Wellness Tip: Healthy Relationship: How to deal with embarrassment?

Offra Gerstein, Relationship Matters: Feeling embarrassed by your spouse's behavior? - Santa Cruz Sentinel: "Respect and social approval is individually earned and each person's perceptions dictate his/her actions. The man who feels embarrassed by his wife's attire may worry about her vulnerability, reputation or safety, which she may not share. The wife's concerns about her inebriated husband's acts may or may not lose him the respect of his friends. Adult children are not likely to attribute unkind or impolite gesture of one parent to both parents.

Since a spouse is unlikely to be demerited in the eyes of others for actions he or she did not undertake, a case can be made that the embarrassment a partner feels when the other falters is a compassionate response of feeling embarrassed for, not about the other.

Very often discussing the socially unpopular conduct with the offending partner does not result in a behavioral change. As long as the erring mate does not personally feel embarrassed about his/her conduct, no change is likely to occur. Embarrassment cannot be transferred from one individual to another. It requires sufficient self-awareness and discomfort to motivate one to modify his/her ways."