Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) Third Edition: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

“I have found that nothing foretells a marriage’s future as accurately as how a couple retells their past,”

Over and over we have heard people say, “I knew the week after the wedding I’d made a terrible mistake.” “But why did you have three children and stay together for the next twenty-seven years?” “Oh, I don’t know; I just felt obligated, I guess.”

As long as couples choose to stay in a relationship that is far from their ideal, they reduce dissonance in ways that support their decision: “It’s not really that bad.” “Most marriages are worse than mine—or certainly no better.” “He forgot my birthday, but he does many other things that show me he loves me.” “We have problems, but overall I love her.” When one or both partners start thinking of divorce, however, their efforts to reduce dissonance will now justify the decision to leave: “This marriage really is that bad.” “Most marriages are better than mine.” “He forgot my birthday, and it means he doesn’t love me.”

“They do not know what to give up in order to be a couple,” says Tiefer. “They each want to do what they feel entitled to do, and they can’t discuss the important issues that affect them as a pair. And as long as they stay mad at each other, they don’t have to discuss those matters, because discussion might actually require them to compromise or consider the partner’s point of view. They have a very difficult time with empathy, each one feeling completely confident that the other’s behavior is less reasonable than their own. So they bring up old resentments to justify their current position and their unwillingness to change, or forgive.”

the couples who grow together over the years have figured out a way to live with a minimum of self-justification, which is another way of saying that they are able to put empathy for the partner ahead of defending their own territory.

Successful, stable couples are able to listen to each other’s criticisms, concerns, and suggestions undefensively.

In good marriages, a confrontation, difference of opinion, clashing habits, and even angry quarrels can bring the couple closer, by helping each partner learn something new and by forcing them to examine their assumptions about their abilities or limitations.

Letting go of the self-justifications that cover up our mistakes, that protect our desires to do things just the way we want to, and that minimize the hurts we inflict on those we love can be embarrassing and painful

We have all done something that made others angry at us, and we have all been spurred to anger by what others have done to us. We all have, intentionally or unintentionally, hurt another person who will forever regard us as the villain, the betrayer, the scoundrel. And we have all felt the sting of being on the receiving end of an act of injustice, nursing a wound that never seems to fully heal.

Feeling like a victim of injustice in one situation does not make us less likely to commit an injustice against someone else, nor does it make us more sympathetic to victims.

Each pair was hooked up to a mechanism that exerted pressure on their index fingers, and the participants were instructed to apply the same force on their partner’s finger that they had just felt. They could not do it fairly, although they tried hard. Every time one partner felt the pressure, he retaliated with considerably greater force, thinking he was giving what he had gotten.

Perpetrators are motivated to reduce their moral culpability; victims are motivated to maximize their moral blamelessness.

most victims reported lasting negative consequences of the rift or quarrel. More than half said it had seriously damaged the relationship. They reported continuing hostility, loss of trust, unresolved negative feelings, or even the end of the former friendship,

“Not only did he do that terrible thing; he doesn’t even understand that it was a terrible thing!”

One reason he doesn’t understand and she can’t admit it is that perpetrators are preoccupied with justifying what they did, but another reason is that they really do not know how the victim feels.

Many victims initially stifle their anger, nursing their wounds and brooding about what to do. They ruminate about their pain or grievances for months, sometimes for years, and sometimes for decades. One man we know told us that after eighteen years of marriage, his wife announced “out of the blue, at breakfast,” that she wanted a divorce. “I tried to find out what I’d done wrong,” he said, “and I told her I wanted to make amends, but there were eighteen years of dust balls under the bed.” That wife brooded for eighteen years;

Many victims are unable to resolve their feelings because they keep picking at the scab on the wound, asking themselves repeatedly, “How could such a bad thing have happened to me, a good person?” This is perhaps the most painful dissonance-arousing question that we confront in our lives.

Perpetrators, whether individuals or nations, write versions of history in which their behavior was justified and provoked by the other side; their behavior was sensible and meaningful; if they made mistakes or went too far, at least everything turned out for the best in the long run; and it’s all in the past now anyway. Victims tend to write accounts of the same history in which they describe the perpetrator’s actions as arbitrary and meaningless, or else intentionally malicious and brutal; in which their own retaliation was impeccably appropriate and morally justified; and in which nothing turned out for the best. In fact, everything turned out for the worst, and we are still irritated about it.

One of the most eternally popular dissonance reducers, practiced by everyone from toddlers to tyrants, is “The other guy started it.”

The problem is, how far back do you want to go to show that the other guy started it?