Tim’s wife was on a rampage the whole weekend. Nothing pleased her and there was nothing he could do right in her eyes.
She criticized everything he said and insulted his intelligence and his manhood multiple times.
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“Well if I can’t take you at your worst, maybe you shouldn’t be so fucking horrible.”
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When he finally told her to knock it off or prepare to spend the weekend alone, she said, “Look, if you can’t take me at my worst you don’t deserve me at my best.”
Tim had the best reply I’ve ever heard to that ridiculous old trope.
He said, “Well, if I can’t take you at your worst, maybe you shouldn’t be so fucking horrible.”
She gave him a scowl as he left for the day, free to do whatever made him happy.
♦◊♦
Horrible is a Choice
Obviously, this applies to everyone. Both women and men get to choose how horrible or how well they behave and treat each other.
The expectation that your partner should accept your worst behavior in order to experience your best behavior is, at best, simply juvenile.
At its worst it’s emotional blackmail.
And what’s worse is this notion of enduring each other’s tantrums is supported by some popular marriage counseling advice.
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Using our childhood wounds as a perpetual pass for explosive, childish and destructive behavior is the perfect recipe for a miserable, mediocre relationship.
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The explanation for bad behavior is attributed to unhealed childhood wounds that are triggered within the relationship.
Some experts claim the best relationships include mutual understanding and empathy for each other’s wounds. And if we just nurture each other and avoid rubbing salt in those wounds we can find our way back to those trusting, loving, mushy-mushy feelings of love and connection.
I don’t disagree with the theory or the sentiment. It just sets the bar awfully low.
None of us is perfectly adjusted and we do slip up every now and then. But using our childhood wounds as a perpetual pass for explosive, childish and destructive behavior is the perfect recipe for a miserable, mediocre relationship.
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They focus on celebrating their personal growth instead of rationalizing their personal dysfunction.
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The best relationships I’ve seen don’t make excuses for bad behavior.
These partners feel personally accountable to their own high standards of behavior and consistently support their shared values for the relationship. They have a powerful vision of what their relationship stands for and they don’t screw around making excuses when they fuck up.
In other words, they choose to become healthy people in a healthy relationship. They focus on celebrating their personal growth instead of rationalizing their personal dysfunction.
Which relationship would you rather be in?
♦◊♦
What to do if You’re in Tim’s Shoes
While I write for the Tim’s of the world, this advice applies to everyone.
If you are in a miserable, mediocre, dysfunctional relationship you must first decide if you want something better.
Yes?
Next step. You’re going to need to be better.
Why?
Because there’s a 99.7 percent chance that the dysfunction has taken a toll on you. You’ve succumbed to the role of the victim and now treat the emotional explosions and horrible behavior as normal.
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Without a clear picture of who you want to be, what you want and where you are going you are doomed.
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And your normal response has become food for the dysfunction. You either avoid her, attack her or throw your own tantrums. This virtually guarantees that your crappy relationship will never change and you will never emerge from this situation as a healthy person.
Again, you’re going to need to be better. This means getting clear about who you want to be and what you really want for your life. You need to have a vision of your future so powerful it makes you want to cry. The power of this vision needs to outweigh the fear of changing what you’ve got now.
Without a clear picture of who you want to be, what you want and where you are going you are doomed. Even if this relationship ends today you’re still doomed because you’re already programmed to create another one just like it.
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The Best Case Scenario
Some men think if they change themselves the best case scenario is their wife makes drastic changes and their marriage is saved from doom.
That is not the best case scenario.
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You don’t require her to lick your wounds because now you can lick your own.
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And thinking that is the measure of your success is exactly what will make you a failure. This puts focus on things over which you have no control. You cannot depend on her changes or the outcome of your marriage. Depending on the outcome will sabotage your efforts to make any true changes in yourself as they will all be conditional changes.
What you need are non-negotiable changes in yourself.
The best case scenario is that you become a calm, confident, deliberate, clear headed man. You now know your long-term happiness is in your hands no matter what your wife chooses and no matter what happens to your marriage.
You’ve emerged from victim status. You’ve developed higher standards for what it means to be a man and you operate in a stronger, more consistent frame of how you think, speak and behave.
You’ve mastered your own wounds and your own patterns of dysfunction. You don’t require her to lick your wounds because now you can lick your own. And in the face of emotional explosions and attacks from others you respond with a quiet, calm strength.
How was this possible?
You lost the fear of change.
You saw a future much more appealing than the status quo.
And you made a bold decision to change the course of your life forever.
♦◊♦
I just released Straight Talk Tools for the Desperate Husband on Amazon. This book will help you to lead yourself and your relationship back to good health.Understand why your partner acts the way she does toward you and learn how to lead your life in the direction you want it to go.
And go HERE for my free ebook The Hard to Swallow Secret to Saving Your Marriage.
Photo: WHITETRASHCARCLUB/Flickr
Good article. Thanks Steve.
You’re welcome, Jonathan. Glad you found it helpful.
Great column as always Steve. I would note that I met a couple of nice guys through online dating, both coming out of bad relationships. By the tone of their voices and the nature of their interaction, realized that all/most of their communications heretofore with women (or at least significant others) involved women complaining/criticizing/objecting. I realized that they had probably done what my dad had done with my toxic mother, i.e., accommodate her assuming that would improve the situation. It won’t. Toxic people are toxic people. I finally screwed up the courage to tell one, “Do you know how defensive… Read more »
Hey Big Fan, thanks for sharing your story! Would this be MH from Boulder by any chance?
No One should be held to higher standards than their partner is also willing to meet. But the common cannon for relationships in current american society has been warped by those sayings, happy wife/happy life, if you can’t handle my worst…. etc. There currently seems to be an accepted set aside for women’s emotional acting out…..the kind of thing that was once only grudgingly accepted from toddlers that don’t know better yet. Not healthy for anyone involved or even witnessing this behavior.
Hey Trey,
“No One should be held to higher standards than their partner is also willing to meet.”
Except for your own standards we have for ourselves. We get to set our own expectations – those things we expect OF ourselves and those things we expect FOR ourselves.
When we choose to own and enforce our own values and boundaries, we’re no longer victims of someone else’s choices or behavior. We are ultimately in control of our circumstances.
Thanks for your comment!
Held to by others….. Internal control is fine ….external expectations placed on men without equal expectations on their partners leads to abusive controlling behaviors by those partners…. way more common today than this culture will admit to. Missing is the acceptance that men are abused in relationships as often as women are….. as a culture we are not yet ready to drop the damaging “sugar and spice” beliefs. Men need to step up for themselves…. definitely…. But our culture also needs changing, so the abused men don’t need to deal with social stigma over being abused.