Yeah, that was bothering me, too.

Sometimes the auto spelling goes berserk.


Reheating a petite dead woman sounds .... Ummmmmm.... Messy.

*ding*

"Hey, your Mother Teresa is ready!"

Bwhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Aaa
A

Well I think a valuable discussion has ensued from your questions. I've had to vocalize my thoughts on intentions and behavior so I know I have benefited.

I hope you don't feel offended... it wasn't my intent

If you feel the need to bow out, do so, but I think this was a helpful conversation.

Mark, I will say that I liked the comparison you made at first for the 3 differences. Even though there is a broken arm in all 3, I would respect the person i the first one much more than the others.

My point in all this though had nothing to do with any form of physical harm. More to do with emotionally hurting something by words that we use. Sometimes we say things that are not meant to hurt, we don't realize how the other person is going to react to them. Its unintentinoaly, and yet they are hurt. We don't try and repeat this, but we don't always know how people will respond.

is there an embarrassed smiley?

And effects on the brain are as real as a broken arm. They can even be measured with appropriate devices. They are not something that you can just do away with by telling yourself "he didn't mean it."

Emotional harm is a real physical harm in the brain.

I agree with this.

We know in general what will hurt our spouse from our past interactions. We know to avoid obviously hurtful actions (LBers included once we learn to recognize them).

However, we must accept that there is a realm of behavior which we do not know the consequences of. We have to be aware that behavior within this realm MAY hurt our spouse.

I fully agree with you here.

When we do so, the answer isn't to beat ourselves up, it isn't to convince our spouse they need to consider our intent. When we hurt our spouse we fix the problem. We stop what was painful, we apologize.

Would you agree that the person that takes you to the emergency room after breaking your arm would garner even more respect? That person would make a Love Bank deposit in that situation.

See the problem I'm having with focusing on intent in marriage is that good intent can lead to some painful love busters. On the offender's side they can be motivated by the good intent of making their spouse's life better, and they fall into the trap of DJing and SDing. But their intent is good.

On the offended party's side, we may be tempted to let hurtful behavior slide because we know there were good intentions involved, further damaging the relationship by allowing hurtful behavior into it unchecked.

Intent is meaningless unless coupled with action.

Wish I'd said that...
So much bandwidth.
So little time.

All those wise words yet she can't find the embarrassed smiley.......

Not2fun

Not to the offending party they don't.........

And when the offender keeps circling back to their intentions, all you are really saying to the offendee is that their feelings are unreal or at best minimizing them. That does nothing in making good deposits in the LB......

It matters not what our intentions were, it matters how we correct them.......

Not

Sometimes I think that physical harm and pain is easier to deal with. It can be very difficult to prove emotional harm to your spouse. But emotional harm does just as much damage as physical harm. Been on both sides of emotional abuse, giving and receiving. Our words are very powerful. I am trying to clean up my side but still can't convince H that how he says things (Not what, but how) can mean the difference between abuse and not abuse. Ex. "You are such a jacka**" (abuse), versus, "You behaved like a jacka** when you yelled at the old woman on the plane because her bag had been placed above your seat". (True story. Not my words, words of our long past marriage counselor)

"You shouldn't be angry, I'm only a little bit late" (for the 100th time). After the 100th time intention is completely lost, it is the action that sends the message.

Intention only lasts so long and only goes so far. Action is what matters. Good intentions can destroy a relationship and the trust in a relationship. I meant to be home on time, I meant to get the milk, I meant to pay that bill, I meant to schedule the plumber... I meant and meant and meant but without actions, meant is just hot air. Meant changes absolutely nothing. Meant destroys trust and love.

Thanks for posting this.
Good points made!

Maybe I missed this somewhere, but I don't think the original point of the article was to say intentions don't matter. I think it had a general point to make. Good intentions don't eliminate an injury, aren't a substitute for an apology, and those two things are true regardless of whether there was physical or emotional injury.

I didn't take this as some deep philosophical point. More like it's a good rule of thumb to apologize and try not to do it again when you hurt your spouse.