My wife got home from a day at the beach with our daughter.  She started looking for her camera because she had taken a lot of pictures and she couldn’t find it anywhere.  She called her friends that she was with to see if they had it, to no avail.  She was getting more and more upset because she had so many pictures on the camera.  She said it must have been stolen on the subway. 

He said: “Serves you right for being careless”.

She said: “Can’t you see I’m upset?  Why are you trying to make me feel worse?”

He said: “I’m not trying to make you feel worse, but this kind of thing doesn’t happen to me”.                                                                                       

She said: “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”                      

Clearly this was not intended to make her feel better, and it didn’t.  Not only was she upset about losing the camera, which she subsequently found in the hall as it had dropped when she was looking for the keys to open the front door, but she was hurt and upset that he sat there with a stone-faced expression rubbing salt into the wound.

This does not paint a pretty picture of his behavior, but he is human, and no one gets it right all the time.  The question is: how do you deal with the damage?                     

It is often difficult to take a step back when you are in the moment, but it is useful to make the effort when the storm dies down to take a step back and think about your reaction.  Put yourself in your partner’s shoes and ask yourself how it would feel to be on the receiving end of your behavior.  If you realize that it was hurtful, apologize.  It’s not easy sometimes, but it’s so important to recognize and acknowledge that what you did was hurtful and find a way to repair.

By David B. Younger, Ph.D