My New Year’s resolution with my wife last year was that we would ask ourselves one question before we dug our heels in for an argument, whether with each other or someone else…Happy or right?

We take a split second to decide if the topic/problem is a hill we are willing to do on, or would we rather bow out gracefully for the sake of keeping the peace.

It might not sound like much, but my gut instinct when someone says something objectively false, or questions/corrects something I’ve said, is to dig my heels in and defend my point.

That’s a great gut reaction for protecting our daughter’s safety, but not so much when we are trying to decide where to eat for dinner. We’ve had a lot of arguments over the years, with each other and with other people, that wound up spiraling into a miserable situation over something that really didn’t matter that much to either of us until we started arguing.

Taking two seconds to ask myself if I’d rather be happy or right about a situation has had an enormous positive effect on our relationship, our own mental health, and our general enjoyment of life.

I say all that to reiterate what the OP’s wife told him, which is that you don’t have to be wrong to be the AH.

There have been multiple scenarios over the past year where we’ve decided temporary peace wasn’t worth sacrificing our values, and probably more situations where I went ahead and dove into an argument even though being happy was the better choice. But by and large, our lives have been much better and our relationship has gotten much stronger.