Motive Matters: Believing the Best of Your Spouse

She said, “My counselor said we were caught in a cycle of negativity, and the next time I was upset I should look for a more generous explanation about his motives. So that night, I decided to start over. I texted him to tell him I was making his favorite lasagna — something I hadn’t done in ages. He said he’d be home at 7:00 pm.  And then, as usual, he was really late. Almost an hour. I was steaming mad and assumed he just didn’t care enough to get home on time. But I had promised to look for a more generous explanation. So I held my fire and said ‘Hard day?’ And he started sharing about how difficult this one customer was, and how he couldn’t get out the door. And it was clear he was just waiting for me to start yelling at him.”

“Did you?” I asked.

“No. I wanted to. But I forced myself to smile and told myself that it was client demands, not a lack of care, that kept him. It took everything in me, and it honestly felt fake, but I said, ‘Well, I’m glad you’re home. I kept the lasagna warm for you.’ And I served him dinner and ate with him like nothing was wrong. And then it hit me, really strongly: what if nothing was wrong? What if he truly was trying to care for me, and I was always assuming that he wasn’t? We were having this perfectly normal dinner together simply because I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. And I realized: my ability to have this sort of peace all the time, is kind of up to me.”

You might protest that this is unfair. As one woman indignantly told me, when I shared that story with her, “But that is just letting him off the hook! All he’s learned is that he can take her for granted!”