Lies Wives Believe

My Partner Can’t Do Anything Right

We’ve seen it on countless sitcoms—from the Dick Van Dyke show to the present—where the wife that’s at home continues to make mistakes.  She burns the food, leaves an iron mark on the shirt, and ran the car into the pool.

Today it’s the man—he’s a bad dad.  He can’t do anything useful.  He wouldn’t know how to clean a dish if he were standing in a bucket of soap and water.

The Evil of Comparison

Each of us has things that were good at and things we are not.  We have things that we’ve practiced and things that we could do if we had a bit more practice.

The problem comes into play when we evaluate someone else based on our skill set.  And it gets worse when the person that we’re evaluating is someone close to us—because we tend to be a whole lot coarser.

Mean to Family, Nice to Friends

It’s an odd fact, but the closer someone is to us, the more blunt and cruel we are to them.  The further away they are, the more likely we are to treat them nicely and to be courteous.

The same applies with what we say about people around us.  We’re a whole lot more likely to have higher expectations of people around us, or we’re dismissive of them because they can’t do something the way that you do it.

Why is this?

Part of it, I believe, is that we know that the person that we’re talking about knows us, loves us, and we know them very well.  We know that they’ll probably stay around, even if we belittle them (we may even belittle them when they’re around!), but we may not be so sure about those that we don’t know as well.

The truth is that this should be opposite.

We should be more concerned about what our family thinks of us, and talking them  up rather than worrying about those that may leave our lives and we won’t see them again.

You can choose your friends, not your family—well, not after your married at least.

So, what are you doing to build up your spouse?  How about resolving not to say anything diminutive about his abilities to any of your friends and family?  That would be a great start!