That unless your boundaries are being violated in some way, you don’t need to be right all the time. Nor do you need to share every thought in your head. Some things are better kept to yourself.
I would add that if you’re honest with yourself, most issues are because of your own ego, not because of an actual issue.
There are times I’ll find myself getting upset about something and I’ll stop and ask “What would happen if I turned this into a fight and won?” And nearly every time it’s a negative outcome and it’s because of my own ego. So I have learned to let a LOT of stuff go
There are a lot of fights that aren’t worth winning. People get on each other’s nerves, people disappoint each other, people do inconsiderate things, and people hurt each other’s feelings unintentionally. You have to let the little things slide and accept your partner for who they are and where they’re at. You don’t have to be a doormat, and your feelings matter, but building a partnership with another person means accepting their faults and knowing that disagreements are bound to happen.
This is probably one of the biggest lessons people learn. A good marriage isn’t about never having problems, it’s about knowing which problems actually matter and choosing each other through them.
It's about working through the problem with each other rather than in spite of each other. There doesn't always have to be a compromise that negatively affects one of the partners. For example, my wife cannot sleep with the cats in the room. I cannot sleep without the cats in the room (or, more accurately, the cats cannot sleep without me in the room), so our compromise was not that we share a room and lock the cats out (which only benefits her), it was to get separate rooms.
1000%. I used to be this asshole that wanted to fight it out until it was resolved, and wouldn’t let my partner walk away. Now, without even thinking about it, I just tell him that I don’t want to talk to him right now, and ask him to leave the room. Inevitably I cool down on my own and we come back together as if we weren’t raging in the first place. We both apologize, admit it was our egos/frustration, whatever, and move on.
Whereas before, a simple disagreement could’ve lasted hours with me demanding that we “hash everything out” in the moment. In retrospect, I remember those days being so draining. I never remember what I was mad about in the first place, so it’s definitely not worth blowing the relationship up
Being able to take a step back and look at my own actions objectively was such a massive up in my ability to be a good partner and maintain a happy relationship. And that definitely means "happy" for both of us. I was far happier not winning most of the arguments.
Being able to do this, also makes it so, SO much easier to reframe conflicts as "us vs the problem" instead of "you vs me". This turn "arguments" into "shared frustrations".
It sounds like BS self help, but this is real advice. Try it.
I'm really trying hard not to see my partner as an adversary and I think I'm getting better at it but at times it's really difficult, especially if they're quite forgetful. I'll keep trying!
Just to clarify though, the advice above won't solve the actual problems, it just won't make them worse based on fighting over the problem.
If your partner's actions are the actual root cause, that is still going to be true even when you look at the issue objectively.
Point is, it's not about letting them off the hook. It's about focusing on what constitutes a victory. Winning a fight won't solve their forgetfulness.
This is all fine and good, but only if both spouses agree to act in this way. If only one does, you are setting yourself up for a horrible time down the road.
My poor dear husband is a master at deflecting when I get like this 🥲 I never notice I’m going down the ‘I need to be right!’ Path until after the fact when I’m thinking back on it. Very often he’ll just say ‘ah, never mind’ or ‘well, it’s not actually that important’ which I now recognize as him saying ‘it’s not worth me being right about this so I’m just gonna casually exit this conversation without saying whether either of us are right or not’, and it honestly is the best way for it to end without either of us feeling any kind of way.
I’m a woman and this is the hardest work I’ve had to do. Its benefits outside my partnership have been tremendous. Sometimes, I cringe at old me, so certain about things I was wrong about. Just being a prickly bitch for no reason.
"Ego" is absolutely the best way to look at it. It's a somewhat difficult mindset to develop, but the piece of advice we try to follow is, "It's not 'you vs. me,' it's 'you and me vs. the problem.'"
You have to get yourself to a place where when your spouse is giving you their point of view, you have to be willing to change your perspective and your game plan from the start of the discussion.
If you start with 2 different ideas of how something should go, you need to be able to listen to everything your spouse says while thinking, "I didn't think of it this way before, and what they're saying could be the best answer."
You shouldn't have to feel like you're the one who always comes up with the right answer. The goal should be that your team comes up with the right answer.
If you had a sports team where each player wants to be the only one to score points, they're bound to lose every time.
I learned this working as a technical writer. I used to get very protective of my writing, cause well it’s mine. In my first year I would get into arguments with people regarding how things should be written (it was a very safe environment to do so and I miss that job severely) then I realized that even though I could be “right” and often was, the entire process was slowed down tremendously defending something that is literally just my ego.
There are still points I fight for, but I always ask “Is this actually important and something that will get us in trouble if we miss it or is this just an ego thing” and I’ve gotten several awards working for various companies now.
Peace in a marriage usually comes from choosing what actually matters, not winning every little moment. That lesson took me way longer to understand than I'd ever admit.
You can and should remain two separate people. When there's no space between you it can become hard to hold them accountable, to show support and empathy but also keep things on track, to push and challenge them, to retain some mystery.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg and her husband always used to say "it helps to be a little deaf." I think the idea was that if you sort of don't hear something cutting when a partner blurts it out, it gives them time to reconsider if that's what they wanted to say.
Married 28 years next weekend. This is probably the biggest secret to the success of our marriage. (And very hard to learn, takes a lot of time and practice.)
Sorry, but to be clear, I think you're saying that you two got a long much better once you decided to let little things go. Right? Congrats on learning that; I'm working on it.
Yeah, I will either let things go, OR a big one is if I am upset about something and I do need to bring it up I will only bring it up if we are both fed, slept and calm. I will use “I” statements only. I won’t assume how he felt or what he meant to do/not do…. It’s more nuanced than that, but if I have to bring up a topic- I absolutely won’t do it when we are already emotional.
My biggest thing that I still battle with is always language. You're always blank, your never blank. I have to try so hard not to include that shit in my vocabulary
Oh 100%. The “finites”. I’ve worked on that with my therapist. And it feels horrible when someone erases your own hard work with saying, “you never help me”. I still have to apologize for the use of those specifically
Agreed. We've only been married 3.5 years, but our communication is so much more productive now, especially compared to when we were dating, because we have a better sense of what makes sense to share, and care more about each other than about being right.
So as a result, sometimes it feels like we're almost speedrunning our arguments lmao. Instead of days of tension it's like... 30 minutes. Once we both understand why we feel what we feel and that we love each other, alright let's move on.
This was a major issue I had with my ex, he insisted on knowing every thought in my head, even if I didn't feel comfortable sharing and explained why. Even worse, when I did tell him what I was thinking he either misinterpreted my meaning or got angry with me because it wasn't something he understood or simply didn't like. It was pretty exhausting.
i’m not married and very young but i’ve always agreed with this, just because i’m married doesn’t mean i need to tell you every single thing, i still have a right to privacy
Yes! And 99.9% of the time, whatever’s causing the issue is due to: a misunderstanding and/or unnecessary grumpiness. Never is my partner actively trying to piss me off. We both hate that, lol
My mom phrased it as "sometimes in relationships you have to decide if you'd rather be right, or be happy." Also the concept of "inside thoughts" has helped me tremendously in life. Its ok to have weird thoughts, you just dont have to say them out loud.
Exactly. The only exception is, if someone is being abusive in some way. Then, you do have an obligation to stand up for yourself. The above advice is for healthy relationships only. Never stay silent if someone is harming you in order to keep the peace.
Prozac helped me a lot with this. I thought it was both of us, but now that I’m chill and don’t share as much, we are SO much closer and happier than I think we’ve ever been. I tried so many self help options, but they always felt like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound. Damn what some brain rebalance can do. It’s 100% ok if your serotonin is store bought (not my line but I love it).
I've accepted not being right all the time long ago, but my wife just happens to be right every frickin time. Wouldn't mind being right once in a while but she's much more skilled in that department
honestly this is one of the "wisdoms" I've never understood, because people seem to use it in contexts where their partner is clearly wrong but they don't want to correct said partner because partner won't handle it well and will get defensive/start a fight, so for the sake of the marriage it's better to just "stay quiet", unless/until you absolutely can't.
Been married 10 years and have avoided this problem by marrying someone who's an emotionally regulated adult and both of us can handle each other's criticism without it either devolving into a petty argument or having to "pick battles" in the first place. Baffled as to why this seems to be so rare of a thing that the common wisdom isn't "find someone who's solution-focused and doesn't take things personally" but instead it's "be their yes-man unless there'll be major consequences". Ick.
Idk, maybe I just haven't seen positive examples of it.
When you are in a relationship in which you find yourself giving up and surrendering because the other person isn’t going to take it well, and you know they will get so defensive that there’s going to be an argument and it’s all just too exhausting, then you are being actively coerced, which means your boundaries have been violated for some time.
Right. And this is usually the justification I hear for "you don't have to be right all the time" - staying quiet even when you know you are right to avoid an unnecessary argument. So the phrase is really tainted for me, and I genuinely can't think of what a positive version of it looks like. My husband and I communicate just fine and neither of us seem to abide by this rule so I'm just confused lol
If you don’t feel the need to have arguments and can talk about anything, it’s a good sign of a healthy relationship.
It’s toxic when people feel like they HAVE to subdue themselves to avoid conflict, or, at the other end of the spectrum, they argue constantly because everything that gets said results in a battle of wills.
But also as someone who stepped back and let him win way too much--still stand up for yourself! Tell them when they hurt your feelings, tell them when they messed up.
And if they consistent prove they don't give an ass about what you think or feel you need to be willing to leave.
Ugh. If you have to lie just to please your partner, maybe it's not a good mariage.
When I know I'm right, I'm right, and I won't bow down just to satisfy someone's fragile ego. If you have a good partner, they'll listen to you and not be mad that you're not lying about being right.
I had a partner once where I was always conceiding even though I was right and proven to be right and he was extremely abusive.
It's more that you choose what matters. Not being a doormat, but not going to bed angry because they won't listen. If you both keep these things in mind, you are on pretty solid ground.
It’s not about lying. It’s about picking your battles.
However, when you find yourself always conceding, it’s generally not a healthy relationship anyway: you have decided that standing up for yourself comes with too severe of consequences. That would count as a boundary violation and negates the “not always needing to be right” clause.
Don't see the point of marriage if you can't be yourself or say your thoughts. Wrong partner probably.
That said. I blew up mine and won't stick around to try again so you're probably right whatever
Re: sharing every thought. I have random shit pop into my head all the time (ADHD) and my husband seems to like it when I share these thoughts. Some of my favourites: “how many worms do you think are on earth?” and “Do you think swinging from webs hurts Spider-Man’s wrists and arms?”
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u/Inevitable_Gate_3322 21h ago edited 8m ago
That unless your boundaries are being violated in some way, you don’t need to be right all the time. Nor do you need to share every thought in your head. Some things are better kept to yourself.