When You are Hurt, Believe the Best

Tip #2: Believe the Best

As I was watching the second Hunger Games movie with my 13-year-old daughter, I was reminded – of all things – of something I saw during the last few years of researching marriages. Something that I now believe is one of the most important keys to a happy marriage.

Anyone who has entered the dystopian Hunger Games world knows the cruel irony of the phrase used in the story: “May the odds be ever in your favor.” The whole series is about those who live under – and struggle to break free from — a cruel and unjust dictatorship where the odds are never in their favor. Their lives are full of pain because the Hitler-like dictator cares nothing for the citizenry.

So here’s what struck me. When someone causes us pain in a relationship, we tend do – often without realizing it — ascribe the same exact motive: They hurt me, therefore they don’t really care.

You had the perfect romantic date planned last night, but your husband worked late and you missed your dinner reservation.

You can’t wait to surprise your wife after spending all day Saturday repainting the bathroom – she’s been asking for a while now. But when she walks in, she bites her lip and says the walls were supposed to be Silver Sage not Sedona Sage.

He doesn’t care. She doesn’t appreciate me. Those thoughts are so subconscious we may not even realize that’s what we’re assuming – but that is why we’re hurt.

As one wife put it after experiencing the romantic-date-that-didn’t-happen: “It wasn’t even missing the date that hurt the most – it was what missing the date meant. It meant that he cared so little about me, that he couldn’t even tell his boss ‘no, I have to leave’ instead of agreeing to take a long client call at 6 pm.”

What I discovered in my surveys though, is that in the vast majority of real-life marriages those assumptions are completely wrong! Unlike evil Hunger Games dictators, the vast majority of people — even in the most troubled marriages – deeply care about their mate and want the best for them. Just because they sometimes do boneheaded or hurtful things, doesn’t mean they don’t care. Only a tiny fraction of people (one half of one percent) didn’t care about their spouse anymore.

It turns out that one of the main things making people unhappy in marriage is allowing themselves to believe the “he/she doesn’t care” lie that just isn’t true.

By contrast, I saw in the research that the happiest marriages are so happy because the spouses refuse to believe that lie! Sure, these people felt hurt, disappointed, or angry just like anyone else; but they made the choice to believe the truth: that their husband or wife had their best interests at heart regardless of what their emotions (or their sore painting arm!) might be telling them at the time.

So, now you know that the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor and that your mate almost certainly cares about you greatly, what does that mean, and how can that knowledge improve a marriage?

Well, if we believe the worst about our mates, we will inevitably be quick to spot the worst in them—and you can guess what a bad cycle will be started by that predisposition! But thankfully, the exact opposite is also true. If we assume that our mate had good intentions, our default will be to think “I know he didn’t mean to hurt me that badly.” And what I found in the research was that the next step is that you don’t end up feeling quite as hurt! Which means less conflict, more grace, quicker forgiveness, and much more delight in the home.

It sounds so simple, yet it profoundly improves a relationship once you realize that in real life and real marriages, that the odds really are in your favor.

Join us Monday for Secret # 3, and learn how some common advice can actually hinder communication with your spouse.

From Chapter 3 of The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages, by Shaunti Feldhahn.

Welcome to Marriage Month! From June 5 to July 4, join us here in the Christian Post Book Corner as I share my top findings on the little, eye-opening things that make a big difference in creating great marriages and relationships. Today’s post is one of a series on what makes happy marriages so happy, based on nationally-representative research with more than 1,000 couple