Is this issue with your spouse a hill you are willing to die on?

Me: “Where do you want to eat dinner?”

Tracy: “I don’t care. Where do you want to go?”

Me: “How about Chick Fil A.”

Tracy: “Oh, I’m tired of Chick Fil A

Me: “Okay, how about Longhorn.”

Tracy: “That place smells funny. But I don’t really care where we go.”

Me: “How about that new Italian place on the river or where would you like to eat dinner?”

Tracy: “I really don’t care. You pick.”

How many of those conversations have you had? It’s almost a humorous Abbott-and-Costello routine in our family. I’ll start naming every restaurant my wife hates until we finally agree on something. We are typically laughing about it now, but 20 years ago, it would get heated - we’d be arguing about something as trivial as a dinner location!

A wise man once said, “You should ask your spouse, ‘Guess where we are going to dinner?’ and whatever place they guess, go there.”

Here’s the truth on this game: I really don’t care where we eat dinner. Seriously, as long as I’m with Tracy, I DON'T CARE!

Where we eat dinner is not a hill I’m willing to die on.

I’m not letting my children go to a keg party, so that is a hill I’m willing to die on.

I don’t want to go in debt up to our eyeballs, so that is a hill I’m willing to die on.

A while back, I found myself in hotel room at midnight. A man I knew had walked out on his wife, checked into a room, and called me asking what to do next. He was furious. She was livid. It was obvious things had gotten completely out of hand - he was sitting in a hotel room just down the road from a perfectly good house where his wife and child were. This spitting match grew out of what should have been a small issue, but it consumed them both. As the night wore on, I sat there listening to him at the Holiday Inn Express as he enthusiastically tried to convince me, “Don’t you see, I’m the one who is right! She’s crazy!” I can honestly say that most of the time a marriage is in trouble they get in front of me, both spouses are blaming each other.