the room.
“Was that really necessary?” I asked my mother. “You took a nice little gathering in your hospital room and turned it into The Jerry Springer Show.
“Besides,” I asked her, “why not say something when the situation is actually fixable rather than years later when the damage has been done?”
“I don’t butt in,” she replied.
Translation: When it’s fixable, I don’t say anything. I wait until it’s done, and then remind you about it.If you’re so sure at the time, do an intervention. Otherwise, you should keep your mouth shut forever after.
This is my whole way of operating on Project Runway.After the judging, we’re back in the lounge and sometimes a designer will tell me, “Nina and Heidi were telling me how bad this aspect of the garment was, and you never mentioned it.”
“And I never would,” I say, “because you couldn’t have done anything about that particular aspect of your design.”
At the same time, some secrets shouldn’t be kept. A friend whom I love and adore was diagnosed years ago with a degenerative disease. Somehow, her husband learned about it before she did and kept it from her for some two or three years, until her symptoms were evident to her.
When my friend told me this story, she suggested that this was a tremendously generous and romantic gesture on her husband’s part.
“I hate to respond this way,” I replied, “but I’m not even remotely moved by this story. It makes me angry.”
“Why?” she asked, shocked.
“What if your last wish were to climb to the top of an Aztec pyramid or to rappel down the side of the Empire State Building?” I asked. “What if? You would have had three years to do those things before your illness progressed.”
Plus, I found it infantilizing. My friend is a very strong, very smart woman. Her husband thought the diagnosis would weigh on her, and so he thought it was good that she didn’t know, but I maintain it wasn’t his call.
Still, I know that some of her friends think how wonderful it was of her husband to keep this secret from her for years.
“He wanted to protect you from this,” they say to her, all moony.
Protect her? It was going to happen anyway!
I guess if she’s happy he kept the secret, then he made the right choice, but I still have trouble with that story. Maybe it’s just that it pains me to see people being lied to “for their own good.”