Well, last night my husband was totally in the dog house. He neglected to tell me that after work he was going to grab a beer with some of the guys in his construction crew. Well, one beer turned into a couple more and then a cheeseburger too. Meanwhile, I’m at home wondering if I’m supposed to be making dinner. Needless to say I was ticked-but that’s really not the point of this post. The hubby bought me dinner anyway, and said he was sorry, so that’s all cool.
The real reason for this post is what happened while my husband was at the bar with his coworkers. I guess a bunch of them showed up-even from different job sites, and it turned into a huge gossip fest. Well, word got around to my husband that one of the foremen had been saying some bad things about him-like he’s not a good worker, doesn’t follow direction, can’t finish concrete-all things that are totally untrue. This guy who said these things has a reputation of kind of being a jerk-in fact, he even bragged to a guy on his site that he was hired to be an executive foreman, a position that doesn’t even exist in the company. My point is that the guy is one of those people that just aren’t happy themselves, and in order to boost their own egos, they have to belittle other guys.
Needless to say, my husband came home fuming. I guess on Monday he has to go do a concrete pour with this guy and was telling me how he’s going to confront him about what he said. I thought to myself what a horrible idea-it just didn’t sit right with me. So, I started explaining why I thought it was such a bad idea.
First of all, this guy has already formed an opinion about my husband, founded on unreality, so my husband trying to get him to change his mind is going to be a waste of time.
Second, to even acknowledge what this guy said as being an issue is giving validity to his statement-which it doesn’t deserve. By confronting him about hearsay, it’s stooping to his level, and perpetuating negative energy that is really not worth putting any time into anyway.
Third, there are a few guys who stood up for my husband, thankfully. Well, how would it look to them if my husband went back to this guy and told them he heard he said this stuff- and when he asks who said it, and my husband names these guys who stood up for him-then the guy goes back to those guys and says something to them about it. My husband would have betrayed the trust of these guys who have his back. Not a good thing.
Fourth, I’m a big believer that unless someone brings an issue directly to me themselves, it doesn’t exist. So why make an issue about something that, until yesterday, didn’t exist?
Thankfully, after presenting my points to my husband, he realized I had a point. He was disappointed-he even had his whole speech ready to go to this guy. I told him that I knew how in theory it would be really satisfying to tell this guy off, but in reality, the satisfaction would only be fleeting-and the drama and negativity that followed would be much much worse. Besides, if it got back to any of the higher ups that these two are still having issues-it would reflect poorly on my husband. I want him to be able to say in any situation that he acted with integrity and didn’t play into other people’s drama.
So, it did make sense to my husband, and I was happy he listened. Sure, I was stoked that finally he told me I was right-but then I realized it really wasn’t about me being right. It was about helping my husband out through a situation that really had him upset, and I was glad to help him. After all, isn’t that what marriage is all about?
