Margaret and I hadn’t always been this nimble at diffusing our disagreements. Earlier in our marriage, Margaret would grow frustrated if I over-apologized, and I would retort by clanging the dishes around. And “sorry” wasn’t our only conflict either. Margaret wanted to acquire a weekend getaway near our home in Massachusetts, but I worried that owning a cottage might divert me from spending holidays in Canada. Margaret also worried about my on-again, off-again homesickness back then, and encouraged me to get out more. I suggested that she should acknowledge my nostalgia rather than try to fix it.
I began to notice that our disputes had something in common. Why did I always apologize? I’m Canadian. Why didn’t I want a cottage? I’d rather be in Canada. Why did I want Margaret to acknowledge my nostalgia? I missed my homeland. When it came to my marriage, I imagined that all roads lead to Canada.
Several years after I moved to America, I addressed my intermittent homesickness when I began working with immigrants in Charlotte, to try and help others who, like me, missed their home countries. It turned out to be a good idea, as my mood improved and my quarrels with Margaret gradually abated.
Five years later, I moved to California to start a job with the Canadian consulate in Silicon Valley. One of my responsibilities there was “expat Canadian affairs,” which involved meeting with Canadian entrepreneurs and scientists and supporting the local expat community. Although my new job was great, Margaret and I resumed our intermittent bickering in California for reasons neither of us fully understood. Our arguments featured familiar flashpoints. Should we buy a cottage? Will we make it to Canada this year? Can you please stop apologizing? The flair-ups would start small but quickly escalate, like this exchange over dinner one night:
“Sorry, can you pass the butter?”
“Sure…but why are you apologizing?” Margaret asked as she handed me the butter.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” I responded without thinking. Margaret sighed and glanced suspiciously at me, wondering if I was mocking her.
Margaret and I were keen to grasp the root causes of these renewed tensions when, as part of my job, I attended a 2010 lecture on American-Canadian cultural differences that offered a clue. A political scientist at UC Berkeley shared data showing that Americans and Canadians exhibit small but consistent differences across a range of cultural behaviors. And he emphasized that, in statistics, “consistency matters.”