I recently had a valuable realization… and yes, that meant I had a very bad day. That’s the joy of my life – the best lessons come out of my worst times. Fortunately, I learned a long time ago that the best thing for healing is to find value in the pain because that makes it easier to let go of any negative feelings toward it (i.e. forgiving). This lesson will first consider a few points I’ve learned awhile ago leading to a new realization that is particularly helpful for understanding why my good intentions are seen as bad and why I can get accused of doing something I’m not.
My wife has frequently criticized me for being too critical of her (that’s fun). Whenever this happens, I’m very confused because I don’t know what she’s talking about. Have you been there? It’s this strange mix of confusion, fear, and hurt: (me) “Why would you think I would I do that?” which is a similar mix of emotions she’s feeling: (wife) “Why would you treat me like that?” (me confused) “I’m not.” The difference between us is she’s the only one directly pointing anything out. These situations are particularly confusing because I would say that I definitely have my criticisms of my wife, but I keep them all stuffed down and pretend they’re not there, you know, like a typical suppressing husband who wants to avoid conflict (it’s a very clever plan). I know if I mention my criticisms nothing good is coming out of that conversation, so… why bother? Of course, as I’ve taught, I will make requests where possible like “Can I make a request? Can you try to… instead of…” I can’t think of a recent example because even those are rare. It’s easier to stuff it all down and hope it magically goes away (it makes me feel manly). My main requests have been (and would continue to be) about my wife being on time and not doing so much for others, but I gave up on that because I know who I married. She’s not changing those things, which means those are requests not worth asking (anymore). I can only do what I can to help what I want to happen, happen. After all, this kind of change is the same as my wife asking me to start liking more exotic types of foods like casseroles, stinky salads, and rice. Maybe “exotic” isn’t the best word to describe rice, but that gives you a better idea of my wife’s frustrations – I’m very food selective. Some things are just what they are (like rice being gross).
As I’ve taught before, we accuse others of doing what we do ourselves (i.e. pots call kettles black), which means if my wife thinks I’m criticizing her, there’s a good chance she’s criticizing me. I learned this is at least sometimes true with her because years ago when our daughter was first learning to use a toilet, we had a little potty by her bed for any late-night needs (you should be able to guess what those are… and snuggling isn’t one of them). We had an unwritten rule that if the potty was left on the bathroom counter, it meant it was clean… or at least I thought that was the rule. The one morning I saw the potty on the counter, and I grabbed it to take back to our daughter’s room… any guess what happened? Grabbing it with a little too much confidence that it was empty, I created a splash zone, and spilled it everywhere. This caused me to exclaim: “Oh, gross. There’s pee everywhere!” You know, a very natural response to having pee go everywhere. Even better, I now have to clean it (no good deed goes unpunished). Hearing my reaction, from the other room, my wife started yelling at me (that’s helpful). Not wanting to escalate the situation, I bit my tongue (and left a mark from biting so hard) as I cleaned up the mess. Leaving the bathroom, I saw my wife and asked, “Did you think I was angry at you or did you think I was angry about spilling pee everywhere?” Her response? She told me she thought I was angry at her – interesting (and crazy). I then asked, “If the roles were reversed, would you have blamed me?” and she said… “Of course.” That makes sense. She assumed I blamed her because she would’ve blamed me, and as I’ve figured out more recently, she yelled at me as a pre-emptive strike in hopes to prevent me from yelling at her. This is a very common defensive move… a very foolish common defensive move. Unfortunately, many times when one person yells, the other person will want to yell back, which leads to a fight. Fortunately, it’s nice to have this kind of understanding to be better prepared for her reactions, but it’s still hard not to want to match her response.
The other reason my wife will accuse me of being critical of her is from my wife being so critical of herself. As I’ve learned (the hard way… as always) this is very normal for most women. Women tend to be harder on themselves than men. (Congratulations for being better?) This connects to women being thoughtful and having the creative acuity to come up with reasons to feel bad when there’s no reason. This follows the idea that women tend to carry more guilt than their partner. Since men tend to be more easygoing and just go with what we’re given, we’re less likely to get upset over little things. We make things work while women are drawn to there being a “right” way to do something and having to do it that way: (wife) “What do you mean you didn’t buy napkins that matched the table cloth?” (guy) “We have a table cloth? Wow, we’re going all out tonight.” If my wife is being hard on herself, it makes sense she’ll assume I’m doing the same thing when, typically, my main concern is two-fold: not getting in trouble and not wasting time or energy on things that don’t matter.
A third option for why my wife thinks I’m critical of her is the way I’m talking, in general, is coming out more critical than I realize. This is a possibility, especially since I’ve found myself getting grumpier as I’ve gotten older. A lot of women will see their husband being grumpy and she will spin that to be he’s upset with her, but it’s just grumpiness. This is ultimately a risk for all good people because we want to see someone happy and if they’re not, our brain will go straight to “What am I doing wrong?” when most times it’s not about you. It’s just a bad day/season. We need to work at letting people have their emotions: “It’s not me; it’s Mr. Grumpy Pants having grumpy pants full of grumpiness.” After all, in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves no one was offended by Grumpy being grumpy. He was doing what was expected – being Grumpy.
A current tough day led to a whole new idea of what might be going on to add to my wife’s interpreting me as being critical when I didn’t understand why she’d see me that way. 2026 has not started out kind to me and two months in I found myself having another conversation where my wife accused me of being critical. This time she suggested that maybe I’m not critical like she claims; maybe I’m just very negative about her. I give my wife credit; she was trying to better understand the situation, but from my perspective isn’t being negative about the other person and being critical the same thing? Fortunately, I know in brainstorming sometimes what can seem like the dumbest ideas end up leading to the best idea. That’s why using the improv tool of “Yes and” is so important in brainstorming – you accept what’s given to you and then see where you can take it. You’re not dumb for giving a dumb idea; you’re only dumb for pursuing dumb ideas.
Fortunately, my wife’s idea led me to a new thought. I had been working with this really awesome couple, and we recently concluded their main issue is rooted in a simple problem: They both see the other person as talking down to them. An exercise I like to use shows three stick figures, a small, medium, and large. I showed this to my wife, and pointed out how the big person sees themselves as superior and talks down to the smaller people (there’s more to it, but that’s the basic point). I added I think the problem is she sees me as being the big person talking down to her while I feel like the small person trying to be good enough for her, the big person. It was interesting how surprised she was to hear me put her in the big person spot. To me this should’ve been a no-brainer, however, because she’s heard me talk about how guys typically have to peacock and prove themselves to win the girl over, which is why there are songs like Tal Bachman’s “She’s so Higgghhhh above me”. In long-term relationships, guys are generally more easygoing/lazy, but we still want to make the wife happy, so how could I be in the big spot? She then insisted that I must be wrong because it was definitely me as the big person. This follows how she saw me at the beginning of our relationship. Because I was older and working on a Masters Degree (getting three of those degrees didn’t help), she felt smaller than me while I was trying to peacock to win her approval. 20 years later she still has this misperception where she chooses to see me as the big person when I’m not doing anything in my eyes to suggest that.
In a stereotypical modern-day household, if the wife thinks something, she’s sharing that something even if it’s to tell the guy he needs to dress better, eat healthier, or lose a few pounds. Women are socially allowed to be more honest. Meanwhile, when the husband thinks something, there’s a really good chance that’s being stuffed down and ignored in hopes of avoiding conflict. Why? Because we can’t win. Women are better with words and/or attacks because just a woman’s look of disgust can crush a good man (emphasis on good). Women are also the gatekeeper of sex – that’s a big one. What does a guy have against her: “Well, I guess I’m not taking out the garbage later.” Oooohhh what power we hold. In my house, my wife makes the cookie dough… she has the power, yet somehow, she sees me as the big person.
Fortunately, this path of thinking led to my new conclusion: My wife confuses me having an opinion with being critical. As her equal in the relationship, I should be allowed to have a different opinion, but to her, that’s not being supportive. After all, if I understood her, I would naturally agree with her. Unfortunately, just because I understand her doesn’t mean I’m going to always agree with her. I’m allowed to say, “You need to cut back on how generous you are,” and she’s allowed to say, “No, I don’t.” We’re allowed different opinions. My wife isn’t alone in this. It’s a cultural problem: “If you don’t agree with me; you must hate me.” The healthy approach is to hear a different opinion and learn from it whether it leads to a new idea or strengthening our own belief: “As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.” (Pro 27:17)
I’ve been watching According to Jim off and on over the last year, and because of our conversations, it jumped out at me that this family (I know they’re not real) will have different opinions and they’ll even get angry at each other. The difference is they always come back together and affirm their love for one another. This is a good reminder that love means perseverance. Maybe part of the problem with our culture is we’ve stopped watching family sitcoms where people get over their junk and work things out in short periods of time. Instead, we watch these intense shows where people are super mean and/or evil and everyone dies or ends up against each other. If we have shows like this it makes sense people will start seeing life this way – I’m good and you’re the bad guy. Or maybe it’s not about being the good one, but the victim. This definitely seems to be happening more often in families than I remember as a kid, especially with in-laws.
What’s the answer? We’ll get into that next time… as this will be continued.
This week may you consider how people are allowed to have different opinions.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)
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