Confirmation Bias - Exploring Marriage Part 1

Confirmation Bias: seeking opinions that align with your preconceived opinions.

Confirmation Bias

Part 1 in the Exploring Marriage Series

I haven’t written much this year. We moved away from our home of 17 years in early summer, and before that, we were prepping for the move since February. We also welcomed a grandchild, updated our will, revised life insurance policies, and switched banks —a whirlwind start to the year.

For the past week, I’ve been home alone. My wife was in Kelowna helping our youngest daughter with her first child. I’ve kept busy, but a jumble of words has been tumbling in my mind, ideas for articles I could write for this blog. That’s how I create: it starts as a chaotic mess, but if I’m patient, the words flow as naturally as a conversation with a friend. Today, I want to talk about marriage.

I’m no expert on marriage or relationships. I was just a few weeks past 20 when I got married; my wife was 19. I’ve often joked that we “grew up together,” and in a way, we did. Ed Sheeran’s song “Perfect” captures it well: “We were just kids when we fell in love, not knowin’ what it was.” So true. We’re now approaching 38 years of marriage.

We entered marriage with preconceived notions of what it should be. We carried mental checklists of positives and negatives from our parents and relatives—behaviors we wanted to emulate or avoid. We also had expectations for each other, shaped by legalistic preaching, the entertainment industry, and our friend groups.

The first decade was tough. Disagreements were hard to navigate without one of us getting deeply hurt. At times, we shut ourselves off emotionally. For nearly 33 years, we couldn’t discuss money without clashing—our priorities were opposites in different areas. Friends and relatives sometimes fueled our discontent, validating our feelings instead of encouraging us to see the bigger picture.

This is where I want to begin this series on marriage: confirmation bias. I’m sharing from our experiences—not as advice, but to encourage young couples in similar struggles to consider that a strained relationship is rarely the fault of just one person. Refusing to seek God’s perspective can lead to regretful places.

WebMD defines confirmation bias as the human tendency to seek out information that supports one’s existing position or idea. This creates a bias because you only find what reinforces your viewpoint, rather than exploring opposing perspectives through careful research.

This happens constantly in relationships. Early in our marriage, I’d share my frustrations about my wife with friends, focusing on what I felt she was doing wrong. She did the same with her friends or relatives, who empathized with her. The result? We grew more alienated, struggling to find common ground. She couldn’t see past my flaws or how I fell short of her expectations of a husband. I, too, sought out articles or confided in friends who reinforced my ideas of what a wife should be.

This amplified our hurt, feelings of rejection, anger, and frustration—often based more on perception than reality. Our sense of victimhood made us feel needlessly broken.

Seeking opinions that align with our own is natural; we crave validation. But this desire often stems from our sinful, fleshly nature. It’s carnal, prioritizing validation over healing or wholeness.

I’ve often asked, “How do we know we’re deceived?” The answer is, we don’t—not until we turn to Christ and ask Him to reveal where deception lies. Even then, it takes time for His Word to expose the locked-up places in our hearts. We must be open to the possibility that we might be wrong, that our perceptions could deceive us into seeking only opinions that affirm our stance.

My wife and I have both hurt each other—through words, actions, innuendos, anger, or rejection. We each built a case against the other. One of the most beautiful, transformative moments in our lives came when we knelt before God and asked Him to reveal each other’s hearts to us. We opened everything: our phones, our journals, our innermost thoughts.

Reading each other’s journals dismantled the massive silos we’d built over 30 years. To the outside world, we appeared as a committed couple, but we often held back pieces of ourselves. For years, she was the rock; then I was. We hadn’t truly become partners in our pursuit of peace and truth.

Please don’t misunderstand—we deeply loved each other. But sometimes, we didn’t like each other much. Either of us would have been devastated if the other had passed away. Yet we frequently misjudged each other’s intentions or efforts, only considering viewpoints that aligned with our preconceptions.

Transparency and careful honesty—always honoring each other’s hearts—tore down those silos of secrecy. In the rubble, we sat together, feeling more connected than ever. No more wondering how the other felt; we could be fully honest.

Of course this idea of oneness and openness before Christ is entirely biblical as well. James 1 says

“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”

Ephesians 4 says

“Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”

Then there’s 1 Corinthians 13 which reads:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

It’s a powerful feeling when you can have the same open conversation with your spouse as you would with your closest friend, without fear of them overhearing. Having empathetic friends isn’t wrong, but it must be balanced with a genuine desire for truth.

Next week: Grudges