They're at a party or dinner. The husband starts to tell a joke. The wife immediately snaps, "Oh, don't tell them that old story." The husband falls silent with an embarrassed grin.

Or the wife has just made a comment in Sunday School, and the husband says, "What she meant to say was ..." and corrects her. She looks abashed ... or angry.

They criticize each other's taste in clothing or in food, they demean each other's intelligence, they tell unflattering stories about each other, and it's hard to know whether it's worse when the object of these criticisms is absent or standing right there. Absent, it seems like deep disloyalty to the marriage; present, and it feels like you've stepped into a quarrel.

We've all met a married couple like this, or perhaps more than one. They embarrass everyone around them. Yet still they persist in this pattern of public criticism.

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