Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night with the remnants of a dream teasing the edge of your mind?
I sit, wide awake when I should be sleeping, wondering why my brain insists on being alert. After several minutes of trying to return to slumber, I've given up. My husband is away on business, my kids are sleeping, and I am strangely restless.
I say strangely, because I am often alone and content. I am a person who can curl up with a book, an old sitcom, or almost any movie, and be completely satisfied for hours at a time. If that fails, I can blog-surf forever, letting one blog's sidebar lead me to another, indefinitely.
But none of that is working for me tonight - or rather this morning - so I decided to simply sit down and let the thoughts in my head ramble their way onto my blog. perhaps once they escape, I will finally be able to put my mind, and the rest of myself, to bed.
Things have been going well recently, but I did have one bad day last week where DH and I had an actual, verbal fight. We rarely raise our voices, but I was both crying and shouting. He had unintentionally said something earlier that day which was incredibly hurtful to me. He felt the fact that he had said it without thought as to how I would feel made it somehow less egregious. After all, he didn't intend to hurt my feelings.
I, on the other hand, thought that the thoughtlessness actually made the situation much worse. I am his wife. I think that he should be thinking about how his words and actions affect me. The fact that I didn't occur to him is not comforting in any way.
He sees my point, and I understand his... on an intellectual level, but neither of us is really conceding our position.
So, in my sleep deprived state, I have decided to ask any of you reading this if you have an opinion. And I am interested to see if this is one of those Mars / Venus situations where men and women see things differently.
Do you think that accidentally hurting your partner's feelings is excusable because intent is what matters, and there was no intention to hurt the other person?
Or, do you think that not considering your partners feelings is offensive, regardless of whether or not any damage was done? That the fact that you aren't thinking about your partner is a problem in and of itself?
I'm going to go to bed now - again - but I look forward to your opinions.
10 comments:
Great post. Yes, I have been in limbo with some dreams that I just can't shake.
Accidently hurting your partners feelings is not excusable, but the other person needs to know that it did hurt. But the fact that you don't consider your partners feelings and aren't thinking about your partner is an absolute problem in itself.
Just because you are pissed off at someone does not give you the right to say hurtful things. I know MANY people have said things that they regret (and that is a BIGGER problem). On the other hand, I have not ever done this (it is true) I feel like when you do this you really have been meaning to say that for some time it just came out when you were angry.
I think more people are more consummed with the fact of being right versus the discussion on the table.
I hate those nights. And I know just what you mean about the restlessness. But right now I'm in a different kind of insomnia: I wake repeatedly through the night, maybe every hour or half hour, then fall back asleep only to repeat the cycle. It's been a week or more since I got a good night of sleep. No doubt we are both tired today!
As to the question, I find both kinds of hurt to be both unquestionably offensive and yet forgiveable. In my marriage, I am often the unintentionally hurtful one. And I do agree with and understand your reasoning. So I offer this as explanation and not excuse. In my case, I was raised to be somewhat self-centered and selfish (the youngest sibling of a family raised in an attitude of entitlement). I am incredibly perceptive when it comes to other people (more so than my 3 older siblings) and yet still not when it comes to my husband. I often cannot predict what will hurt him. And with being selfish on top of that it happens that I cause pain more often than I like. Our marriage sort of revolves around me (both as his preference and mine.)
I find my apologies when I've done so fall on deaf ears and I think I know why. Lacking intent with the offense, I think my apology then lacks sincerity. It's a weakness. I think I'm just incapable. So often I am asking him to forgive me simply for being myself? I can only change so much and with a somewhat volatile partner, it is difficult to predict what might offend.
And no, I am not saying this is like your situation. Again, just offering my own perspective and you can determine what applies and does not.
This is a rambling comment from a tired brain. But I hope you can get something out of it.
Hugs and here's hoping you sleep better tonight.
This is a very interesting question. As Kyra cogently points out above, intentional harm and unintentional harm have something in common: they both hurt, and both should be unacceptable to either partner.
Intentional harm and unintentional harm are painful for different reasons, however.
Intentional harm adds to an injury the sense that a partner knows what is painful to you -- and chose to do it anyway. This adds an extra layer of grief, and often fear, to the original harm. When someone close to us harms us intentionally, our private world now takes on a sense of danger.
Unintentional harm is painful because one of the fundamental things many of us want out of a relationship is to be known. It's unsettling to realize that a partner does not know or has forgotten something central about you, something that you believe they should know. It's painful because it may make us feel that our importance to them has been diminished. Sometimes we are sad because we feel we were more important to our partner in the past than we are today, or worse, we feel that we are so unimportant to our partner that it may invalidate our very relationship (how can you call it a marriage if one partner feels the other is unimportant to their life)?
My personal experience is that my interpretation of someone's behavior is often more painful to me than the behavior itself. It's not about what they said or did, it's about what I think it means.
If I find myself more angry about my interpretation than the thing itself, it often means that I am having an outsize reaction to an incident. I'm often reacting just as much to a painful memory from the past as I am to the present situation. He's pushing my buttons, yes -- but the button itself was installed years and years ago, and often not even by him.
Whether he pushed it on purpose or brushed up against it by accident makes no difference, in the end. I do need to tell him where the buttons are, and ask him not to push them, because although I can diminish my response, it's clear that some buttons are never gonna be uninstalled.
Now, final note: You might get the impression that I think you're overreacting, or that it's "all in your head." Absolutely not. I'm not there and I can't know, and furthermore, what I do know gives me the impression that you're a very practical woman. It's just that I feel whether an issue is "real" or "just feelings" is not the right question. Your feelings are part of you, and they should command respect.
I think it definitely is a mars/venus thing, but I also think you are right. When someone hurts you because they are not thinking about you can sometimes make it more hurtful. I realized at one point that as a wife and a mother I was almost lost underneath other people's needs - I felt invisible. Feeling that someone does not even care enough to realize what will hurt you certainly adds to those feelings...
Helen is way smarter than me. So I agree with everything she has said.
I do think, however, the actual hurtful thing itself (it's nature, in other words) does count for something. Is it something that, tables turned, would be hurtful to him? Or is it something that would roll off his back and that he might not even notice? Maybe it is a Mars/Venus thing here... seems like (to generalize grossly) we manly men just aren't as (oh god he's gonna use the "s" word) sensitive about some things as our womanly woman cohort are. Tell me my ass looks fat in these jeans and I'll shake it right up in your face.
That said, I personally think that the most important thing you can be towards a lover/spouse (or a friend, for that matter) is thoughtful. By that standard, even things that are unintentionally hurtful break Hoodies #1 rule (that would, of course, be "first, be thoughtful")
I think the whole question of "excusable or not?" comes at it from the wrong angle. Look at it this way: suppose you accidentally step on your loved one's foot in a really, really painful way. It's a complete accident -- you had absolutely no intention of doing it. And yet your loved one is now in excruciating pain. Are you going to give a rat's ass what's excusable? No, you're going to say "OMG, sweetheart, are you all right? Is there something I can do? Here, let me take a look ... can I kiss it and make it all better?" And so on.
At least, that's what I try to do when I say something that inadvertently hurts Wife ... or, these days, D. I didn't always. Time was, I used to get caught up in the whole self-exculpatory routine of whining, "Well I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, so why are you getting all bent out of shape? Geez, you're being irrational!" Somehow this only made things worse. (Big surprise, huh?)
It is precisely because that routine always made it worse that I finally learned to cut it out. Oh, there are plenty of times I still feel like it. Nobody likes being at fault, so it is almost overpoweringly tempting to try to excuse myself. But I just force myself to pretend I stepped on her toes instead, and to react the way I would then. I have no idea if it's "fair" or "right" but I think there are times that it really doesn't matter. By my lights, this sort of situation is one of them.
Your mileage may vary ....
@ ChocDrop - Your comments remind me of something my mother used to say, which is absolutely true: Any time you win an marital argument, chances are you lost even more.@ Kyra - This was not all my husband's fault, I just needed to vent, but your point about an apology not being sincere hit the nail on the head. I think that is truly what made the situation worse.
I hope you are sleeping better now.
@ Helen - Wow! Are you actually a therapist named Kathleen? You seemed to hit all of my issues perfectly.
...one of the fundamental things many of us want out of a relationship is to be known... It's painful because it may make us feel that our importance to them has been diminished... I find myself more angry about my interpretation than the thing itself...@ Kimberly - Exactly.
@ hoodie - I love your rule #1! (and I think I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you your ass looks fat in those jeans. ;-) )
@ hosea - I love your stepping on toes analogy. I am going to try to remember it when I hurt my DH. I love your perspective.
ROFL. Oh, god, no -- I'm such a basket case! I'm definitely on the business end of the couch.
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