“Every couple in their daily life together messes up communication, and every marriage has a dark side. It seems that what may matter the most is the ability to repair things when they do go wrong” – John Gottman.
By “repair”, Gottman is talking about the ability of both or either of the partners to do or say something that either breaks the tension or leads to a resolution of the negative emotion that the issue has created. Only when negative emotions have been dispelled will a couple have the opportunity to resolve the issue itself.
And Dr. Wayne Dyer would often say that one of the things that helped him the most was having the thought “do I want to be right or do I want to be kind?”
That’s not to say that we ignore bad behaviour or condone something serious that our partner has done that we need to address but it does mean that in the course of daily life it is always better to pick being kind. It is even more important to pick being happy as opposed to being right.
