There are a few rare things to which everyone agrees on at any given time. We are a world of variety even while conformity is the measure. Regardless of the value placed on conformity, it does seem that almost everyone has an individual sense of right and wrong. Granted that definition is as varied as the weather but most of us can easily categorize our actions almost instantly as right or wrong.

We naturally carry our ideas of right and wrong into our personal relationships, friendships and business relationships. We are willing to stand our ground based on what we perceive is right or wrong. Some of us even take our notions of being right or wrong so far as to be unwilling to be wrong at any given moment and under any circumstance. At the very least most of us can recall a moment when we knew we were mistaken and fought the good fight anyway rather than back down and “lose.” In those moments I think we make the choice to stand our ground because we think we somehow will lose self-value if we are wrong. We’re somehow less.

Can you recall some moment when you fought with a parent or a spouse where you were sure that you were right? Were angry words said that perhaps you might not have otherwise spoken? Was it worth the tears? Was it worth the look of hurt you saw? Or worse, was that one fight a contributing factor to another layer that rushed the crossing of the finish line for that relationship? Has there been anyone in your life who was close to you that you weren’t willing to have the fight with when you were sure you were right? Do you believe that fighting is a sign of loving or part of loving? Do you believe there is a difference between fighting and hanging in? I do.

If your answer was yes to one or more of the above questions, let’s talk. Did the subject of the fight really matter? Was it a core value issue that would make or break your life? Was it an issue so foundational to who you are that not fighting for it would significantly change your life for the worse? Was it something that broke your hard-won boundaries? Did it diminish who are you as a person? In other words, I’m asking you—was it really important?

If this issue didn’t erode who you are at a bottom-line level, let’s take a little detour and have a look at other possibilities. What if right and wrong wasn’t important enough to be a factor or the main topic of the conversation? What if right and wrong dropped down the list of what actually mattered in the discussion?

What I’m proposing is seemingly radical. If you’re sick of the fights perhaps something radical is exactly what is needed.

If we choose not to focus on right and wrong and didn’t perceive a loss in not focusing on our rightness, I believe we’d apologize more easily. I believe we’d fight less as we’d no longer take it personally, feel defensive, or that our “self” was at stake. Making the jump away personalizing is fairly important. It allows us to step so clearly out of our own heads, stop listening to our own voices and actually hear what is being said. What if we apologized in a manner that didn’t come with the message of, “I’m sorry you’re right.”

I’m going to backtrack a bit. Have you noticed that when you fight each person is embarking on struggle? Have you thought about that beginning moment when you or someone else begins feeling criticized, unheard, unseen, and starting of feel hurt? They feel criticized in part because their idea of what is right isn’t shared. They feel unheard, and usually begin to get louder, when what you are saying back to them isn’t acknowledging of the information they are sharing but instead presenting them with “reasons” why they are wrong. It seems logical enough—if you only explain the reasons to them then of course they are going to agree with you, because to you it makes sense. How often is that working? How often when you have listed your reasons has anyone else changed their mind? Suddenly ramped down and gotten on board your line of thought? I’m betting this approach hasn’t worked. Instead of reaching “your logical conclusion” your other half feels sure you aren’t hearing them and that your reasons are telling them that they’re wrong and their hurt is growing. Add in a healthy dose of frustration in both parties and you have a recipe for your next fight.

Each person’s perception is entirely different and both are sure about the “rightness” of their perception. It’s right here, if not long before, that we could do things differently.

Do it differently by no longer being concerned with who is right or wrong. There’s time for that later if it’s even needed at all. I’m suggesting that you make perception more important than your facts. Leave your facts on the table for later. Start with what your spouse perceived. Don’t judge their perception as right or wrong. Don’t judge their perception as adhering or not to facts or indicative of flaw. Hear them clearly as to what they believed happened. Step into their shoes. Ask yourself if you believed what they do, would you be hurt? Find the understanding in yourself to acknowledge fully how you see that their belief in what happened or what didn’t clearly indicates how they would be hurt. It’s in that moment that I’m suggesting we no longer apologize for what we haven’t done well or correctly but we apologize for the experience of hurt this important person is having.

There’s the novel idea—apologies for another person’s perception. Recognition of their pain. No worries about losing some part of our ego. What if we made apologies that looked something like this:

“Thank you for telling me. I am so sorry you are in pain. I can see clearly that you’re hurt and if I had the same set of circumstances, I would be hurt also. I’m sorry this went on long enough for you to be in pain. I may not agree with you regarding the facts of what happened but your perception of this clearly has left you in pain and hurt your feelings. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world but from your perspective I have. I’m am truly sorry for that. What do you need from me to be less hurt? {be quiet and hear their answer}

After you fully invite this person’s feelings in and acknowledge those feelings, they are going to be in a much better position to hear your facts. They are also going to be much more open to your interpretation of what happened because hurt is no longer operating like a filter that all your words come through. Most hurt dissipates when the person who is hurt feels understood. Usually it’s in this moment, they also become less interested in being right also.

Could you imagine if we were so open as people that we were willing to apologize for another’s experience without having any ego stake in being right or wrong— could you imagine that right/wrong just didn’t matter? If we were more interested in why they were hurt and could hear their version before we began to engage our own potential feelings of being unseen and unheard, would we be fighting or talking?

I’m betting we’d be talking calmly. We’d be more prone to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes we treat the people who love us as if they honestly wished to hurt us. It doesn’t even make sense to go that route. Do you really believe that those closest to you have a desire to hurt you? If so, get out now. If we really came to all our disagreements with the thought that our spouse in no way shape or form wished to hurts us wouldn’t be give them the benefit of the doubt? Wouldn’t that benefit look something like—Ouch! That was hurtful, wait, my spouse wouldn’t really want to hurt me therefore we have a disconnect going on because if they knew this was going to hurt me they never would have done that. In bringing that surety to your own thought patterns, you’ve just defused half your hurt. You’re now curious how they came to choose the choice you thought was, oh, wrong. You’re not in a place where you’re yelling, “How could you do that to me? You know me so how could you think it would be okay?” The assumption here being that they knowingly with full information about you made a choice that would hurt you.

To really hear someone else’s perspective, you have to get yourself out of the way. You have to make this not about you and really look at them and get that in this moment, in this expanse of time, it’s not about you. They get to talk about themselves, their feelings, their perceptions and all of that is about them. It’s not a sideways roundabout way to criticize you. If you feel criticized, you are making it about you and you are leaning on the tenets of who is right and who is wrong. If that didn’t exist you wouldn’t feel defensive and you wouldn’t feel personally criticized simply because they don’t see it your way.

I recognize it isn’t easy to engage this type of thinking—it almost seems counterintuitive to everything we’re taught about sticking to your guns and not being a doormat. It takes a lot of skills beneath the surface to get there. You need to know who you are. You need to feel sure enough in your worth to easily glide past defensiveness and the need to be right. You need to quiet all the voices in your own head to allow the voice of another to fully penetrate your thoughts and stay with their thoughts. But hey—we all need goals and if this one gets you to a point where you no longer are hurting the people you love most and you don’t feel criticized, unheard and unseen, I’d say it’s worth it.

By Catherine Gross

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