At pickleball the other morning while waiting for my turn on the court, I chatted with an animated personality of an Italian guy. As we discussed careers, marriages, kids, our Italian heritage, and all that fun stuff, he asked me if I had married an Italian. :D (Do brown Italians count? Hubs is 1% Italian according to his genealogy test.)

I asked the guy if he was married; he replied, "recently divorced after 34 years and three kids. My wife left me for no reason." He added that his kids even said, "You're a great guy, Dad ... Mom's crazy."

That all may be true - I don't know the guy, his wife, their kids, or their marital history. Yet I do understand (in 32 years together with Hubs) that it takes a LOT to hold a marriage together and push through. And I do know that no one is faultless. No one. In relationships, we each play a part in the good and the bad, the happy and the sad ... whether we are the angel or the cad.

"C'mon, you didn't do anything wrong?" I boldly asked. "No girlfriend on the side? Out with the boys too much? Gambling, drinking, toilet seat up, didn't pick up your toenail clippings from the bathroom floor ... nothing?"

He said no.

He said no. 

Now, not to run a judgment here - this is observation ... do you think if we knew this couple during their 34 years together, that this guy may have had some part in the split? I don't know, call me crazy ... I had trouble with it.

Snippeteers, none of us are perfect - not as humans, not as spouses, not as parents, not as pickleball players. Maybe the Italian was telling me 100% truth; maybe he was withholding. Yet if he was telling a little white lie, then perhaps he was not owning up to his part of what went sour in his marriage?

When we are thinking or describing a situation in which we claim to be "the innocent one," isn't it up to us as honest humans to own up to our mistakes, too, in the parts we played?

We've all heard this adage ... there are three sides to every story: