When It's Wrong To Be Right

Who doesn’t want to be right? There’s nothing quite like that self-satisfied and feeling of knowing you are in the know, and knowing that someone else knows it too. It’s very validating -- and sometimes we need validation. When you’re right it’s important that others know you’re right so that they can then use the information, guidance or advice you provide to make everything right with their world. There’s nothing wrong with being a known source of accurate information. When others credit you and acknowledge your rightness, that means there’s a chance you’ll be a good source of information for them in the future. In fact, it’s absolutely necessary that they credit you and acknowledge your rightness, right?

Wrong.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being right. It’s good to be right so you don’t spend your time going down the wrong path. But always having to be right -- for it’s own sake -- and always having to be acknowledged by people who at first disagree with you that you are in fact and after all right….well, that’s not right.

First of all -- it’s enough to know you are right -- and not for the glory of being right but because it’s good to know correct information. If you are right, and someone disagrees with you, eventually they will come to realize you were right. And that’s good, because then they can go down the right path too. It’s much less important that they give you credit for being right. And it’s rarely worth it if the issue of being right overshadows whatever you are right about.

Picture a scenario where you spend several minutes going back and forth over who is right and who is wrong to the point where the relationship suffers and the issue under discussion is lost. There are people who do that, and do it regularly, and they usually end up by themselves with their self-righteousness.

I just so happen to often be right when my husband and I disagree (initially) about a particular fact. Hey, I read a lot. And I also tend to not be emphatic about things I’m not absolutely sure I’m right about -- so that increases my odds of being right when I take a stand. But I’ll be the first to tell you I’m talking out my hoo hoo if I’m going on a hunch or accidentally making something up.

But when my husband and I disagree about something, and he is convinced he is right, I’ll usually tell him my right answer, he’ll come back with his wrong answer and when it’s clear he’s holding to that position I’ll simply say, “Whatever you say, Dear,” or “You’re right, Honey, what was I thinking,” or something along those lines to put an end to it.

He most likely knows I’m brushing it off…but that’s ok -- it usually turns what could be a tense situation into a humorous one. Being right is not worth haggling over and it’s certainly not worth getting into a full blown fight over. He will eventually find out I’m right. And there is that remote possibility that I’m wrong -- so my bases are covered there too.

Recently I got into this kind of situation with my daughter, who is very firm in her opinions and also often right. We were disagreeing about a really unimportant thing -- something about a sequence of events that had taken place in the past. After a couple of back and forths I said, “I’m sure you’re right, Honey.” She laughed, because she knew what I was doing and I told her that’s what I do with my husband and we stay happy. Whatever we were disagreeing about wasn’t worth spending our time arguing over -- it was really unimportant.

In this instance, I knew either eventually the rightness would be unearthed (she would backtrack and rethink the whole scenario), or it would just be dropped because it wasn’t really significant. Clearly we weren’t going to sort it out then and there, and our relationship was more important than one of us winning. Unfortunately people often let little disagreements like this take on a life of their own, where the rightness itself becomes the focus.

When there is a critical issue, hopefully what’s right will jump to the forefront without question. If it doesn’t, no amount of arguing in the moment will fix it. And how many “who’s right” arguments are about critical issues anyway? Very few.

So express your opinion once -- maybe twice. If you can’t agree, keep your good humor and let it go. It’s never so important simply to be right that it damages your relationships.

Ultimately, the truth will out -- and it really won’t matter who said it.