There’s a funny little requirement some people have for women talking about their difficult marriages: before you explain what hurt you, please establish that you’ve also been a pain in the ass.
Friend, I can provide references. Can we get to my point now?
What bothers me is how easily the conversation gets stuck there. A woman starts explaining something that took her years to understand, and suddenly she’s defending whether she has the right to be upset at all. By the time she’s finished proving she’s considered everybody’s feelings, we’ve barely talked about hers.
I think that lands with a lot of us because we’ve done it privately, too. I’ve caught myself adding so much context about why my husband did something that I practically talked myself out of being hurt by it. Being fair to him mattered to me. But somewhere in all that explaining, I needed to be fair to myself, too.
So yes, we can talk about my part. Let’s just make sure we actually get around to the rest of the marriage.
Have you ever told someone what was happening in your relationship and ended up defending why you were hurt? What did they say?
