Michele Phillips and her husband, Gary Wadds, were hanging out on the porch with friends one evening in Piermont, N.Y., when the talk turned to hiking. One person mentioned a local trail, another raved about her new hiking boots. Then Ms. Phillips chimed in with, 'Gary and I fooled around behind some rocks on a path on Bear Mountain -- and another hiker saw us.'

The reaction? Silence. Mr. Wadds shook his head and retreated into the house. Ms. Phillips finished her story, and the friends had a laugh.

Later that night as they were getting ready for bed, Mr. Wadds confronted his wife. 'I can't believe you said that,' he said. 'Isn't anything sacred?' Ms. Phillips became defensive and asserted the story was benign. 'I only told a few close friends,' she replied. 'Get over it.'

Honey, you're embarrassing me! Don't tell me you've never heard that line, or thought it.

I hear plenty about wives who never speak in a group, and husbands who never shut up. People have partners who misuse words, launch into political rants and are much too fond of bad puns. Some have regrettable table manners or clothing choices. Others think their jokes are hilarious.

'The number of ways for spouses to embarrass each other is almost endless,' says Mark Leary, professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the Social Psychology Program at Duke University. It is perfectly ordinary in a lovingrelationship for one spouse to mentally wince from time to time because of something the other spouse has said or done. But chronic feelings of embarrassment, and constant fighting about them, could be a sign of serious problems in the relationship.

Why do we often find a spouse's faux pas so much more embarrassing than our own? Spouses represent one another. Doesn't it say something about you if the person you chose to spend your life with tells insensitive jokes or dances with a lamp shade on his head? You may feel torn between your spouse and the people watching the behavior. And there's the lack of control: 'It's the uncertainty that gets us -- how bad is this going to get?' Dr. Leary says.

Social psychologists say embarrassment is an emotionalmechanism with an evolutionary purpose. It keeps us behaving in ways that are sociallyacceptable so we don't get kicked out of our group.

Researchers have studied it by making subjects perform awkward tasks in front of others, such as solo disco dancing or sucking on a pacifier. It's worth remembering that many studies have reached the same conclusion: People's embarrassment tends to be exaggerated because they overestimate how much others notice.

Spousal embarrassment falls into four distinct categories, Dr. Leary says. The most simple is secondhand, or 'empathic,' embarrassment -- what you feel when your partner does something unintentionally embarrassing, like trip on a stair or knock over a glass of water. Sadly, this is probably the least common type of spousal embarrassment, Dr. Leary says.

'Reflective' embarrassment is what you feel when your spouse does something you find humiliating. Think of the wife who gets angry and raises her voice in a restaurant, or the husband who tells an inappropriate joke. 'Our big worry is that people will think we had to sink pretty low to put up with this clown,' Dr. Leary says.

'One sided' embarrassment is when you are mortified, but your partner isn't -- such as when he or she insists on break-dancing at the family wedding. Not surprisingly, this type of embarrassment often leads to conflict. The partner whose behavior has been questioned may deny he or she did anything wrong. Dr. Leary says the attitude can be summarized as, 'I don't know why you think that I embarrassed you. The lamp shade I wore on my head was funny.'

Finally, there is 'targeted' embarrassment, when one spouse, intentionally or not, directly embarrasses the other. It can be as simple as telling a story that your partner thinks should remain private (Ms. Phillips's specialty). Typically, in this scenario, everything seems fine until the couple gets home -- and one person finds out the other is furious.

People who become embarrassed often engage in 'remedial tactics' afterward, Dr. Leary says. He asked research subjects to sing the 1970s song 'Feelings' ('whoah, whoah, whoah') into a tape recorder, played it back for them and others, and then asked the subjects to rate themselves on attributes such as being pleasant, confident or ethical. When they learned their self ratings would be shared with people who had heard the recording, subjects rated themselves more highly than when they thought their answers would be shared only with people who hadn't heard them sing. 'They're trying to repair the damage,' Dr. Leary says. He didn't look specifically at couples in that study but says spouses who have been embarrassed by a partner will try to repair their own images after the mortifying fact, just as if they had embarrassed themselves.

So what can you do when your partner embarrasses you? Start by asking: Is it really that bad? Remember, everyone's partnereventually says or does something humiliating. And most of the time, we are way more self-conscious about our spouse's foibles than others are.

Is the behavior simply the result of who your partner is? A spouse who is withdrawn at a social gathering may be shy. Let isolated incidents go. If you try to change your spouse, you will only be creating a problem where one didn't exist.

What about repeated behavior? Dr. Leary says it's OK to raise the topic with your partner, 'just as you would report any inappropriate behavior, such as, 'I wish you'd pick up your socks.'' Timing is critical. Wait for a neutral moment, not right before you arrive at a party. Focus on other people's reactions, not your own. If the behavior seems deliberate, or recurs so that you are fighting constantly, you should consider marriage counseling, Dr. Leary says.

Ms. Phillips says she has unintentionally embarrassed her husband a few times, including when she showed her friends some love poems he had written. And Mr. Wadds, a projectmanager for a glass and aluminum company, has been known to embarrass his wife, usually by being too quiet at her family's parties. Part of the problem, Ms. Phillips says, is that she is a chatty American and he is a reserved Brit.

The day after she shared the story of their hiking exploits, though, Ms. Phillips vowed to think twice before revealing private details of her marriage again. 'This is my second marriage, and I don't want to blow it,' says the 48-year old corporate training consultant.

The couple created their own guidelines for discussing an embarrassing event. They have agreed never to use 'hateful' language. They make sure to apologize when they realize they have made their partner uncomfortable. 'We always say, 'What is the outcome I want?'' Ms. Phillips says. 'I want to have a lovingrelationship and I want it to last.'