If you have a significant other, do you speak worse in front of them?

I have noticed in the past week or so that when I’m talking to my lovely and talented wife, I sound like a complete and total nimrod. I don’t mean that I’m saying things that are stupid (although, inevitably, that sometimes occurs), but that I am physically speaking badly.

I have always had a lisp although, apparently, some people who know me have never known that or at least never noticed, and so I’m pretty grateful that it’s not very prominent. Over the years I’ve been able to compensate for it in most situations, but when I was little I went through a lot of speech therapy classes to try to correct it. My problem is my ’s’es — I create the ’ssss’ sound by holding my tongue between my teeth, whereas most people make it by folding their tongue back into their mouth and pressing against the roof to produce the hiss.

I spent the better part of 3 years of my childhood education being pulled out of my lessons and being drilled by a speech therapist (who, if I had been 15 years older, would have very much liked to drill, but alas…the innocence of youth), speaking in the way in which she wanted me to (forcing my tongue to make those positions…oh, hell, that just reeks of innuendo, doesn’t it?), and then promptly going back to my old ways once I got back to class. After all those sessions, I think she gave up and went back to teaching others how to do more useful things, like saying ‘w’ instead of ‘r’.

Now, over the years I’ve gotten so good at my own way of doing things that it’s second nature and I’m very accurate, masking most of my problem. But when I’m intoxicated or, apparently, talking to my wife, my speaking problems come back again from time to time. I’ll find myself saying a sentence and simply being too lazy to bother saying it any clearer, because we know each other so well that even if I was 10 feet underground, sucking on a rutabega, she would be able to finish my sentence.

I wonder if this is an automatic response being initiated by my brain which, after witnessing the copious amounts of excellent communication flowing between me and my wife, has chosen to simply not work as hard, figuring that if she’s going to figure out what I was going to say anyway, it just can’t be fucked to make the effort. Either that or it’s testing me (or her) to see how far it can go before I get too many “WTF?”s and I have to actually work at speaking again.

I don’t mean to be lazy, really…I’m usually pretty conscious about my speaking and how it is coming out, but one has to admit that they get pretty comfy with your spouse and you let certain things go that you’d be more vigilant about in public. I’m not out to fart on purpose (usually), but releasing the occasional blast in front of the wife, while might not be the most romantic thing in the world, certainly isn’t something that I prevent as much as, say, doing so at an interview. “Well, Nathan, what do you think your best management style is?” “I rather prefer *bwaaaht* a more pragmatic approach to *ffffaaaapppt* conducting business, don’t you, Jim?”

I guess I haven’t asked my wife how many times she’s noticed me sounding like a complete doughhead, but I imagine it’s happened more than once. Or, perhaps like me, she’s just getting lazy with her hearing, too. Which explains a lot of our odd mishaps, but at the same time, means we’re clearly destined to grow old together and drive each other nuts for years to come.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what? I didn’t hear anything you daffy old bird, and knowing your ears, you didn’t hear anything, either.”

“Listen to the sound of the whistling in the air as I hit you over the head with a skillet, you old bastard.”

*WHONG!*