Habit #3: Look for a more generous explanation of your spouse’s behavior

So here you are, sitting in front of your laptop, having just logged off your rather disastrous Zoom meeting. The A/C repairman left after no one answered the door. You hear the shower turn off. And you have a choice to make.

Your hurt and anger are roiling. You feel put upon and taken for granted. You want to let your spouse have it. Yet that is likely to begin a cycle that will raise other defensive and angry feelings on the part of your spouse. And then you . . . and then your spouse . . .

So you force yourself to pause. You pray for God’s help. You think to yourself, I know my spouse cares. I know they wanted to be helpful. So there must be another explanation for what happened.

So when your spouse comes into your home office, you say, “I’m pretty upset.” You explain the situation and how embarrassed you were. But you don’t say, “You always take me for granted!” Instead, you say, “I know you said you wanted to help. What happened?”

In other words: You are assuming something happened. And you are assuming it is something other than, “Well, I just didn’t care about you being embarrassed in front of your boss. Deal with it.”

By believing the best, by believing there is a more generous explanation of your spouse’s behavior, you open up the space for your spouse to explain what happened instead of defensively justifying themselves. So your mate owns up to the fact that they got caught up in their own work deadline, got a text from their own boss, and ran to take a shower so they could run to pick up the materials for tomorrow’s event.

In other words: they simply forgot. But it wasn’t that they didn’t care. In fact, they feel terrible about what happened. Your choice to give them space to explain that doesn’t “let them off the hook.” (After all, you’ve been honest about your feelings.) Rather, it prioritizes what is most important: Not your need to make a point, but your marriage.

In future articles, we will tackle several vital truths that every marriage needs to know about money, communication, sex, and several other vital topics. But this one . . . this one is foundational. You get this one right and it will help you with everything else as you build the happy marriage you are longing for.

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