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In fact, both meant well. Brenda was afraid to say outright that she did some great work at the office that day. She didn’t want to be boastful. So instead she talked about the tiny details of her project. Jack didn’t want to be impolite, so instead of asking Brenda questions or expressing his puzzlement, he steeled himself and waited for her story to end.

Jack just needed to say, “You know, honey, when you get into so many details, I lose your point and get frustrated. Why don’t you tell me why you’re excited about this project? I’d really love to hear that.”

It was a problem of communication, not a problem of personality or character. Yet in the fixed mindset, the blame came fast and furious.

By the way, I love these stories. When I was a kid, Reader’s Digest used to have a feature in each issue called “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Usually, the answer was yes. I ate up those stories, fascinated by all the ways a marriage could go wrong and even more fascinated by how it could be repaired.

The story of Ted and Karen, told by Aaron Beck, is a story of how two people with the fixed mindset went from all good traits to all bad ones in each other’s eyes.

When Ted and Karen met, they were opposites attracting. Karen radiated spontaneity and lightness. Ted, a serious guy with the weight of the world on his shoulders, felt that her carefree presence transformed his life. “Everything she says and does is charming,” he effused. In turn, Ted represented the rock-like “father figure” she had never had. He was just the kind of stable, reliable guy who could give her a sense of security.

But a few short years later, Ted saw Karen as an irresponsible airhead. “She never takes anything seriously . . . I can’t depend on her.” And Karen saw Ted as a judgmental tyrant, dissecting her every move.

In the end, this marriage was saved—only because the couple learned to respond to each other not with angry labels, but with helpful actions. One day, when Karen was swamped with work, Ted came home to a messy house. He was angry and wanted to scold her, but, drawing on what he’d learned from Beck, he instead said to himself, “What is the mature thing to do?” He answered his own question by starting to clean things up. He was offering Karen support rather than judgment.

CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED?

Aaron Beck tells couples in counseling never to think these fixed-mindset thoughts: My partner is incapable of change. Nothing can improve our relationship. These ideas, he says, are almost always wrong.

Sometimes it’s hard not to think those thoughts—as in the case of Bill and Hillary Clinton. When he was president, Clinton lied to the nation and to his wife about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Hillary defended him: “My husband may have his faults, but he has never lied to me.”

The truth came out, as it has a way of doing, especially when helped by a special prosecutor. Hillary, betrayed and furious, now had to decide whether Bill was a permanently bad and untrustworthy husband or a man who needed a lot of help.

This is a good time to bring up an important point: The belief that partners have the potential for change should not be confused with the belief that the partner will change. The partner has to want to change, commit to change, and take concrete actions toward change.

The Clintons went into counseling, spending one full day a week for a year in the process. Through counseling, Bill came to understand how, as the child of alcoholic parents, he had learned to lead a dual life. On the one hand, he’d learned to shoulder excessive responsibility at an early age—for example, as a boy sternly forbidding his stepfather to strike his mother. On the other hand, he had another part of his life where he took little responsibility, where he made believe everything was okay no matter what was going on. That’s how he could appear on TV and earnestly vow that he was not involved with Lewinsky. He was in that no-responsibility and high-denial space.

People were urging Hillary to forgive him. One evening, Stevie Wonder called