{"id":32223,"date":"2024-03-29T23:00:47","date_gmt":"2024-03-29T23:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/?p=32223"},"modified":"2024-04-06T13:23:53","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T13:23:53","slug":"benefit-of-the-doubt-partners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/benefit-of-the-doubt-partners\/","title":{"rendered":"Benefit of the Doubt: Partners"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Do you ever feel like the people you love the most get the absolute worst of you?<\/strong> You\u2019re busy all day long giving your best to whatever is in front of you and by the time you get home, you\u2019ve got precious little left in the tank. You can\u2019t wait to not be \u201con\u201d anymore. You\u2019re with your people, you\u2019re in your safe place, you\u2019re in comfy clothes. It\u2019s time to relax. This is not an easy time to summon the motivation to give your partner the benefit of the doubt. They are not perfectly attuned to your inner state and are probably tapped out too. It\u2019s inevitable that misses will happen and it\u2019s easy to assume the worst.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"Let\u2019s say you get home and the sink is full of dishes. You\u2019ve had this conversation before. You\u2019ve had a long day and you\u2019re tired. You often feel like you care more than your partner about having a tidy house. This would be an easy moment to jump to conclusions about why there are dishes in the sink. \u201cShe cares more about relaxing than about me.\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s never listens.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s lazy. If I want a clean house, it\u2019s all up to me and I get no help at all.\u201d There may be a kernel of truth in any of these. It may be that you have a dynamic where your spouse sometimes tunes you out, or it may be that you carry the lion\u2019s share of the work around the house or that cleanliness is a higher priority for you. However, if you jump straight to these judgments, you\u2019re likely creating a big surge of anger and resentment for yourself and cutting off access to a productive solution for either of you. It\u2019s usually not the message we have to deliver, but how we deliver it that sets the stage for healthy communication. And, our delivery is far more likely to yield the results we want if we\u2019re coming from a place of curiosity and the benefit of the doubt than if we\u2019re coming in hot, conclusions already drawn.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"ManWhat if you tried this instead: Rather than making a judgement about your partner\u2019s character flaws or care for you, can you get curious or creative with your assessment of the situation<\/strong>? The dishes didn\u2019t get done; I wonder what went wrong? Maybe she\u2019s not feeling well? Maybe it was a rough day? Maybe he thought he had more time before I walked through the door?\u00a0 Even if you can\u2019t get all the way to a more generous interpretation of your partner\u2019s actions, simply admitting what your assumptions are can be helpful. \u201cI\u2019m making up a whole story in my head about why the dishes aren\u2019t done. Can you explain what happened or talk me down?\u201d Or, \u201cI\u2019m reacting like this because I\u2019m feeling like the dishes somehow mean you don\u2019t care about me or you\u2019re trying to spite me. Am I right?\u201d Just introducing the possibility that your assumption may not be true can de-escalate the whole situation.<\/p>\n\n

The dishes in the sink may still need to be addressed, but resisting the impulse to draw sweeping conclusions about why your partner didn\u2019t follow through and what that means about them as a person and your relationship as a whole leaves you open to problem solving and empathy rather than judgment and stonewalling<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

Curiosity can minimize your distress while you figure out what\u2019s really going on.<\/p>\n

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Do you ever feel like the people you love the most get the absolute worst of you? You\u2019re busy all day long giving your best to whatever is in front of you and by the time you get home, you\u2019ve got precious little left in the tank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32223"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32287,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32223\/revisions\/32287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteford.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}