One key that I think will help, based on your earlier posts in this thread:

Separate two issues:
* what should the offender do?
* what should the offendee do? (the wounded person)

This thread is addressed to the offender.

The offendee might do well to realize that it is human nature to defend ourselves and offer "but"s, etc. But that belongs on a thread for the offendee.

The offender is probably not married to a saint who will do that kind of a perfect and self-sacrificial job, anyway.

So what if one is better than the other? It doesn't change the fact that the hurt has been caused. It doesn't change the fact that to alleviate the hurt compassion must be given. It doesn't change the fact that in order to avoid future hurt behavior must be changed.

The hurt may be a bit less, knowing it wasn't intentional. But it still exists and must be addressed.

If pain is caused intentionally and persistently then that would be abuse. If pain is caused unintentionally and persistently it is still abuse.

It is not abuse when the behavior is stopped. When restitution is made. These things have nothing to do with intent.

Too often intent is used as a crutch to avoid change in behavior.

If you had good intent to repair my car and in the process accidentally crossed some electrical wires under the hood and set it ablaze, I wouldn't be all, "Oh, that's okay, I know you meant well."

I'd want you to replace my flipping car.

Thank you for that example CWMI.

Maybe I just try and look past the bad in people and try to only find the good. We all have negatives to our personality, how much good do you counteract with that? I know I am not perfect, I accept my faults (hoping others will as well, and move on. Expecting someone to try and work towards perfection, just doesn't seem practical.

And yes, I would expect the car to be fixed, mistakes are made, nobody is perfect.

beth, you sound like you're saying that you don't think the negatives should even be mentioned if there's positives. Is that what you intend?

My DS3 at the time tried to repair a dent in a friends car with a biro.


We obvioulsy offered to pay for a respray but the friends said no it wasn't necessary. They sort of polished out (a ring all around the car, as well as the scribble over the dent). And we offered again since the polishing became sort of unpolished.

The friends are still very very good friends but they accepted that DS was only trying to help and that his intentions were good.

Surely this is a much better way to get on in the world - life is too short. It is up to the hurt person whether they want any recompense.

If you innocently cause damage when you think you are helping then surely if you do cause damage you are naturally sorry - after all you were trying not to cause damage in the first place???

You don't have to be perfect. No one is saying that.

You have to just be better. Today I don't hope to be the perfect wife, just better than I was yesterday. Sometimes I'll mess up and be worse. If I lean back on the safety net of intent I'll be tempted to let bad days slide... Indefinitely.

My intent must be backed by action.

Mother Theresa isn't respected as a good person because she WANTED to do good, but because she DID good

I agree with you sbethCO, but examine the behavior as the limit approaches infinity.

Do you see a difference between these two situations:
* someone hurts you once, but never does it again
* someone hurts you once, and keeps doing it over and over again

When you get out to that limit, intentions matter a lot less, and even apologies matter a lot less.

And this is where our focus here goes, because, as a practical matter, it makes sense to focus on repeated behavior (instincts and habits) rather than isolated incidents. And this is a very practical program. You are looking at the most practical program for marriage in existence.

But keep asking questions where things appear impractical to you. Getting the answers you need is important.

sbethCO, have you read the Basic Concepts, specifically the Love Bank model?

I may not be understanding you stay, in my example above, are you saying I shouldn't have told my husband his story was hurting me because his intent was good? Should I have tried harder to not be so hurt? Should I have tried to convince myself it didn't matter and I was making something out of nothing?

You see, beth, that if the offender tells the offendee how she should feel, how she should feel (or should think), it is a Disrespectful Judgement. And that is a Love Buster. It makes massive withdrawals from the offender's Love Bank account in the victim's Love Bank. Even if the offender is right, it still has the same psychological effect. The Love Bank balance still goes down.

This thread is addressed to the offender, to tell him what to do. Not to the offendee, to tell her how to feel.

Yes, I have read as much of the material on the site as I am aware of. I started reading material about 6 months ago, I just recently joined the forum to discuss my own marriage.

I'm sure BP didn't intend to spill crude oil, but I do believe that the people responsible should pay for any property damage they cause.

I've made some mistakes at work. I don't intend to, but sometimes I do. When I do, I stay after to fix what I broke. I don't just put it off till tomorrow so our customers and my bosses can wait. It's my mistake, and I fix it out of my own time.

Do you think you would still be friends if, like in the article that began this thread, you had told your friends, "Oh, he meant well. Want a potato chip?"

Or how about if it happened again? Or a third time? And each time you said, "Oh, he meant well. Why are you so mad? He's only three. Not like he knows better."

Your brain measures it perfectly. All those deposits and withdrawals add up.

I think this has been blown out of proportion to what I was trying to mean.
I understand your side, you don't understand mine. I can just leave it at that.

Mother Teresa has been reheated?
Whoa!

a. We approach a stairway and I notice that you are about to drop a package that you are carrying. As it begins to fall, I reach for it and grab it so that it does not fall down the stairs. In the process, I knock you off your feet and YOU fall down a flight of stairs, breaking an arm in the process. I didn't mean for that to happen and even feel really badly that it did, but my intent was to prevent you from having something valuable fall and get damaged.
b. I walk up to you as you approach a flight of stairs and give you a shove. You fall down the stairs and break our arm.
c. As you near the top of a flight of stairs, I push past you, knocking you down so that you fall down the stairs, breaking your arm. I'm in a hurry and don't really know you so I just continue on my merry way.

Net result in all three cases, you have a broken arm and I did it to you. Does my original intent matter to you at all? The consequences are exactly the same for all three.

Now let's translate it to a marriage. Things we do either cause our spouse to have a positive emotional reaction or a negative one. When we married, we promised to care for each other and to love, honor, cherish each other as long as we both are alive. So once I know that something I do is hurting my spouse, does the fact that when I do it I don't really mean it for harm really matter. Since I now know that my action hurts my wife, is it now right to continue to do things that hurt her simply because I didn't mean that she should be hurt?

More to the point, once I know that what I did hurt her, even if I thought I was doing something that she would enjoy, is that now just cause to continue hurting her simply because my original intent was to do something she would enjoy?

I might say "I didn't know it would hurt you" That does not lessen the hurt. The real question then becomes, is it now justifiable to continue doing things that hurt you just because I was once ignorant of the pain I was inflicting?

The way to discern intent is what happens once a person KNOWS the truth that something they are doing is hurting you. If an action continues that causes pain and suffering once it has been exposed as such, doesn't that address the person's intent?

Once I have been informed I have hurt you, isn't my responsibility to stop hurting you even if I never intended to hurt you to begin with or if I didn't know that what I was doing would hurt you?

Most of the pain and suffering in this world falls into the category of unintended consequences. Whether the original intent was to harm another person or not really has no bearing on the actual harm that is done. The analogy of a drunk driver really fits this well. If I drive while drunk the fact that I intended to go home does not matter one jot to the family of the man I killed when I ran the red light because I was too slowed in my reactions to stop in time and now his children will suffer and his wife will be without a husband she loves dearly even though I did not intend to do any harm. He's just as dead as if I had taken a gun and shot him at pint blank between the eyes.

And I am just as culpable...

Mark

Cursed Ipod - the reply screen disappears after so many lines.... *grumble grumble*

....*goes to edit

Trust! This brings me to core of trust, and how competency is a CORE. People will forgive mistakes that are corrected, and they will trust you if you grow in competency.

However, if you make the same mistakes over and over, it doesn't matter if you correct them every time. You have shown incompetency. Trust falters.

beth, noone's yelling at you or mad at you. We can talk about it indefinitely as long as everyone feels like it, and anyone can drop out of the discussion at any time.

I don't think you can really say we don't understand your side. Perhaps we do understand what you are saying; we just disagree?

Perhaps you think you understand what we are saying, but you are mistaken?

Are either of those possibilities?