About five years ago, my wife and I had a dumb argument. I wasn’t backing down. She wasn’t backing down. It was as if we were both sipping strong cocktails of the fundamental attribution error, overconfidence effect, and naive cynicism. During the stalemate, I vented to this friend. I explained to him in agonizing detail why I was right, why my wife was wrong, how the world would be better off if I could just get her to understand this—and did this guy have any advice for convincing her I was right? His response: “Do you want to be right or happy?” This question has since saved me a lot of
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