Let's look at this using the example of a couple that was created on the basis of an emotional connection.

Each of us inherited a certain “filter”, a criterion on which the main emphasis was placed. This could be emotionality, commitment, achievements, attitude towards money, etc. Interest arises when another has a similar “filter” to ours, but acts in a completely opposite way. This is how we are attracted to each other.

For example, commitment was important in the family. One person, as a result of such upbringing, could become a spontaneous rebel, and the second could be orderly and learn to follow these rules. Love may arise between such people; they are attracted to each other. They are interested in each other.

However, the hormonal cocktail of love ends when the couple begins to live together. While people were dating, their different ways of living were pleasing and exciting. And in one territory, diametrically opposed ways of relating to life are revealed.

There is an attempt by one to impose their values ​​on the other and vice versa. Everyone believes that “we will do as I see fit.” And this again concerns that main “filter”. For example, “sociability - silence.” And the more polarized modes of behavior in terms of significant values ​​are demonstrated by the couple’s participants, the more conflictual the relationship develops.

As a result, “insecurity”, anxiety, tension, and dissatisfaction appear in the space of two. Fighting hormones are released into the blood. “I’m afraid of losing myself in this relationship, I’m afraid of losing my face, I’m afraid of losing stability,” we say.

Feeling safe is our basic need. But since we are different, for one, for example, a situation when the other is silent can be dangerous, and for the second, it is impossible to discuss something openly, to open up. With insecurity comes conflict. And gradually lead to a break in the relationship.

And divorce is often not a panacea here. Because if a person has not changed in any way personally, then in a new relationship the same thing is repeated as in the previous ones. Even worse. They say about such cases: “I got married a second time, and such problems began... It would be better not to get a divorce.” We still find similar difficulties with our personal structure. That’s why it’s so important to work on yourself and grow personally. This makes it possible to create a qualitatively different relationship with a personally more mature person, if separation is inevitable.

What could be the way out of a conflict relationship other than divorce or breakup?

A couple is a balance of two opposites. Two people brought their own ways of living from their parents' family. Communication began from these poles. But in order to be happy in a long-term relationship, these positions need to be “smoothed out.”

The natural way out is mutual, mutual steps towards each other, from the pole of one’s position to a common center. For example, if a couple is formed on the criterion of emotionality, then the one who is used to talking more must learn to be silent and listen more. And those who like to remain silent should begin to open up more.

This is difficult, because everyone is sure that their position is the most correct. It has already proven its effectiveness in many situations in the past, it has allowed us to achieve certain successes, and simply live up to our age. Each of us has a great need to accept the value of our way of living. History knows many cases when a person even went to the stake for the sake of his beliefs. But in couple relationships, this method does not work and leads to conflict. The extreme position of one determines the extreme position of the other.

Therefore, the only way out for a successful relationship in a couple is for everyone to move towards the center, towards balance.

How to do this if there is no feeling of security and trust in the couple?

Personal boundaries are very important here. Often in a couple, someone has more energy and takes up most of the space. This makes him feel safe. The second partner, on the contrary, occupies a smaller part of the space and may feel unsafe. He has difficulties with personal boundaries. For a person who does not have clear personal boundaries, any caustic remark can cause a flurry of emotions, upsetting, because it goes straight inside, instead of stumbling upon an internal antidote: “This is not about me. That man was wrong."

1) Realize and appropriate your values. Answer the question: “What is important to me? What has no place in my life? What will I never allow to be done to myself?

2) Be aware of your feelings.

3) Get out of the victim position. Because if there is a victim (someone who deserves love and good treatment), there will always be an intervener. The victim provokes the partner to be cruel. And when the situation “I gave you everything” comes, the victim begins to get angry. The partner may say in response: “I didn’t ask. It was your choice". And further in a circle. Masochism is a very powerful weapon.

4) Stop communicating with reproaches. Reproach is emotional abuse; it forces a partner to defend themselves. When we attack a person with reproaches, he stops hearing us, because at best he comes up with arguments to justify himself. A reproach is always “you are wrong.” Reproach gives rise to a feeling of guilt and is a lever for manipulation.

In creating successful relationships, this technique is both prohibited and ineffective. Guilt kills love. This is how a person stops trusting and loving.

The system of non-reproaches is much safer and more effective than the system of reproaches. It is very important here to try to talk about your feelings, about yourself. When we talk about ourselves, we do not violate the territory of another; the partner can approach us. This is how we give our partner the opportunity to do a good deed for us.

It is interesting that behind a reproach there is always a request. We reproach each other because we are afraid to ask. Therefore, you can ask: “I took this as a reproach. What was your request?” If we talk about ourselves, about our needs, then we become vulnerable - a person can refuse us.

And here again the question of personal boundaries arises. About the opportunity to accept and survive the refusal of another, without getting hurt by it. When making a request, it is important to acknowledge the other person’s feelings: “I want to ask. I know it's not valuable to you. But it's valuable to me. I’m nervous in this situation...If you care, please call me.”

I would also like to talk about personal growth in a couple. At the beginning of a relationship, partners are almost identical, starting from similar positions. Then, most often, one of them begins to grow, and the second remains in place. And they either get divorced or find a way for the second one to grow up. This can be either a man or a woman. Very often, personal development begins with a crazy crisis. A person either begins to move or becomes a “person with a difficult fate.” And the simplest growth occurs through a change in social position.

Can two strong personalities create a union? Marriage experts say yes, but only in the second half of life. When a person becomes self-sufficient.

In conclusion, I would like to note that a couple is communicating vessels. By “topping up” ourselves, growing personally, balancing, we thereby invest in common relationships.

And finally, I would like to ask you a question.

What do you think: is it better to be happy or right?

I will be glad to comments)

This is the first question I will ask you when you take your place in my office. I will continue to amaze you with my stupidity, asking it again and again... I am a very boring monotonous)))!

And my thoughts are about peace between Happiness and justice.

Well, or between humility and pride....

And this is all based on my last couple of groups: algorithm and marathon.

So about humility and pride.

I assume that many in this place yawned and reached out for the “mouse” - there is no interest in reading about these “church” words.

Religion is alien to me personally. I am closer to vulgar materialism both because of my Soviet upbringing, and in my first, natural science, education (biology-chemistry), and in my profile of activity.

I understand these words - pride and humility - not as religious (Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist) concepts, but as universal human categories and psychotherapeutic tools.

I encounter these categories (pride-humility) at every training, at every family and individual consultation. By and large, any family quarrel, any showdown, and even just a statement can be attributed to a manifestation of pride or humility.

“They should have done something wrong;
- I was tricked;
– My husband does everything wrong;
– My mother always thinks that I am wrong;
“I should have told him that.”
etc., etc., etc....

In response to such descriptions, I always ask the question: do you want to be right or happy?

Rightness, the search for justice, the desire to win are the essence of the expression of pride.

The feeling of happiness belongs to another category - humility.

“Humility” is to be “with the world” in one dimension, in one rhythm, in one matrix, if you want.

Not in the context of good and evil, but in the context of worldview, belonging to the world.

Humility, in my understanding, is a kind of universal tool, the key to solving any problem.

A key that can lead beyond justice, rightness, victory, and thus rise above conflict.

If any conflict, for example, blacks with whites, is raised up to the level of universal human values, then it loses its meaning.

Conflict involves the opposition between “we, the whites, are good, and they, the blacks, are bad.” Who are "we? People. And they? People. We love children and want to be happy, what about them? They love children and want to be happy.

There is no opposition at this level. At the level of the question “Who am I?” The "us-them" conflict disintegrates.

In psychology, this is called outframing—to go beyond the conflict into a broader framework.

At the risk of sounding overly religious, let me suggest that God is beyond conflict, because his scope is much wider than ours!

The paradigm of clash, struggle, conflict, comparing oneself with others (no matter for better or worse) is pride.

People agree that clashes between nations and racial strife are explained by national and racial pride (pride).

Pride is the strongest motivator for achievement. So is there something stronger, more important, more valuable than achievements?

But any dictionary will tell you that pride is the opposite of humility.

Humility is a holistic perception of Life as it is.

Both of these paradigms (pride and humility) are, to one degree or another, accessible to every person.
They are constantly represented among the decision criteria.

Simply put, when making a decision, we are guided by both pride and humility, the only question is the ratio.

Pride is a way of doing the impossible, overcoming the insurmountable.

An example of a motto for this paradigm would be “I see the goal, I see no obstacles.”

Humility is an attitude expressed in a famous prayer attributed to King Solomon and other sages: “Lord, give me the courage to change the things that can be changed, give me the patience to accept the things that cannot be changed, and give me the wisdom to know the difference.” ".

If we talk about specific examples, we can take the tragedy of loss (death, divorce).

A loved one has left and for many months your pride whispers to you in your dreams and in reality: “You should have done this and that, bring him back.”

Under the auspices of the paradigm of pride, most of the mourning, acute grief, inability, unwillingness to come to terms with the obvious takes place.

In turn, a person gets tired of struggling with what has happened, what is inevitable, what exists.

He lowers his head and resigns himself. The acute grief in his soul is gradually replaced by light sadness, and peace returns to his heart. At the beginning it may be bitter and sorrowful, but life goes on.

It is probably very important to go through this “dead loop” of denial, paying back the debt to your love, your suffering, your grief, your irreparable loss.

Maybe there is an age of pride and there is an age of humility.

There was a time when only pride gave me the strength to remain myself.

I hope today I need less of that kind of power (pride) because I have more wisdom.

For a living person who chooses life, who chooses continuation, for a person who is tolerant, accepting, wise, bottomless in his wisdom and not omnipotent in his strength, life continues.

“To come to terms” means to live in peace.

This is a little wisdom that I learned in the first half of my life.

Or maybe in the second I’ll come up with something else?

Everything we see is only one appearance.

Far from the surface of the world to the bottom.

Consider the obvious in the world to be unimportant,

For the secret essence of things is not visible.

Omar Khayyam

The dilemma posed in the title goes deep into human wisdom. Buddha Shakyamuni also bequeathed: “Focus more on being happy than on being right.” Although this is not in the Gospels, Jesus Christ said the same thing: “You can be right or you can be happy.” The ancient sage king Solomon spoke about this in a slightly different manner: “Lord! Give me the courage to change the things that can be changed, give me the patience to accept the things that cannot be changed, and give me the wisdom to know the difference.”

Truth (or rightness, although this is not the same thing) and happiness have always been at the center of human thoughts about life, higher values ​​and meanings. Therefore, it is difficult to survey the widest range of opinions about them, dividing people into adherents of one or another. It is generally accepted that the sages have always given preference to happiness, understanding better than others the unattainability, uncertainty and even the danger of being right.

Rightness, confidence in it, the desire to win an argument are the essence of pride. But happiness does not affect anyone’s interests and is often considered a form of humility before all the hardships of life.

Rightness, even the truth, bears the Cain stamp of pride, struggle, conflict, intolerance, one-sidedness, thirst for revenge. Pride is guided by the categories of good-bad, right-wrong, victory-loss. Happiness and humility are a holistic perception of life as it is. To come to terms is to live in peace, to carry peace in your soul. The logic of rightness is “all or nothing”, the logic of happiness is both.

I would generally introduce an absolute ban on the words “you’re wrong!”, because I’m afraid of idiots speaking in the name of the truth and only the truth. They are idiots - because they are not given the opportunity to understand the grandeur of the depth of existence and the primitiveness of any superficial “truth”. Rightness, the fight for truth, absolute faith - very often are reflections of inner blindness, fixation, denseness, inadequacy, and lack of understanding of the bottomlessness of existence.

Facts should not be confused with rightness-truth - especially since facts are continuously updated, and rightness-truth changes. Knowledge itself is conventional in nature, that is, based on recognition by the majority. Not to mention the fact that society often rejects the new knowledge of pioneers and defends the truths of yesterday. History is replete with examples of great ideas and inventions that seemed ridiculous only because society was adamant in its unwillingness to go beyond the traditional thinking of its time. A person who strives to be right all the time often clings to outdated information that may have been true in the past but is no longer true.

Experience shows the undoubted advantages of communication through love, forgiveness and kindness compared to communication through “right and wrong.” Even in the recognition of the new, benevolence, condescension and tolerance win. Compromise is preferable to being right. The Chinese say: “Let your opponent save face.” Failures and mistakes should not be ridiculed, but encouraged, and inflexibility should be viewed with suspicion. After all, in the end, “your freedom ends where the freedom of another begins.” And God is above the truth, because the truth is EVERYTHING for Him. And the very desire to prove that you are right rarely brings happiness.

If you want to be happy, stop being right. Enjoy life, the fullness of being, by accepting others as they are and “allowing” them to have the views that they have. In the end, everyone has the right to their opinion, regardless of the degree to which they are right. But other people’s anger, pain, and aggression in response to your “rightness” are unlikely to bring you happiness or peace of mind.

Sometimes it seems to me that “RIGHTNESS”, “CONFIDENCE”, “CONFIDENCE”

and “Zombie” are synonyms. I don’t know what kind of rubbish other people’s opinions and beliefs are made of in their heads, but there is no doubt that the faith of many rests solely on a tremendous lack of knowledge or mental abilities...

Eugene Ionesco testifies: “More than once in my life I was struck by a sharp change in what could be called public opinion, its rapid evolution, the power of its contagion, comparable to a genuine epidemic. People suddenly begin to profess a new faith, accept a new doctrine, and succumb to fanaticism. Finally, one is amazed at how philosophers and journalists, claiming to have an original philosophy, begin to talk about a “true historical moment.” At the same time, one is present at a gradual mutation of thinking. When people stop sharing your opinion, when it is no longer possible to come to an agreement with them, you get the impression that you are turning to monsters...”

The world is so complex, deep, diverse and unpredictable that most statements about it are in the same relationship with it as zero is with infinity. This means that most opinions about anything are worthless.

I prefer folk wisdom to opinions. Here are extracts from it:

A fanatic is someone who takes his own opinions seriously.

God, how they appreciate the fact that everyone thinks the same thing.

There is nothing more despicable than the opinion of the crowd.

Everyone finds their own way to common misconceptions.

• October 7, 2018
• Life style
• Liliya Ponomareva

To move through life, a person needs guidelines. You need to understand what is bad and what is good, what is correct and what is misleading. At some point, the world is divided into white and black, and in order to notice the undertones, you need to step back and look from a different point of view. A logical question arises: “Do you want to be right or happy?”

Understanding the importance of another opinion

Sometimes it seems that the point is clear, that someone has acted unfairly. After receiving additional information, it becomes obvious that the person could not have acted differently. The realization comes that life is multifaceted and full of surprises. There is an understanding that if a person did exactly that, then he definitely had reasons for it. Before you judge him, you should ask yourself what is more important, being happy or being right. After all, showing injustice to others makes it difficult to be happy.

However, to accept the world in all its diversity, you need a developed worldview, a psyche capable of perceiving the world as it is. The ability not to judge people, not to prove that one is right, but simply to be happy, respecting the right of others to live the way they want, characterizes a mature, full-fledged personality. A formed harmonious personality will not prove anything to anyone, because he knows that everything comes to a person when he is internally ready for it.

Someone may wake up in the morning and suddenly realize that his family loves him sincerely, and the manifestation of the brightest feelings is not always in words. Life often plays a cruel joke when people, proving someone’s guilt, condemning someone, find themselves in a similar situation a little later. The same object is turned the other way, showing all its sides, making one feel the unacceptability of categorical opinions. A person has the right to be happy and live as he sees fit.

Pathological rejection of someone else's truth

There is a category of people who are incapable of perceiving another point of view. Constant disputes, active proof of correctness and the unacceptability of another opinion indicate a pathology of mental perception of reality. Such people do not recognize the right of everyone to be happy, making their own demands on everyone.

Although rightness in itself is a paradox, because it is based on the subjective perception of a particular person and cannot exist in principle. But a person, proving that he is right, feels superior to others, succumbing to the fear of being wrong, wounded and imperfect. At the same time, he forgets that it is much better to be happy than to be right. Disputes and condemnations take away a share of peace and happiness from life.

Confirmation error

The desire to be right in all aspects is based on inadequacy complexes. The point here is not deception, but the principles of the brain, which is designed in such a way that it manipulates arguments to prove its beliefs. "Do you want to be right or happy?" - this question does not arise in the presence of pathology.

A person sees first of all what he believes in or what he wants to believe in. This phenomenon is called the term “confirmation bias” and is based on the fact that the basic principle of perception is the search for facts that confirm an existing system of attitudes, and not the search for new opinions that can destroy existing stereotypes.

The Basics of the Habit of Being Right

Psychologists see the root of everything in culture, when from childhood the opinion is instilled that only stupid people make mistakes. Next, a person strives to avoid mistakes, not realizing that it is in the process of life, and not the fear of making mistakes, that the most valuable experience is acquired, which makes it possible to achieve goals and make dreams come true. In fact, whoever is happy is right.

Stages of developing the habit of being right

The formation of a pathological desire for rightness goes through the following stages:

• ‌a person is wrong and does not have the courage to admit it even to himself;‌
• there is an awareness of error under the influence of other people’s arguments;
• denial of wrongness and search for justifying arguments.

At the last stage, a person may come out of an argument nominally right, but deep down in his heart he will know that this is not so. This situation hurts pride and ego no less, adding a feeling of deception of others and oneself.

Tools of Rightness

The writer K. Schultz, the author of a book about the phenomenon of rightness, identifies the following arguments for defending rightness to oneself, most often used by consciousness that does not want to destroy established stereotypes and perceive another point of view to the detriment of its own pride:

• Ignorance of others (a belief arises about the low level of education and experience of other people, the lack of some important information, which is the reason for their opinion). In this case, peace sets in, the person no longer doubts that he is exceptionally right, trying to explain to others their mistakes.
• Incorrect judgments of others, their low mental abilities (with the same information environment, others do not see the most important thing, there is a feeling that they are not able to understand the situation due to the lack of information processing abilities, a logical conclusion is drawn that people with low mental abilities are mistaken) .
• Maliciousness of others (confidence that others also know the truth, but try to denigrate the opponent due to malicious intent).

As can be seen from the listed arguments, they all relate to the people around them. There is an opinion that the desire to be right is a sign of a vulgar mind. This is partly true, because only a high level of self-awareness can make you doubt yourself, ask the question “do you want to be right or happy?”

The danger of perfectionism being right

By accepting the fact that everyone is a living person and has the right to make their own decisions, a person takes himself to a new level of knowledge of himself and the world. The new level is based not on the right to make mistakes, but on the absence of the right to judge what is right and what is wrong.

Objectivity is an illusion that people have created to bring at least apparent order to life. But she has insidious qualities. The desire for perfectionism reduces human behavior to a narrow framework, regulated from all sides.

This state of affairs closes the way to constant development, which is the basis of the universe. The law of philosophy “everything flows, everything changes” applies to everything around. Science, technology, political and literary thought, fashion, culture - all these areas went through many stages of development. One rightness replaced another, thereby moving the development of society. To take a revolutionary step forward, it was necessary to break the existing system of stereotypes; this was painful, with sacrifices and suffering, but all life is in this development and movement.

The same thing happens to a person when he accepts the world with its imperfections and allows it to develop, evolving with it.

The Advantage of Being Wrong

Awareness of one's own wrongness and recognition of one's right to search for the truth together with others requires practical effort.

Being wrong has a number of advantages:

• awareness of oneself as a human;
• recognition of one's imperfections and thus getting rid of the pressure of social and internal stereotypes;
• awareness of one’s shortcomings and adequate self-esteem, the ability to work on oneself and develop;
• formation of a worldview of understanding the world, improvement and learning, building a priority for self-development rather than reputation.

Training the ability to be wrong

Do you want to be right or happy? Everyone chooses the answer for themselves. If you want to be happy, you need to learn to give up eternal rightness.

Only a brave, self-sufficient person can admit that he is wrong. It is much more difficult for people with complexes and worldview disorders to accept their imperfections and look openly at their shortcomings and fears. Given the fact that being wrong is a skill, it is therefore trainable.

The following techniques will help you develop the ability to adequately perceive the world with all its advantages and disadvantages:

• lose an argument - entering into an argument and deliberately losing it will help to recognize the right to the existence of another point of view, to experience the versatility of the world and opinions;
• support another point of view;
• accept an alien opinion as the truth - look at the world for a while through the eyes of an opposing opinion, looking for confirmation of it in surrounding events;
• prioritize compassion over being right in dealing with others;
• open up to other opinions, change your own, which will not be a betrayal of yourself, but will mark personal growth.

They sit in front of me - disheveled, confused, offended, and each is waiting for me to explain to the other that he is wrong. They pull me like a rope. Both have their reasons: he could be less pedantic and boring, and she could be less careless and scattered. They, as in the life that brought them to me, put forward demands on each other and immediately step over them. It seems that they are trying to come to an agreement by covering their own ears and the other’s mouth. And I think: “Guys, do you want to be right or happy?”

Each couple embroiders their own stories of discord on this canvas, putting the family on the brink of collapse. My task is not to reconcile or separate, but to help make a choice not rashly, to understand the situation in such a way as to make a decision that is suitable for both, which they can and will find necessary to make. What exactly it will be, I don’t know, and it’s none of my business. My job is for the conflict to at least cost them less blood, and at the maximum, for them to find in themselves and their relationships something that will make them allies in preserving or ending the marriage.

The first thing that catches your eye is the attempts to remake the other. Their common problem is the knowledge of what is “bad” in others, and a very weak idea of ​​what “good” is and should be. This knowledge is perceived by others as rejection and causes defensive resistance. But even let’s say that the husband stopped lying in front of the TV with a can of beer in his hands and started cooking - will this suit his wife or will she rebel against this invasion of her clearing? And will this rebellion lead to him turning to all-season fishing as a “legal” escape from home?

If you scrape together the knowledge that something is “bad” in another, under it very often you find things that have nothing to do with the other and very often are simply not realized. Here the wife discourages her husband from one game, he tolerates it for a while and plunges into another, and so on all their lives. She is afraid that he will become a “player,” as she reads, an “addict,” and it will destroy him. At some point he says: “The toys are taking him away from me” - there is alarm in his voice. I ask: “Are you scared?” She immerses herself for a while, and then remembers: she was four years old when her newborn sister died and at the funeral she found herself at the table with a white bag with some red spots “right in front of her nose at eye level.” Tears in my eyes: “It was horror, physical panic, I didn’t understand anything. Until I was 30, I avoided any funerals - I started to shake. It’s scary when something takes a person and I can’t control it, I can’t defeat death.” And following these words, the tension disappears from the face and body: “I turned my face to fear. Don’t look at me crying, the tears are just flowing, but I feel good and calm, and let him have his toys.” Or the classic problem of an alcoholic’s wife: she got him to quit, and when she sends him on vacation, she puts a check in her suitcase - they say, you can’t stand it, so here it is for you, and no more!” Rest, naturally, breaks into binge drinking. Her dad was very dry and strict, and only became affectionate after drinking.

I’m not saying that behind all the discord in a couple there are such deep psychological problems, but that it makes sense to try to look for the origins of dissatisfaction with the other not only in him, but also in yourself. If one grew up in a family where order and cleanliness were valued above all else, and the other in a family where emotional connections and friendship were in the foreground, then the first will not be happy when he finds a herd of friends tearing up the house, and the second when he comes to a licked empty house. And you need to somehow get used to it and agree, giving yourself and others the opportunity and joy to change.

This succeeds if both understand that the other was not “harmful,” but expressed love. And there is no other way to help you adapt than through relationships. Psychologists say that 10–15% of the success of interaction depends on the properties of people, and the remaining 85–90% in relationships. It’s stupid to shout: “If I invented you, become the way I want you to be” - you will shout all your life or get tired, change your partner and shout to him. And there is neither truth nor happiness in this.