Last week friend of mine said something stupid and I proved him wrong. I wish someone stopped me before we started arguing and reminded me the Carnegie's advice I've read few years back but was ignoring all the time.
Yeah - I have to resist this urge with my wife sometimes. Internally I'm saying "YES YOU CAN TOO MAKE A BATTERY OUT OF A POTATO! I'M GOING TO LOOK IT UP AND SHOW YOU!!"
But really, it's way more important to get along and be happy than to prove I'm right about something that doesn't matter. (I still say it, but refrain from proving it.)
Wife was having trouble with a financials spreadsheet from work, and asked me to help out. I took a look, and although I didn't know the actual content, it was clear to me what the kind of error must be, and how to correctly design a spreadsheet so that such errors are easily identifiable.
She said she didn't know that the incoming data might be problematic; I replied that one must always treat all inputs as untrusted. She said that XYZ gave it to her; I said be defensive against bad data even if I give it to you.
Anyway... the whole thing turned into a conflict, when I could have just said "I'm glad I could help you this time".
This is not a case of inaccuracy. This is a case of you accusing her of being the problem and her defending herself. How could that not lead to an argument?
Because he's not accusing her of being the problem, he's accusing her current behaviour of being poor and improvable. A case of accusing the sin, not the sinner, if you like. It's not an attack on her, they can both gang up together and attack the behaviour that leads to those errors.
That was pretty much it. That and the idea, mentioned elsewhere, that when something is wrong it just has to be fixed. She's my wife, I know she's a smart lady and has every potential of doing this well. If I could just show her a better way, how wonderful the world would be.
I feel guilty, my married life isn't like that. My unmarried life, ironically, was frequently like that. I believe my wife just came to accept certain annoying parts of my personality, like I accepted annoying parts of hers. She accepted sci-fi, I accepted chick-flicks and certain reality TV programs.
My wife now frequently turns to me when she hears "facts", I've become a sort of a content filter for facts and trivia; not to mention an encyclopaedia too. I've still got to teach her a true understanding of the universe and our solar system, but I learnt all that by being a sci-fi nerd from when my dad showed me Star Wars at like 3. I've literally got almost two decades on her on that front.
Smart phones help, but it is very regular for people to argue a point without having any citations to back themselves up. I'm guilty of this too.
What it has lead to is that I will often cede the point for the time being, I will then look up the relevant literature and either bring it up the next time I'm with the person or send them the link. I try to do this even if I'm wrong.
I'm sure it doesn't help me come off as sociable, but I like to contribute to the spread of fact-based discussion which we have so little of these days.
