The Wisdom of Ogden Nash

Ogden Nash wrote:

“To keep your marriage brimming,

With love in the loving cup,

Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;

Whenever you’re right, shut up.”

Everyone has a valid point of view. And each person’s point of view has a particular “rightness” to it, given that it is the only point of view a person can have at any particular moment in time. In a relationship, there are at least two points of view. The difficulty in a relationship begins when one person in the relationship holds too tightly onto their point of view as the right point of view. The person has locked onto to his or her point of view as the right one. “I’m right and you’re wrong.”

“I’m right, you’re wrong” is a perspective that creates problems in a relationship. The cost to the couple’s experience of being in relationship can be great. The costs include a loss of affinity, a breakdown in communication, a closing down of self-expression, and a loss of connection. At the moment that “I’m right, you’re wrong” occurs, the experience of “us” disappears. In other words, you can’t be right about being right and have an experience of being lovingly connected to your spouse at the same time.

The world of “right-wrong” creates a world of “me or you.” There is little interest in understanding each other. The problem is that to have a happy and healthy relationship and marriage, this way of being doesn’t work. What works is to be more committed to understanding each other than being right or justified in your point of view or insisting that you both must agree with each other. Having to be right drives a wedge in one’s relationship and fosters disconnection in one’s marriage.

Understanding in a relationship is the real prize; being right is the booby prize. So, what do you do, when you see yourself being right and the quality of your relationship appears to be suffering (e.g., there’s a loss of connection, self-expression, and happiness)? You give up being right. You don’t have to give up your point of view; you just need to give up being attached to your point of view. You give up being right about being right! You very well may have a valid point of view, but holding tightly to it gives you no room to hear or understand your partner’s valid point of view. When you give up your attachment to your point of view, you create room for both points of view to be heard and considered. At that moment, being related to each other occurs powerfully and you can see that you are not your point of view. You simply have one.

Posted in Partnership Marriage