As a society, we’re afraid to admit our weaknesses. As a result, we end up blaming others, complaining, lying, being evasive, shutting down, gossiping, backbiting, and just generally living in fear of being found out.
None of this is good for a marriage, as I’ve learned from personal experience. I’m guessing many of you have learned this lesson the hard way as well. In a great marriage, both of you feel so comfortable with one another, accepted, understood and safe that you are okay with admitting weakness. In a bad marriage, however, it’s easy to find yourself building protective walls, walls that make a bad marriage even worse. Walls push your spouse away, causing you to feel even more distanced and less comfortable. Our fear of admitting our weaknesses is often what keeps us from apologizing.
How do you turn this around? The first step is the scariest.
Make the first move. Someone has to. You could wait the rest of your life for your spouse to do it, or you could take control of the situation and be the first to admit that you are only human. Here are a few things to think about:
- Unless you married an enlightened being, your spouse is only human, too. Everyone has a weakness somewhere. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone fails. Everyone screws up from time to time.
- Chances are that your spouse won’t react as negatively as you think he or she will react. We all suffer from a negativity bias that causes us to predict negative outcomes that sound like this, “If I admit to X, then my spouse will….” Quite often our predictions are way off the mark.
- Refusing to admit your weakness just makes you weaker. As soon as you admit a weakness, you feel stronger.
- Admitting a weakness brings you and your spouse closer.
Use language of change. It’s hard to admit that you are “too emotional,” “can’t pay attention” or are “too stressed.” It’s not as hard to admit (or to hear) that you are “too emotional right now” “can’t pay attention right now” or are “too stressed right now.” Similarly “I don’t like you right now” inflicts less of a sting than “I don’t like you” and “I’m too tired to clean the house right now” won’t annoy your spouse as much as “I’m too tired to clean the house.” Similarly “I don’t feel like having sex right now” isn’t as hard to hear as “I don’t feel like having sex.” The “right now” implies that this negative situation or emotion is not your identity and it’s not permanent.
Admit that you don’t like your weakness. This further humanizes you and allows your spouse to know that this is a sensitive topic. It’s the difference between “I wish I wasn’t too emotional right now” and “I’m too emotional right now.” It’s also the difference between “I’m embarrassed that I’m so angry that I don’t even like you right now. That’s how angry I am” and “I don’t like you right now.” Similarly, think about how “I wish I wanted to have sex right now” feels compared to “I don’t want to have sex.” The first leads to solution oriented thinking and begs the question, “What would make you want to have sex right now or sometime later?” The second shuts down the conversation.
Express love. Rather than make your weakness all about you, get some buy in from your spouse. To do so, express your concern not only for your happiness, but also for your spouse’s happiness, too. This sounds like this, “I don’t think we should have this conversation right now because I’m too emotional. I’m afraid I might say something hurtful and I don’t want to do that to you. Could we talk about this in a few hours when I feel calmer?” Similarly “I feel really anxious and stressed right now. I wish I didn’t feel this way, but I do and I’m worried that I’m about to blow my lid. I don’t want to do that in front of you or our children because none of you deserve to be around me when I’m like that. So I’m going to go in the bedroom, shut the door and put myself in time out for a while.” It also sounds like this, “I really want to rock your world in bed because you deserve that, but I’m way too tired right now to make that happen. I don’t want to go through the motions with you. I want to be fully present. Could we have sex in the morning when I’m feeling more energetic?”
What stops you from admitting your weaknesses? How does that impact your marriage? What have you done to be more vulnerable with your spouse? What advice do you have to offer others?
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