Why It’s Better to Be Wrong in Your Relationship
It’s a common experience when I meet with a new client for them to tell me that they don’t like being wrong. To be fair, most of us don’t. We can have a hard time receiving criticism, changing something because someone else asked us to, or admitting that the way we’ve been doing something might not be working. This becomes especially difficult in relationships because being wrong can feel like more than simply having incorrect information. It can feel like admitting that we failed our partner, that we’re the problem, or that the other person somehow “won.”
The problem is that when being wrong feels threatening, we tend to become defensive. Instead of listening to what our partner is trying to tell us, we start building our case. We explain what we meant, point out what they did wrong, remind them of the times we did things correctly, or look for inconsistencies in what they’re saying. Before long, the conversation stops being about understanding each other and becomes an argument over whose version of events is correct.
Sometimes the beliefs we’re defending aren’t even beliefs we consciously chose in the first place.
Sometimes We’re Just Using the Pan We Were Given
There’s an old joke I like that gives a good example of how easily we can do things without ever questioning why we do them.
There was a woman who would bring her famous roast to the church potluck every year. Everybody loved it, and it never lasted long. One day someone asked her for the recipe. The woman happily explained how she made it and said the first thing she did was buy a roast and cut about three inches off the end before seasoning and cooking it.
The person asked why she cut three inches off the roast. The woman thought about it and said, “I don’t know. That’s just how I’ve always done it.” Later, she called her mom and asked why they always cut the end off the roast. Her mom told her that when she was younger, she only had a seven-inch pan and the roast was usually about ten inches long. Cutting off the end had nothing to do with making a better roast. It was simply what she needed to do to make it fit in the pan she had.
Obviously, cutting the end off a roast isn’t causing much harm, but we do the same thing with much more important beliefs. We learn ideas about marriage, conflict, emotions, sex, parenting, money, apologies, vulnerability, and what husbands and wives are “supposed” to do. Some of those beliefs are useful. Others may have made sense in the family we grew up in but don’t work very well in the relationship we have now.
We can spend years trying to make our relationship fit beliefs that were created for a completely different pan.
Being Certain Doesn’t Mean You’re Right
I remember when I was probably six or seven and my family went to the beach for vacation. I saw what looked like a shiny blue bottle cap on the ground and picked it up. I wanted to show it to my aunt, so I started running down the beach with it in my hand. My hand started stinging, but I ignored it because I was more interested in showing her the cool bottle cap I had found.
When I finally got to her, she slapped it out of my hand. How rude! Then she told me, “Gary, that’s a jellyfish, not a bottle cap. They sting when you touch them.” The important part of that story is that I wasn’t lying about what I had found. I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I genuinely believed I was holding a bottle cap. I was also completely wrong.
That distinction matters in relationships. We can genuinely believe that we’re listening to our spouse while our spouse experiences us as dismissive. We can believe that we’re helping when our partner experiences us as controlling. We can believe that we apologized when the other person heard an explanation or justification. We can believe that something “shouldn’t be a big deal” while completely missing why it matters so much to the person we love. Our intentions and perceptions are important, but they aren’t the only information available to us.
Why We Get Defensive When Our Partner Says We’re Wrong
One of the approaches I use in counseling is Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, or REBT. Part of REBT involves identifying beliefs and perceptions that may be irrational, overly rigid, or simply inaccurate and replacing them with beliefs that better fit reality. That sounds relatively simple: identify an inaccurate belief, challenge it, and develop a healthier one. In practice, it can be much harder.
Our beliefs don’t exist in a vacuum. Some of us learned early that being wrong came with consequences. Maybe getting something wrong meant being criticized, embarrassed, punished, laughed at, or made to feel stupid. Maybe mistakes weren’t treated as opportunities to learn but as evidence that something was wrong with us. When that happens enough, admitting that we’re wrong can start to feel dangerous even when we’re no longer in that environment.
That can follow us directly into our adult relationships. Your wife says, “I don’t feel like you listen to me,” and instead of becoming curious about why she feels that way, your brain immediately starts looking for evidence that she’s wrong. You remember the conversation you had yesterday, the thing you did for her last week, or the time she didn’t listen to you. You may technically have a valid point, but you’ve also stopped listening to what she was originally trying to tell you.
This is one of the reasons small disagreements can become much larger arguments. Once both people become focused on proving their version of events, the actual relationship problem gets lost. Instead of asking, “What is happening between us?” the conversation becomes, “Which one of us is right?”
Curiosity Works Better Than Defensiveness
One thing I regularly ask clients to practice is this: when a belief is challenged, start by assuming that the other person could be at least partially correct. That doesn’t mean automatically agreeing with everything your partner says, and it certainly doesn’t mean that your perspective doesn’t matter. It means resisting the urge to immediately defend yourself long enough to understand what the other person is actually saying.
If your wife tells you that she feels unimportant when you look at your phone while she’s talking, you don’t have to agree that you don’t care about her in order to take her experience seriously. You can ask what happens for her in those moments, whether there are other times she feels the same way, and what would help her feel more connected to you. You may eventually explain your perspective too, but now you’re having a conversation instead of preparing a defense.
That shift can make a significant difference in a relationship because emotional safety isn’t created by never getting something wrong. It develops when both people believe they can bring up something painful, uncomfortable, or disappointing without immediately having to prove that their experience is legitimate. Being able to hear your partner’s experience without treating it as an accusation is an important part of learning how to repair conflict.
Being Wrong Can Actually Help Your Relationship
Nobody likes finding out that something they believed wasn’t accurate. It’s even harder when the person pointing it out is someone whose opinion matters deeply to us. But refusing to consider that we might be wrong doesn’t protect a relationship. More often, it keeps the same arguments, misunderstandings, and hurtful patterns going because nothing new is allowed into the conversation.
Sometimes growth in a relationship requires realizing that something you learned years ago no longer works. Maybe conflict doesn’t have to mean someone wins and someone loses. Maybe apologizing doesn’t make you weak. Maybe your partner asking for something different doesn’t mean that what you’ve been doing has all been wrong. Maybe understanding why something hurts your spouse is more important than convincing them that it shouldn’t hurt.
Being wrong isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes being wrong gives us information we didn’t have before, and that information gives us an opportunity to do something differently. The bigger problem is being so committed to being right that we keep doing something that isn’t working. In relationships, being willing to question ourselves, become curious about our partner’s experience, and change when change is needed can be far more valuable than winning the argument.