Transcript
Ibinye : Hello, and welcome back to the Better Marriage Podcast with Rafi and Ivy. Today, we're going to be talking about giving your spouse the benefit of the doubt.
Ibinye : This is a big one, right?
Raffi Bilek: Well, this is super good.
Ibinye : Yes.
Raffi Bilek: Yeah, I mean, this this comes up all the time. and this will definitely, measurably increase the goodness in your relationship if you can pull this off consistently.
Ibinye : Yes. You have to know who your spouse is, right? You have to, I like to tell people, go back to why you guys were attracted to each other. Go back to why you even care about your spouse, why you love your spouse, who your spouse is at their core and focus on that in the difficult moments. Like, you know, the heart that they have. So focus on that before everything else.
Raffi Bilek: Yeah, if there's a difficult situation, you're fighting whatever else it is to think, you know what, they're really a good person. know, she's generally very nice. he's's He's a very caring person. This is like, it doesn't make sense. They're trying to be mean to me right now. You know, we often think like, oh, my gosh, he's really giving it to me or they they're giving the silent treatment. Like, I don't know. Really? They're a good person.
Raffi Bilek: Think about, you know, if I'm not sure what's happening here, maybe there's a good explanation for it.
Ibinye : Yeah, I like that. Maybe there's a good explanation for this and think of it as a thing of curiosity. All right. So the person that I know is really kind and very warm and very sweet, very loving. But in this moment, he's giving me the silent treatment.
Ibinye : So if I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, so something has to be going on for him to get to this point of shutting down. Let me explore more so that I can understand, so I can reconcile the behavior that's in front of me with the person that I know.
Raffi Bilek: Yeah, like one way to do that is to adopt the mantra. That's strange. Right? You know, if something is going on that you don't like or that doesn't seem to make sense, why would they do that? Hmm, that's strange. Instead of saying yourself, well, they're trying to punish me or they just don't care. Hmm, that's strange. it I know this person. Why would they be doing this?
Ibinye : Yeah. And how you think about your spouse is going to affect how you feel about your spouse going to affect the behavior that you do towards your spouse.
Raffi Bilek: Yeah.
Ibinye : So if you're you're giving them the benefit of the doubt, okay, well, that's a little bit strange because he's very loving and he's very warm. But in this moment, he's appearing very cold. All right, I'm feeling curious. So now I'm going to ask him more questions about what's going on. And the questions are not going to be finger pointing and blaming. Why are you being so mean to me and shutting me out?
Ibinye : The questions are going to be more along the lines of, tell me more about what's going on. What's, what's happening.
Raffi Bilek: Right. So what you're describing there is a pivot from focusing on my feelings to focusing on theirs. Right. If I am upset because the way my spouse is treating me, if I can stop and say, wait a second, I'm thinking about how I'm feeling. Let me think for a second how they're feeling. They must be upset. They must be hungry. They must be preoccupied. Whatever it is, that there's something there. And again, that goes back to the curiosity and the that's strange. where we can try to understand better and then it hurts me less, I am less upset. And again, the the relationship benefits tremendously from that.
Ibinye : Yeah. So coming from a place of empathy sounds like that's what you're saying.
Raffi Bilek: Yeah, yeah. um And I want to bring up another place where this really is really important. to The benefit of the doubt is when something is happening that you're not happy with, like forget about how they're behaving. Let's say they come home late or you know you told them to pick up milk and there's no milk in the fridge.
Raffi Bilek: Right. And you think like, oh, gosh, I told him to pick it up and they always forget. And I and you say to yourself, oh, i know what's going on. Right. You feel very, very confident. you know what's going on. I have been here so many times. I have been in this situation where I'm annoyed at my wife and I was dead sure. I was like, there's no way she's getting out the out of this one. I said that to myself. I said, I know what's happening here. She is wrong. She messed this up and this is her fault and I'm wrong. And I just, it was so clear. And then once, you know, I followed my advice and I waited until later and we talked about it kindly. And once I heard it, heard from her, i was like, ah you know what?
Raffi Bilek: Like, oh, on it I guess it does kind of make sense. And I've been there so, like, I do it the next time also. I'm like, no, but this time I'm sure. and then it turns like, ah ah you know what? Like, i guess I guess that does make sense, right? So your spouse is home late or, you know, they didn't do the homework with their with your kid or whatever it is. There's so many times where you think you understand what's going on, but you don't. You you can't know everything.
Raffi Bilek: You don't know why they're not home yet. Maybe it's traffic. Maybe their phone died, whatever it is. Benefit of the doubt means, you know what? I don't really know what's going on here. Let me hold off before I before i lay into them with why I'm upset.
Ibinye : Give them a chance to tell you what's going on. Give them a chance to explain the circumstances. There is almost always a great explanation for the behavior or the thing that happened, the thing that didn't happen, that was supposed to happen. There's almost always something else that's going on. But think about it this way.
Ibinye : If you just attack a person, they don't even have a chance to explain and tell you. hey, there was an accident on the road and that's why I'm an hour late, but just go into them and just rah, rah, rah, rah.
Raffi Bilek: Yeah.
Ibinye : They can't explain. Now they are shutting down. Now you're arguing and you really don't have a good perspective on what's going on.
Raffi Bilek: It's a fight and it's useless. And we've all been there. It is a useless fight. You can, if you, again, you have to rely on taking a break and not dealing with it in the moment, right? Your spouse comes home. and They're half an hour late. They haven't called. They walk in like nothing happened.
Raffi Bilek: So you say to yourself, that's strange. I'm sure there's some explanation for this. We will talk about it later because you do not want to open up when you're upset about it. And then later that evening, she comes and says to you like, Hey, I'm so sorry. I realized I forgot to tell you. I came home half an hour late because,
Raffi Bilek: You know, there are these aliens that came down on the on the highway and they abducted me and so on so forth, whatever it might be. That is an unlikely explanation and it might come off like an excuse. But the point is that there's probably some explanation that makes more sense than the one I just came up with on the fly.
Ibinye : Yes, yes.
Raffi Bilek: Okay, so the takeaway for today is when you don't know what's going on, and that is almost always you don't know for sure, to yourself, hmm, I wonder if there's another explanation here. And that will, again, smooth out a lot of the wrinkles and a lot of the bumps in your relationships.
Ibinye : love it.
Raffi Bilek: All right, thanks for joining us, folks. See you next week on the Better Marriage Podcast.
