Poker Face

Poker is a card game that depends on one’s opponents not knowing what cards one is holding in one’s hand. Thus the term “poker face” refers to the skill of not revealing whether you have a great hand or a poor one by the intentional control of your facial muscles: no yelps of glee for picking a great card, no frowns of despair for picking a loser. In fact, even your eyes need to remain steady, unflinching, and your lips relaxed, forehead unfurled. The ultimate self-control.

Being able to maintain a “poker face” is a great parenting and marriage skill to have. Self-control, after all, offers so many benefits, and those who lack it, pay a price. For example, neither kids nor spouses communicate openly with parents/partners who are fast to snap. A wife who knows her husband will go ballistic when she tells him some upsetting news may avoid telling it to him in order to avoid the inevitable meltdown.

Later, when he finds out, he’s furious and dismayed to discover that he has a wife who withholds important information from him. He blames her for being dishonest rather than looking to his own behavior to see why she doesn’t want to tell him difficult things.

For instance, suppose a wife had to tell her husband that, while driving their brand-new vehicle, she crashed into another car, damaging that car as well as their own. As the astronomical dollar signs swirled in his head, the husband’s automatic, well-trained response would be his poker face. Maintaining that tight self-control, he’s able to ask, “Are you okay? It sounds terrifying!”