I hear this story retold on a regular basis. The wife is having a hard time with something. She talks through it with her husband. She wants to know she’s not crazy. She truly is not. She wants to figure out whether she’s reading the situation correctly, and it seems plausible given the information presented. The husband seeks to encourage, affirm, and build her up.
She walks away feeling understood, and affirmed, and she now has to go deal with this situation according to what the conclusion requires.
The missing ingredient is that he takes very little time to uncover assumptions, and ask for the fine grained details of the events. He believes her conclusions about how this happened, and what it means. He helps her deal with the reality that represents, without considering whether the path she took to get to that conclusion was full of assumptions, and filled in gaps to the story.
Husbands, we must resist the urge to believe the negative conclusions straight-away.
When someone comes to you distraught, they most often have formed conclusions about something, and these conclusions are riddled with interpretations, and assumptions of events that have transpired. The actual inputs of the situation are nowhere near the level of certainty the person feels. Everyone is very confident in how they perceive and understand the events of a situation. And the more confident a person in general, the less detail they will likely give you because they don’t feel any need for a second opinion about what’s happened. It’s certain. All is lost.
Husbands, we must resist the urge to believe the negative conclusions straight-away.
People in general are prone to interpreting the world according to their fears and insecurities. It’s nearly impossible to get out of that pattern when you’re emotional about something. If you’re nervous that something will be a certain way, and there are events surrounding that thing, you will almost certainly interpret those events to mean what you’re afraid of. It’s easy to assume the worst. It takes no courage.
What our wives need in those moments is a clear, genuine interest in what happened, and questions working backwards from the conclusions. She needs you to dig and uncover the assumptions she’s making. She doesn’t realize she has made those. She needs you to ask questions to hear what the inputs were – the things said, the voices used, the gestures and facial expressions. And she needs you to follow her line of reasoning, and to be able to say “I don’t agree with that conclusion, you’re assuming horrible things about that person”. She needs you to point how that she’s reading her own fears into the situation, and interpreting all the details according to what would validate those fears. She needs to be reminded that we are called to assume the best from those we love. She needs you to point out that there are many possible reasons this could have happened, and that she ought to ask that friend more questions. She needs to be reminded that to assume the worst is no virtue. She needs to do what you’ve done, and she needs to ask honest questions whenever she has assumptions, and fills the story in.
Husbands, let us love our wives well by asking better questions, and lead them to assume the best about the intentions behind the actions of those in their life until they’ve asked enough questions to eliminate the assumptions.
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