I Blame Archie Bunker

That said, television hasn't been altogether good for me, and not in the way you might think.

It's not that I watch too much (although I do) when I should be doing other things, or that I don't do the things I should do instead, like read. It's that it's taught me a very bad habit: sarcasm. Worse, these days it's downright snarkiness. And while that may be very entertaining on TV, I'm finally learning that as a component of personal relationships - to wit, my marriage - it's really not entertaining at all. In fact, it's downright damaging.

If there's one thing I wish my husband and I could change in our relationship, it's the way we talk to each other, and to some degree, our kids. Mind you, we're not nasty. I recall being with a good friend, her husband, and child several years ago, and when my friend asked their then 3-year-old what Daddy's name was, specifically, what Mommy called Daddy, the child responded, "Joooooooo-ooohhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnn!"* in precisely the same whiny, nagging tone that my friend routinely used. My friend laughed hysterically; I was mortified. This child was learning that people disrespect each other, because her parents found that perfectly acceptable in their own relationship. (For the record, they are now divorced. Shocker.) It's not nearly that bad at my house. We aren't openly awful to each other, per se. But disrespectful? Well...yeah, at times.

My husband and I play to an audience, much the way TV characters do. When Archie's making fun of Edith, he's clearly doing so for the benefit of the laughter of the studio audience, even without looking directly at the camera. Hubby and I are similarly smart, witty people who are generally intolerant of stupidity and quite proud of our respective abilities to make others laugh with just the lift of an eyebrow. The problem is, there's no audience here - except our children.

And we both know we do it, and we both know, I think, that we shouldn't. We aren't kind and generous in spirit to each other, which is how I wish we could bring ourselves to be. Granted, if we were too kum-by-ah all the time, it would be boring as heck around here, and we don't want that either. Still, do we need to be Chandler-esque in our repartee every single conversation? Is it necessary to always say, "were you gonna just leave the dirty dishes for me to do?" instead of "would you help me with these dishes before you go?" After years of not only watching countless hours of bad habit-inducing television programs but practicing those habits on our friends and coworker (who find it considerably more amusing, no doubt because they only have to hear it a few hours a day), we're finding it hard to speak to each other any other way, even though we both sense that it's probably not doing us any good in the long run.

We must do better, but how? Do we start practicing yoga and listening to Deepak Chopra CDs? How do become kinder and gentler, and stop feeling the need to get a cheap laugh - from a nonexistent audience? I try, I really do, but then the opportunity to get a really good one in comes up and, well, it's back to Snarkland I go. Any suggestions? I want to do better, I'm just not really sure where to start.