There is an old adage in law that you take your victims as you find them, which means that if you negligently knock an old lady down and she breaks a hip, you don’t get the excuse of she was an old lady and had fragile hips, i.e. anybody else would be fine ergo I shouldn’t be held liable for the broken hip, but only for the bruise a normal person would have suffered.
In relationships this comes out to you have to own the effect of your words, and not excuse yourself by saying “that’s not what I meant.” You said something that was possibly merely taken out of context, but it caused pain and you have to own that, you have to take your victims as you find them and excusing your behavior by saying “you know I didn’t mean that” or “nobody else would react this way,” or any other variation on that theme that places the blame for the bad feelings that have arisen on the person feeling them.
Intent is one thing, effect is another. If you make a joke, and it not only falls flat on it’s face but comes across as sarcastic and mean, whether you intended to be sarcastic and mean is really secondary to the person who is feeling the sting of your words.
It’s sort of like saying “fuck you” and following it with the old sardonic disclaimer of “I mean that in the best possible sense of the word.” It’s funny when we attempt to soft pedal a clearly unintended and gratuitous insult, but it is not productive when we attempt to back away and disclaim responsibility for unintentional hurt.
Imagine you are carrying a ladder on your shoulder and as you turn you inadvertently clock your beloved in the head with the end of the ladder hanging out behind you. If you want, you may stand there with the ladder and say, “It serves you right you stupid git. You should have seen I had the ladder and anticipated that I would turn. At the very least you should have ducked, now get up and stop bleeding on the carpet.”
The great thing about blaming the other person for being concussed is that it means that you don’t have to examine your behavior, whether it was reasonable to be carrying the ladder that way, whether you turned too quickly, whether you should have said something before you turned, whether if, in all actuality, you didn’t care if you hurt her or if maybe even, at some dark uncaring level, you wanted to.
Or you can put the ladder down and say, “My god, are you all right? Let me help you.”
In relationships this means the better man, when he realizes that he has stepped in it takes responsibility. He takes ownership. He might say “Clearly what I said hurt you, and I apologize for that pain.” And if he’s really good, he might start a dialogue, (“tell me more”) but if he’s getting better at the very least he revisits the circumstances of the conversation in his mind and does a bit of self-analysis, examining his remarks for any passive/aggressive basis. The better man will mark for future reference the effect of what he said, recognizing that it is a soft spot for his wife and treading carefully there. The better man will note that sarcasm is at best veiled anger, and maybe next time he’ll avoid an unintentional hurt.
Now there are those among you who are saying, “Hunt, c’mon, she’s hyper-sensitive,” and you may be right, you know your wife better than I do and you may be 100% tap dead center on this, but here we are back at the premise: you take your victims as you find them. Your wife might be oversensitive, but you are not going to make friends and endear her to you by telling her. You are going to come across is insensitive, uncaring, and possibly mean and then you are going to sit around and wonder why she doesn’t want to have sex with you. Admit it: you’ve tried it that way and it hasn’t worked. Try something new. Try a different approach.
Try coming back to her after she has cooled off and saying “If you have a moment, I’d like to share something with you. I’ve been thinking about what I said about Mother Teresa and I realized that what I said hurt you, and that’s not the man I want to be. I realize I can’t take it back, I can’t un-say, I can’t un-hurt, but I want you to know I’m sorry for the pain I caused you and I’m going to be more intentional, and more careful, about the way I communicate with you.”
By saying this you haven’t blamed her, but neither have you swallowed your man-hood and become a beta-male. All you’ve done is acknowledge that what you said caused her pain (true) and that you don’t want to do that in the future (true) and you are going to work on it (hopefully true.) You haven’t said she was right, you haven’t said that she can control how you talk. You’ve simply owned your part of what happened.
And in time, she will own her part, but you’ve got to lead if you want anyone to follow.
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