The Real Miracle of The First Christmas: A Marriage Able to Survive It

The birth of the Christ child was obviously a miracle, but there is another miracle often overlooked in the story- a marriage able to survive it.

By Rich

I’m resurrecting this Christmas post by Rich because I love it so much.  “Remembering how tough marriages can be sometimes, and facing the sometimes ugly realities of life and marriage, shouldn’t keep us from recognizing that miracles really can happen. It can only help us appreciate them more.”  That’s good stuff.  Thanks Rich!



If there’s anything I think we can say for certain about the night Jesus was born in a stable it was that 1) it was much more dirty and smelly than we’d like to imagine and 2) it was very likely the low point of the up-to-that-point short marriage of Joseph and Mary.

Everything about the Christmas story tends to gloss over the stark and unpleasant realities of what giving birth to a baby in a stable/cave/barn must have been like.  I think it’d debatable whether or not “the little Lord Jesus” did indeed “lay down his sweet head,” rather than acting like a normal infant and screaming that sweet little head off all that night.

Of course (and this is the whole point I’m going to get to) that doesn’t mean that wonderful, holy things didn’t ALSO happen that night. Angels, historically, have had not a problem appearing to filthy people. God has a long history of dealing with unpleasant physical circumstances. The point is, we don’t need to be afraid of recognizing how unpleasant that night must have been for poor Joseph, Mary and her baby.

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Not pictured: smells, sounds, marital stress.

It’s worth considering just how much of a strain the events of that first Christmas night were on the relatively untested marriage of Joseph and Mary. If it’s stressful for you and your spouse to afford presents for your family and plan and execute a Christmas Eve in your home, please know that it could not be anywhere as hard as helping your spouse give birth to a baby in filthy hole with animals.

The Bible doesn’t really ever talk about the marriage relationship between Joseph and Mary. In fact, it doesn’t really talk about Joseph much at all. We know that when Mary was found with child, Joseph was (happily) not going to make a public example of her, but would have canceled the engagement had an angel not intervened. (Matthew 1:18-25) We know that he loved his family (when, as a boy Jesus was found teaching in the temple, Mary says that she and Joseph had “sought [him] sorrowing.” (Luke 2:48) And, it’s probably worth mentioning that, besides the fact that it wasn’t even Joseph’s baby, at the time of the birth of Jesus, we are specifically told that Joseph and Mary had not had sex/consummated their marriage. (Matthew 1:25) That can be a stressful way to begin a marriage.

At Christmas time so many of us send out the very best photos we’ve taken of ourselves that year, when we write newsletters and updates that paint our lives and marriages in the very best light, it’s very easy to realize just how difficult the act of supporting your spouse through the difficult circumstances of life can be. We look back at our year and, for the sake of putting on a good front, we gloss over the painful, ugly struggles in our marriages. Just like we are probably glossing over just how terrible a night that must have been, at least at first, before the miracles, for Joseph and Mary.

Here are some things that Joseph could have very justifiably said that night:

  • “I didn’t sign up this.”
  • “None of this would be happening to me if I hadn’t married Mary.”
  • “Why is this happening to us? I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

Here are some things that Mary could have very justifiably said that night:

  • “Why couldn’t he have found us somewhere else to stay?”
  • “I didn’t know it was going to be like this.”
  • “Why is this happening to us? I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

I think that it’s an often unnoticed miracle of that first Christmas night that Joseph and Mary’s marriage was able to survive it. Yes, there were angels (although they never came to Joseph and Mary that we know of). Yes, there was a star (although we don’t know if Joseph and Mary ever saw it). The wise men wouldn’t show up till years later. For all we know, Joseph and Mary had no idea what miracles were happening around them till the shepherds showed up.

But despite the overwhelming lack of evidence of these miracles, Joseph and Mary made it. They had their child. They raised him “in favor with God and man.” They stayed together. They kept their small family safe together. After such an difficult beginning, it’s fair to call their family, their relationship, a legitimate miracle.

 

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Christmas is a time to focus on important gifts: the gift of Jesus Christ to the world, gifts we give to each other, gifts from Santa. On a daily, tangible basis, there is really no greater gift than my marriage. It’s the thing that has gotten me through trying times and will get me through much more. And the best gift I can give in turn is my commitment to not give up on it, even when I might wonder, “Why is this happening to us? I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

Remembering how tough marriages can be sometimes, and facing the sometimes ugly realities of life and marriage, shouldn’t keep us from recognizing that miracles really can happen. It can only help us appreciate them more.

The Three Worst Things to Do When You’re Wrong

If you know you’re in the wrong, first stop being wrong, don’t justify being wrong and don’t point out all the things your spouse is wrong about. 

By Rich

So Rich actually wrote this post last year, but I never promoted as I should have.  So I’m doing that now because it’s a really excellent post about being wrong.  Although, I’m not quite sure how he got the material to write this . . . seeing as how he’s so rarely wrong  😉    -Celeste


Hey.

Look. I’m going to try and break this to you gently. You and I both know that generally, you’re a good spouse. You usually pay attention to your partner’s needs. You are pretty good about keeping calm and even when your spouse does something that you wouldn’t do a lot of the time you remember that, hey, it’s not that big a deal. But more important than that, you do a good job (again, usually this is true!) of making your spouse feel loved and important, letting them know that you value their opinion and you consider them your friend and partner.

But this time, you were wrong. You messed up.
I’m not talking about “agree to disagree” moments. I’m maybe talking about how you let your temper get away with you, or how you said something you KNEW you shouldn’t say but you said it anyway because you felt justified. Maybe you made a decision without them that you knew inside was going to hurt their feelings, going to make them feel betrayed, but then you made the decision anyway. Whatever it was it was wrong.

Sorry.

There is some good news here, though! You recognized that you’re wrong. That’s a HUGE step in the right direction! I mean, think of all the times when you were wrong (or mean, or selfish, or hurtful) and you never even realized it! You’ve done some growing up and are doing a better job at paying attention to your spouses feelings and you’ve realized that you messed up. So, yeah, you’ve got that going for you.

But, I really hate to keep harping on this, as good as REALIZING that you’re wrong is, it’s not the same as not being wrong.

I’m going to assume you would prefer to NOT keep on being wrong. So for sure, you’re going to have to figure out how to be right! But until you can figure that out, you’re not out of the woods. It is VERY IMPORTANT for you to realize that if I know anything about being wrong it’s because I’ve been there. Over and over again. And I’ve done more wrong things WHILE being wrong all the time. But to help YOU get to where you can hopefully get back to being right faster than I can, I want to tell you the three worst things you can do when you really realize that you are, as I’ve said before, wrong.

The Three Worst Things You Can Do When You’re Wrong

1)    Keep being wrong.

A no-brainer, right? It seems easy on paper. But the state of realizing that you’re wrong is awful. It’s embarrassing. You’re a freaking adult so you should have known better, right? Worse than that, there are going to be consequences to your wrongness and making things right again is going to be painful. You want to avoid that pain, that shame. So it can be very tempting to follow that momentum and keep being wrong. But you have to find a way to stop. Stop being wrong.

If you can’t go through all of the steps to make it right, at least start here. If you can’t ask your spouse’s forgiveness yet, if you can’t repair the broken trust all at once, if you can’t undo the chain of events that led to your being wrong, do whatever you can to just stop being wrong now.

If your wife feels abandoned because you spend so many nights out with your friends, if your husband feels like you don’t appreciate how early he has to get up to get to work so he can get home before it’s too late to do something together, then there might be some things you need to work through. But try to find at least one behavior, an action, that you can stop doing. If you can’t get to the root of the problem all at once, then so be it. But start making things right by choosing to stop.

2) Justify being wrong.

“How am I supposed to just ‘stop’ being wrong?” you say. And it is a good question! Your relationship, like everything in life, doesn’t happen in a vacuum – our actions and choices are influenced by things as humdrum and innocuous as “how hungry am I right now?” or maybe as big and far reaching as, “I’m very concerned about the state of the world right now.” There are so many things that lead us to make the choices we make. But if you know that you’ve done something to hurt, belittle or damage your spouse and your relationship, you’re never really going to be able to let go of that behavior if in your deepest heart you think that you were right, that your spouse is overreacting and being unfair. You don’t get out of deep water by convincing yourself it wasn’t your fault you fell in.

Some common justifications can be, “Well, look at all the GOOD things I’m doing!” or “I’m not cheating on them! I’m not physically abusive! There are a lot worse things I could be doing!” This is probably an overly extreme example here, but did you know that Adolf Hitler loved dogs? Loved ’em! So, yes, Hitler could have, hypothetically, done all the evil that he DID do and ALSO killed and abused dogs too. He could have been even worse! That does not make him good by any stretch of the imagination.

Saying that you’re not that bad because you could be worse is like trying to get out of a hole by pointing out that, hey, at least the hole isn’t filled with snakes! This accomplishes nothing and you stay in the hole. Don’t justify being wrong.

3) Point out all the things your spouse is wrong about.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Three wrongs don’t either. Or four. I think the jury is still out about five wrongs, but I’ll have to check on that.

Focusing on what your spouse might be wrong about is kind of like justifying your own wrong behavior, but is actually a lot worse AND a lot lazier. You could justify spending money or time on something for you without telling your spouse because you feel like you deserve it, darn it and you wanted it. It’s not a great justification, but at least it’s logical, on a primal level: Me animal. Animal want thing. Not care if make other animal cry when I get that thing.

But justification based on someone else’s unrelated bad behavior? It’s petty and mean. You might feel smugly justified complaining about your spouse’s faults in front of friends because at least YOU didn’t forget to pay the internet bill (again). But what does that have to do with your bad choices?

I really feel like one of the worst things you can do in your marriage is keep score. It’s inevitable that, at some point or another, one partner could be doing the lion’s share of keeping the relationship running. But giving and expecting to receive exactly 50% of the effort and no more is going to end in disaster as soon as one or both of you isn’t able to do their best. Thinking that it’s ok to keep being wrong because THEY have slipped up (or keeping a running tally of things they do wrong so that you can feel smug about mistakes you haven’t made YET but expect to) is just toxic. It takes a mistake they’ve made, one that hurts your marriage, and lets you take that mistake and use it to hurt your marriage too: twice the damage from the same mistake! Double the points!

So there are three of the worst things you can do when you’re wrong. How do you go about becoming right again? Totally depends. It could be as simple as apologizing and giving your spouse a long hug. It could be radically changing your life, your schedule, or giving something up that you never thought you could live without. But whatever it takes, doing the right thing when you’re wrong CAN help get you there!

Let’s end this on the same upbeat note. You are on the right path. You know something needs to change. It’s going to be hard, but you can do it. I really, truly believe that people in relationships can change, can stop being wrong and make things right again. But you know what the really, REALLY good news is? Your spouse believes that you can do it too.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T and Marriage: It’s What You Need (and Baby, I Got It)

Successful marriages are established and maintained by . . . . RESPECT.

By Rich

This post is part of a 10-part series celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Family: A Proclamation to the World, specifically the sentence, “”Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.”

You guys- Rich is posting again!!!  Huzzah!  I’m very excited about it and of course I love it.  While he was working on this I jokingly said, “You writing the respect article?  It better involve Aretha.”  To which he said, “You have no idea.”  🙂  Love him.

PS  ANOTHER Giveaway at the end of this post! And you could win a T-shirt of the sentence from the Proclamation we’ve chosen to do this series on. Then you’ll never forget!  🙂  -Celeste


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It’s very likely that the Aretha Franklin song “Respect (R-E-S-P-E-C-T)” is the most famous spelling-lesson-that’s-actually-a-song of all time. It was released in 1967, almost 50 years ago now, but remains such an undeniably awesome song that over those nearly 50 years a few of things have happened.

1) Everyone knows how to spell “respect”
2) As soon as you hear Aretha, the Queen of Soul, belt out “WHAT you want” you instantly know what this song is:

Oh, and 3) her song became so popular that you might not know that it’s not actually Aretha Franklin’s song at all (whaaaaa?).

The original song “Respect” was written and performed by the KING of Soul, Otis Redding (if you’re not familiar, his most well-known song is probably “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”). Otis’ original version of the song is the story of a forlorn man with a partner that runs around on him, but he’s still willing to give her anything she wants, anything she needs. He just wants a little respect when he comes home. It’s not a healthy relationship to say the least, devoid of respect from both partners (and when he does mention “respect” in the song’s chorus, it’s mostly likely a sad, ironic… um, euphemism). It’s sad.

Aretha’s version, while technically a “cover,”flips the song and it’s meaning entirely. It’s now from the perspective of a confident, secure woman who is sure that she, herself, is EXACTLY what her partner wants and needs (“What you want – baby I got it!”). She is invested in the relationship (“Ain’t gonna do you wrong, cuz I don’t wanna”). She’s not even demanding equal investment of resources into their relationship (“I’m ‘bout to give you, all my money”). But the thing she needs? The thing she won’t compromise on? She needs respect. And so do the rest of us.

For being so crucial to a healthy marriage, respect is interesting because it’s an emotion that in a lot of ways is completely separate from the “love” and “romance” aspects of marriages. There’s probably a long list of people you respect, only some of whom you might say you love. But you also respect treacherous mountain roads, loaded weapons, and bears who might wander across your hiking trail. So you can see why it would be emotionally confusing if respect only went hand-in-hand with romance.

So if respect doesn’t necessarily come along with romance, and if we know strong marriages are built solidly on a relationship of respect, then how do we go about feeling, improving, or re-acquiring the respect we should have for our spouses? That’s a tall order, but I’ll try a few ideas.

Respect and Marriage: We all need it, but we don't all give it.  

1. The Opposite of Respect

I know I already said that I don’t think respect develops naturally out of a purely romantic attraction. I think respect shores up love, helps love to grow, but respect isn’t necessarily love in and of itself. So what is the connection between respect and love? It might help to consider what it’s opposite is.
I don’t think the opposite of “respect” is “hate.” Hate is a strong, negative emotion toward something or someone that has influenced you deeply. Hate is the action of consciously or unconsciously focusing negative energy against something, while its opposite, love, is actively finding, celebrating and promoting positive feelings about something.

The opposite of respect isn’t hate. It’s contempt.

Contempt is anger mixed with disgust. Contempt is seeing something or someone and dismissing them as not worthy of you. They’re not only less than you, worse than you, but offensive to you by the way the take up your energy, your attention. Contempt chokes and masks the humanity we should see in everyone, but it’s especially vicious against those close to us. To those close to us, contempt doesn’t just let us ignore them and their needs. Contempt toward one’s spouse or loved ones breeds active resentment. Anything seen through a filter of contempt is pathetic, worthless, and incapable of any redeeming characteristics.

There’s a saying that “familiarity breeds contempt,” to which I would add, “And contempt breeds divorce.” One reason why writing a blog post about respect is so tough is because contempt, utter lack of respect, seems to me a practically insurmountable obstacle. I don’t know how to come back from that. I hope few of us ever feel that way toward others, especially toward our spouses. But fortunately, there are some experts who have some ideas on ways we can literally act more respectfully, less contemptuously.

2. Turning toward your spouse

John Gottman and his wife Julie are psychologists who research relationships and marriages. In extensively studying and observing newly wed couples, their humdrum, day-to-day interactions, the Gottmans and their colleagues identified behaviors, small indicators, that let them predict with (I’m going to capitalize this for emphasis) REMARKABLE accuracy whether or not these couples would still be married or divorced in six years. How accurate? 94% of the time Gottman could predict, based on these indicators, the future success of the marriage. An extensive article, called “Masters of Love,” reviewing their research was published last year.

What were the indicators? From the article:

Throughout the day, partners [will] make requests for connection, what Gottman calls “bids.” For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, “Look at that beautiful bird outside!” He’s not just commenting on the bird here: he’s requesting a response from his wife—a sign of interest or support—hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.

The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either “turning toward” or “turning away” from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that.

Turning-toward means engaging. Physically turning! Literally looking them in the eye. Paying attention. Connecting. Respecting.

Ultimately, it’s not that the wife respects bird watching, respects notable bird watchers, or respects the skill involved in noticing birds. But that she cares enough, is kind enough to notice a bid for attention, for connection, and respond. She is respecting her partner (his interests matter), she’s respecting his feelings (he wants a connection) and respecting her relationship (that connection matters). Substitute any number of “bids” for a connection that you make, that your spouse makes, and think about how you are responding to them and you’ll get an excellent idea of how you are demonstrating kindness and developing respect in your marriage.

Oh AND before we get too far off the topic of bids and birds, I’ll just leave this small joke of a tweet that I wrote long before reading this article:

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BID’S IN YOUR COURT, CELESTE!!!

One last quote from the excellent “Masters of Love” article:

Contempt . . . is the number one factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their partners are doing and they see negativity when it’s not there. People who give their partner the cold shoulder—deliberately ignoring the partner or responding minimally—damage the relationship by making their partner feel worthless and invisible, as if they’re not there, not valued.

3. “Give me my propers, when you come home”

So how can you cultivate respect? Turning-toward during your spouse’s bids for connection is excellent advice. General kindness, patience and understanding are certainly crucial. Anything else?

Let’s get back to Aretha and “Respect”:

I’m about to give you all of my money
And all I’m askin’ in return, honey

Is to give me my propers

When you get home

Propers? First off, great word. It means the respect that someone is owed. I think it’s perfect that she’s asking for recognition of what she deserves when (the unnamed) he comes home. Because in the home is where you likely see more of each other than anywhere else (and, since we know familiarity breeds contempt), what better place to list out and reflect on the things they do and are that deserve respect.

So think about it: What DOES your spouse deserve? What are some of the difficult tasks you see them always doing? What are they really good at doing? What about the things they do that you know doesn’t come easily, that you know is really hard for them to do? How have they changed their lives to benefit you? How have they become the person THEY wanted to be?

I hope it goes without saying that every person deserves respect, empathy and compassion. But if you want to try and foster respect in your marriage, think about the specific things that impress you, that you aspire to, in your spouse. However accomplished you are, at however many things, without a doubt there will be things your spouse is better at. Perhaps many things (it’s not a contest, guys). A more passive form of contempt is taking someone for granted: perhaps they don’t disgust you, but you think so little of them, you don’t notice them at all. Don’t let that be you. Notice, list, and verbalize to your spouse what it is that you respect and admire about them. 

Give them their propers when you come home.

So in the end, what does R-E-S-P-E-C-T mean to marriages?

A lot. (“Sock-it-to-me, sock-it-to-me, sock-it-to-me, sock-it-to-me…”)


If you are enjoying this series on my blog, be sure to check out the other awesome blogs participating in this series:CranialHiccups and Being LDS

You can also share your love of family by sharing photos online this month under the hashtag #ILovetheFamilyProclamation.

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The First Miracle of the First Christmas: A Marriage Able to Survive It

By Rich
If there’s anything I think we can say for certain about the night Jesus was born in a stable it was that 1) it was much more dirty and smelly than we’d like to imagine and 2) it was very likely the low point of the up-to-that-point short marriage of Joseph and Mary.

Everything about the Christmas story tends to gloss over the stark and unpleasant realities of what giving birth to a baby in a stable/cave/barn must have been like.  I think it’d debatable whether or not “the little Lord Jesus” did indeed “lay down his sweet head,” rather than acting like a normal infant and screaming that sweet little head off all that night.

Of course (and this is the whole point I’m going to get to) that doesn’t mean that wonderful, holy things didn’t ALSO happen that night. Angels, historically, have had not a problem appearing to filthy people. God has a long history of dealing with unpleasant physical circumstances. The point is, we don’t need to be afraid of recognizing how unpleasant that night must have been for poor Joseph, Mary and her baby.

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Not pictured: smells, sounds, marital stress.
It’s worth considering just how much of a strain the events of that first Christmas night were on the relatively untested marriage of Joseph and Mary. If it’s stressful for you and your spouse to afford presents for your family and plan and execute a Christmas Eve in your home, please know that it could not be anywhere as hard as helping your spouse give birth to a baby in filthy hole with animals.
The Bible doesn’t really ever talk about the marriage relationship between Joseph and Mary. In fact, it doesn’t really talk about Joseph much at all. We know that when Mary was found with child, Joseph was (happily) not going to make a public example of her, but would have canceled the engagement had an angel not intervened. (Matthew 1:18-25) We know that he loved his family (when, as a boy Jesus was found teaching in the temple, Mary says that she and Joseph had “sought [him] sorrowing.” (Luke 2:48) And, it’s probably worth mentioning that, besides the fact that it wasn’t even Joseph’s baby, at the time of the birth of Jesus, we are specifically told that Joseph and Mary had not had sex/consummated their marriage. (Matthew 1:25) That can be a stressful way to begin a marriage.
At Christmas time so many of us send out the very best photos we’ve taken of ourselves that year, when we write newsletters and updates that paint our lives and marriages in the very best light, it’s very easy to realize just how difficult the act of supporting your spouse through the difficult circumstances of life can be. We look back at our year and, for the sake of putting on a good front, we gloss over the painful, ugly struggles in our marriages. Just like we are probably glossing over just how terrible a night that must have been, at least at first, before the miracles, for Joseph and Mary.
Here are some things that Joseph could have very justifiably said that night:

  • “I didn’t sign up this.”
  • “None of this would be happening to me if I hadn’t married Mary.”
  • “Why is this happening to us? I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

 
Here are some things that Mary could have very justifiably said that night:

  • “Why couldn’t he have found us somewhere else to stay?”

 

  • “I didn’t know it was going to be like this.”
  • “Why is this happening to us? I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

 

I think that it’s an often unnoticed miracle of that first Christmas night that Joseph and Mary’s marriage was able to survive it. Yes, there were angels (although they never came to Joseph and Mary that we know of). Yes, there was a star (although we don’t know if Joseph and Mary ever saw it). The wise men wouldn’t show up till years later. For all we know, Joseph and Mary had no idea what miracles were happening around them till the shepherds showed up. But despite the overwhelming lack of evidence of these miracles, Joseph and Mary made it. They had their child. They raised him “in favor with God and man.” They stayed together. They kept their small family safe together. After such an difficult beginning, it’s fair to call their family, their relationship, a legitimate miracle.
Christmas is a time to focus on important gifts: the gift of Jesus Christ to the world, gifts we give to each other, gifts from Santa. On a daily, tangible, basis, there is really no greater gift than my marriage. It’s the thing that has gotten me through trying times and will get me through much more. And the best gift i can give in turn is my commitment to not give up on it, even when I might wonder, “Why is this happening to us? I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

Remembering how tough marriages can be sometimes, and facing the sometimes ugly realities of life and marriage, shouldn’t keep us from recognizing that miracles really can happen. It can only help us appreciate them more.

The 3 Worst Things You Can Do When You’re Wrong

By Rich

Hey.

Look. I’m going to try and break this to you gently. You and I both know that generally, you’re a good spouse. You usually pay attention to your partner’s needs. You are pretty good about keeping calm and even when your spouse does something that you wouldn’t do a lot of the time you remember that, hey, it’s not that big a deal. But more important than that, you do a good job (again, usually this is true!) of making your spouse feel loved and important, letting them know that you value their opinion and you consider them your friend and partner.

But this time, you were wrong. You messed up.

I’m not talking about “agree to disagree” moments. I’m maybe talking about how you let your temper get away with you, or how you said something you KNEW you shouldn’t say but you said it anyway because you felt justified. Maybe you made a decision without them that you knew inside was going to hurt their feelings, going to make them feel betrayed, but then you made the decision anyway. Whatever it was it was wrong.

Sorry.

There is some good news here, though! You recognized that you’re wrong. That’s a HUGE step in the right direction! I mean, think of all the times when you were wrong (or mean, or selfish, or hurtful) and you never even realized it! You’ve done some growing up and are doing a better job at paying attention to your spouses feelings and you’ve realized that you messed up. So, yeah, you’ve got that going for you.

But, I really hate to keep harping on this, as good as REALIZING that you’re wrong is, it’s not the same as not being wrong.

I’m going to assume you would prefer to NOT keep on being wrong. So for sure, you’re going to have to figure out how to be right! But until you can figure that out, you’re not out of the woods. It is VERY IMPORTANT for you to realize that if I know anything about being wrong it’s because I’ve been there. Over and over again. And I’ve done more wrong things WHILE being wrong all the time. But to help YOU get to where you can hopefully get back to being right faster than I can, I want to tell you the three worst things you can do when you really realize that you are, as I’ve said before, wrong.

The Three Worst Things You Can Do When You’re Wrong

1)    Keep being wrong.

A no-brainer, right? It seems easy on paper. But the state of realizing that you’re wrong is awful. It’s embarrassing. You’re a freaking adult so you should have known better, right? Worse than that, there are going to be consequences to your wrongness and making things right again is going to be painful. You want to avoid that pain, that shame. So it can be very tempting to follow that momentum and keep being wrong. But you have to find a way to stop. Stop being wrong.

If you can’t go through all of the steps to make it right, at least start here. If you can’t ask your spouse’s forgiveness yet, if you can’t repair the broken trust all at once, if you can’t undo the chain of events that led to your being wrong, do whatever you can to just stop being wrong now.

If your wife feels abandoned because you spend so many nights out with your friends, if your husband feels like you don’t appreciate how early he has to get up to get to work so he can get home before it’s too late to do something together, then there might be some things you need to work through. But try to find at least one behavior, an action, that you can stop doing. If you can’t get to the root of the problem all at once, then so be it. But start making things right by choosing to stop.

2) Justify being wrong.

“How am I supposed to just ‘stop’ being wrong?” you say. And it is a good question! Your relationship, like everything in life, doesn’t happen in a vacuum – our actions and choices are influenced by things as humdrum and innocuous as “how hungry am I right now?” or maybe as big and far reaching as, “I’m very concerned about the state of the world right now.” There are so many things that lead us to make the choices we make. But if you know that you’ve done something to hurt, belittle or damage your spouse and your relationship, you’re never really going to be able to let go of that behavior if in your deepest heart you think that you were right, that your spouse is overreacting and being unfair. You don’t get out of deep water by convincing yourself it wasn’t your fault you fell in.

Image by Jacob Walti
Some common justifications can be, “Well, look at all the GOOD things I’m doing!” or “I’m not cheating on them! I’m not physically abusive! There are a lot worse things I could be doing!” This is probably an overly extreme example here, but did you know that Adolf Hitler loved dogs? Loved ’em! So, yes, Hitler could have, hypothetically, done all the evil that he DID do and ALSO killed and abused dogs too. He could have been even worse! That does not make him good by any stretch of the imagination.

Saying that you’re not that bad because you could be worse is like trying to get out of a hole by pointing out that, hey, at least the hole isn’t filled with snakes! This accomplishes nothing and you stay in the hole. Don’t justify being wrong.

3) Point out all the things your spouse is wrong about.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Three wrongs don’t either. Or four. I think the jury is still out about five wrongs, but I’ll have to check on that.

Focusing on what your spouse might be wrong about is kind of like justifying your own wrong behavior, but is actually a lot worse AND a lot lazier. You could justify spending money or time on something for you without telling your spouse because you feel like you deserve it, darn it and you wanted it. It’s not a great justification, but at least it’s logical, on a primal level: Me animal. Animal want thing. Not care if make other animal cry when I get that thing.

But justification based on someone else’s unrelated bad behavior? It’s petty and mean. You might feel smugly justified complaining about your spouse’s faults in front of friends because at least YOU didn’t forget to pay the internet bill (again). But what does that have to do with your bad choices?

I really feel like one of the worst things you can do in your marriage is keep score. It’s inevitable that, at some point or another, one partner could be doing the lion’s share of keeping the relationship running. But giving and expecting to receive exactly 50% of the effort and no more is going to end in disaster as soon as one or both of you isn’t able to do their best. Thinking that it’s ok to keep being wrong because THEY have slipped up (or keeping a running tally of things they do wrong so that you can feel smug about mistakes you haven’t made YET but expect to) is just toxic. It takes a mistake they’ve made, one that hurts your marriage, and lets you take that mistake and use it to hurt your marriage too: twice the damage from the same mistake! Double the points!

So there are three of the worst things you can do when you’re wrong. How do you go about becoming right again? Totally depends. It could be as simple as apologizing and giving your spouse a long hug. It could be radically changing your life, your schedule, or giving something up that you never thought you could live without. But whatever it takes, doing the right thing when you’re wrong CAN help get you there!

Image by Ruxandra Mateiu
Let’s end this on the same upbeat note. You are on the right path. You know something needs to change. It’s going to be hard, but you can do it. I really, truly believe that people in relationships can change, can stop being wrong and make things right again. But you know what the really, REALLY good news is? Your spouse believes that you can do it too.