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himself by seeing his actions as those of a good, loyal, steady husband—that’s who he is—and so he thinks everything would be fine if Debra quit pestering him to talk, if she would forgive his imperfections as he forgives hers. Notice his language: “What have I done that’s wrong?” asks Frank. “I’m an okay human being.” Frank justifies his unwillingness to discuss difficult or painful topics in the name of his “tolerance” and ability to “just let things ride.” For her part, Debra thinks her emotional expressiveness “just shows I’m human”—that’s who she is—and that everything would be fine if Frank weren’t so “passive and bored.” Debra got it right when she observed that Frank justifies ignoring her demands to communicate by attributing them to her irrational nature. But she doesn’t see that she is doing the same thing, that she justifies ignoring his wishes not to talk by attributing them to his stubborn nature.

Every marriage is a story, and like all stories, it is subject to its participants’ distorted perceptions and memories that preserve the narrative as each side sees it. Frank and Debra are at a crucial decision point on the pyramid of their marriage, and the steps they take to resolve the dissonance between “I love this person” and “This person is doing some things that are driving me crazy” will enhance their love story or destroy it. They are going to have to decide how to answer some key questions about those crazy things their partner does: Are they due to an unchangeable personality flaw? Can I live with them? Are they grounds for divorce? Can we find a compromise? Could I—horror of horrors—learn something from my partner, maybe improve my own way of doing things? And they are going to have to decide how to think about their own way of doing things. Seeing as how they have lived with themselves their whole lives, “their own way” feels natural, inevitable. Self-justification is blocking each partner from asking: Could I be wrong? Could I be making a mistake? Could I change?

As Debra and Frank’s problems accumulated, each developed an implicit theory of how the other person was wrecking the marriage. (These theories are called “implicit” because people are often unaware that they hold them.) Debra’s implicit theory is that Frank is socially awkward and passive; his theory is that Debra is insecure and cannot accept herself, or him, as they are. The trouble is that once people develop an implicit theory, the confirmation bias kicks in and they stop seeing evidence that doesn’t fit it. As Frank and Debra’s therapist observed, Debra now ignores or plays down all the times that Frank isn’t awkward and passive with her or others—the times he’s been funny and charming, the many times he has gone out of his way to be helpful. For his part, Frank now ignores or plays down evidence of Debra’s psychological security, such as her persistence and optimism in the face of disappointment. “They each think the other is at fault,” their therapists observed, “and thus they selectively remember parts of their life, focusing on those parts that support their own points of view.” 4

Our implicit theories of why we and other people behave as we do come in one of two versions. We can say it’s because of something in the situation or environment: “The bank teller snapped at me because she is overworked today; there aren’t enough tellers to handle these lines.” Or we can say it’s because something is wrong with the person: “That teller snapped at me because she is plain rude.” When we explain our own behavior, self-justification allows us to flatter ourselves: We give ourselves credit for our good actions but let the situation excuse the bad ones. When we do something that hurts another, for example, we rarely say, “I behaved this way because I am a cruel and heartless human being.” We say, “I was provoked; anyone would do what I did”; or “I had no choice”; or “Yes, I said some awful things, but that wasn’t me—it’s because I was drunk.” Yet when we do something generous, helpful, or brave, we don’t say we did it because we were provoked