Choose to see Opportunity over Offense!

One of the biggest myths that is ingrained in society today is that conflict is bad… that conflict is actually something to be avoided at all costs.

Think about the impact of this for a second… The implications of this are epic in your significant relationships. Any difference of opinion, values, beliefs are not only off the table for discussion, they become a personal attack. An offense for simply being different than you are. When it is put this way, it seems very illogical and ridiculous. However, the unfortunate truth of the matter is that you will succumb to this thinking if you do not take action now! Choosing to have an open mind and acceptance of your partner in the midst of conflict is the birthplace of intimacy.

Your relationship’s success depends on your choice to see that your partner expressing him or herself is an opportunity instead of a personal attack because it is different than you or your [unhealthy] expectation of them. Let that sink in for a minute. You choose to see opportunity or offense. You are only responsible for yourself and your actions within a relationship. You cannot control their emotions or their thoughts. And any attempt to try to control them is typically considered manipulation.

Earlier we talked about being open minded and accepting; which are both characteristics of being vulnerable. This skill of seeking openness to your partner’s perspective is one of the 6 that is necessary for developing connection and deep intimacy in your relationship. Another skill that is important to develop is personal accountability. When you can take responsibility for your actions and the feelings they have caused, you are primed for a deeper connection. This personal responsibility is the key to a sincere apology and repairing the hurt you've caused by taking personal offense in the middle of conflict.

These two skills, vulnerable and accountable are a healthy start to growing in the six relationship principles to develop healthy communication and a cycle of relationship building during conflict. It is normal for these skills to take effort and time. You will not be perfect and neither will your partner. Let difference and conflict turn into an opportunity to grow closer to your partner.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you! If you want to process this in your own counseling journey, you can start here.

In your relationship, do you fight in despair or with repair?

In any romantic relationship, fights are inevitable. Whatever you call it: discussions, fights, arguments… the only way to predict success after a fight is to repair the hurt after the fact (or ideally in the middle). Doctors John and Julia Gottman talk about this in five steps in their book The Eight Dates. You have to grow in self awareness for your own understanding as well as to be known by your partner. It’s hard to share your feelings or thoughts when you have no clue what they are.

Before you can even get to the five steps to create repair, you have to first agree to being civil and respectful in having a conversation about the fight. Like most people, you probably get sucked back into the fight instead of being able to break down what happened in the fight. This agreement to a respectful understanding creates the sense that you both are on the same team, figuring out how to love each other better and win as a team. The goal then is to understand what reality looks like from each other’s perceptions- the feelings and thoughts that happened to them. Each of your perspectives are right because they are unique to you. If this can become the goal, then you can move onto the five steps.

Step 1: Each person sharing what they were feeling during the fight.

Step 2: Each person share the perspective on what happened during the argument. You need to validate your partner’s reality. It will be different than yours because you both saw it differently and you both are right. Validating does not mean you are agreeing with it, you are simply seeing how their emotional experience and thought process makes sense in their reality. When sharing your own reality, it is important to only talk about your experience, not telling your partner what they did. “It seemed like…” or “I thought you…” or “I heard you saying” are helpful ways to stick with your experience instead of judging your partner’s character or behavior.

Step 3: Take time to understand each other’s triggers (if there are any). Triggers are often a part of your past that is contributing to your current experience in the fight. This is an opportunity to share a story that connects the feeling to an incident. Some of the prompts for potential triggers are as follows: “A time when I felt judged…” or “A time when I felt abandoned…” or “A time when I felt excluded…” There are a lot of emotions you can put in there to help paint a picture for your partner to better understand your history and connect with your internal experience.

Step 4: Accept the responsibility for your part of the fight. This could be in how you didn’t listen very well, how you came into the fight already stressed or preoccupied, or haven’t made time for your partner. This is not a time for blame or judging. It is a time to own whatever part you played in the fight.

Step 5: Learn from the fight. How can you both do things differently the next time. Spend some time to commit to doing at least one thing to make the next discussion better; minimizing the hurt and possibly avoiding the incident all together.

If nothing else, start bringing a mindset of curiosity and openness to your partner and see how it changes the way you guys connect. To learn more about this process and how to use it in your relationship, get yourself a copy of the Gottman’s book, The Eight Dates and then schedule an appointment to help facilitate how to put this into practice.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you! If you want to process this in your own counseling journey, you can start here.

Are you sending invitations or accusations in your relationship?

The moment you try to communicate your hurt and frustration with your partner, you have two options in how to go about it. If you’re a bit like me, most of the time you probably end up sending an accusation to your partner, essentially encouraging their defensiveness. And when they respond in defense, you get more frustrated and withdraw or reinforce the cycle of conflict. The other option is to ask for what you needed in the moment, and send your partner the message that they are invited to meet that need or discuss how that need can be met by other means.

The nature of sending an invitation versus sending and accusation is broken down into two parts: awareness and intent. You need the awareness of your own emotions and experience to be able to voice it. You need the intent to be kind and loving to your partner. When you can learn pause in the moment and be curious about what is happening inside you, you grow your awareness. As you become more aware of your feelings and thoughts about your feelings, you enable yourself to be intentional to pursue your partner with kind words while speaking for only your experience.

Another aspect to consider in this scientific breakdown on communication is the role of owning your experience instead of assuming your partner’s motives. What I mean is that you have to speak more about how you feel than the actions that caused the feeling. If you only talk about the offending actions, then you are not allowing your partner to understand you, just making them feel bad for what they have done. This automatically puts them on the defense, not giving them a chance to show you empathy or connect to you.

So if you want empathy and to feel understood… give them the chance to give that to you by invitation not accusation. Doing this will equip you both too build trust, resolve conflict faster and deepen the level of relational intimacy.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you! If you want to process this in your own counseling journey, you can start here.

A Framework for Relationship Success

When thinking through the 3 C’s of communication (borrowed from www.securemarriage.com) it is important to understand what moves us from the conflict cycle of communication to the connection cycle of communication. As we have outlined a basic understanding of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the last post, you now have a simple understanding of what gets us into the conflict cycle. I’ve thought about what gets us out of the conflict cycle to create connecting communication and have come up with six core relationship values.

The VALUES make up an acronym: Vulnerable, Accountable, Learning, Understanding, Empathy, Shared meaning. These six values are practiced to bring you into the connecting communication where it is possible to build trust, resolve conflict and deepen your intimacy. Let’s briefly break them down as to how they work in the context of a relationship.

Vulnerability is the amount of openness and receptiveness you have in your relationship. In most aspects of life there requires some level of vulnerability or risk. The reason for this is that we require relationships to function in the day-to-day activities for survival. Where there is a relationship, regardless of depth, there is vulnerability. Bringing this back to connecting communication… to build trust, resolve conflict, or deepen intimacy you are required to share about yourself; your opinions, values, ways of doing things. So when you do this you make yourself vulnerable to someone’s evaluation or acceptance of these things. It is requires openness to be known and loved. It requires receptiveness to someone else to know and love.

Accountability is a posture of being proactive, intentional, and responsible. In any relationship there are commitments you make as a function of building trust and establishing reliability. You agree to be intentional with how you consider your partner in your actions. There is responsibility to how you act towards your partner when you are in conflict or in peace. You are accountable to have integrity in who you are in and out of the relationship. Integrity is a way of being regardless of circumstance or emotion.

Learning is established by curiosity for yourself and for your partner. Often when you find conflict in your relationship is because you have forgotten to see your partner as a person to be loved and they become a problem to be fixed. This happens around differing opinions, values and experiences without the sense that your partner's just as important and valid as you. Getting a mindset of curiosity about your partner opens up with vulnerability the acceptance and influence of their perspective. Also you might be focusing on your partner or their actions or the busyness of life and you miss the opportunity to be curious about yourself and how you are growing and changing and developing. Curiosity about yourself and your partner enables acceptance and intimacy in your relationship.

Understanding is the posture of positive regard in trying to see yourself and your partner for who you are and why you do what you do. It is the knowledge of experiences that is either shared or personal. A reflection to wrap your head around what you and your partner might be experiencing. You will get into conflict by assuming you know what someone’s experience is without actually taking the time to talk to them and this leaves your partner feeling judged and misunderstood. Your brain naturally fills in gaps of stories, so this posture is really to gain a sense of perspective. This will increase your understanding of yourself and your partner as you take pause to really understand what you are personally going through and what your partner is experiencing.

Empathy differs from understanding in that you are showing your concern and connection to a person in the midst of their experience. You can do this with yourself by giving yourself compassion for an experience you have instead of condemnation and criticism. This is an important skill to practice because it helps you feel grounded and safe in the middle of an experience. It also helps you not project your own insecurities onto your partner. Showing empathy to your partner is a courageous act of validating your relationship and your connection to them while being with them. It is showing compassion for the emotions they are experiencing, not by trying to fix it, but being present and non-judgmental or critical in your presence. This connecting presence in the midst of communication creates intimacy and builds trust that you can rely on this person to be there for you.

Shared meaning is the sensitivity to plan life with your partner in mind. The way this happens naturally is through a shared joke, or memory, or planning of an event. It is a million tiny moments where you are together in life and showing that you lean toward one another instead of against or away from each other. The Gottman Institute calls these bids for connection. You constantly make small bids for people’s attention, time, and energy. The more you can recognize and respond to such small attempts to connect the more you will build trust, resolve conflict and deepen intimacy with your partner.

Thanks for taking the time to read through these suggested relationship V.A.L.U.E.S. I hope that they ring true for you and that you can build trust, resolve conflict and deepen your intimacy with them. How are you building trust, resolving conflict or deepening your relationships intimacy through these six core values?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you! If you want to process this in your own counseling journey, you can start here.

The Four Horsemen are destroying your relationship

We all engage in communication in most aspects of our lives. The communication you engage with your partner either brings connection or conflict. What this means is that when you are communicating with your partner in a healthy connecting communication loop, you are turning toward each other and reinforcing the relationship with your communication. When you are in a conflict communication loop, you are turning away from or often against your partner.

To better understand what gets us into conflict communication we need to know about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (coined by Doctors John and Julia Gottman). The first of those is criticism, being defined as “attacking your partner’s character, usually with the intent of making someone right and someone wrong.” A typical way to see this is the use of generalizations; “you always…” “you never…” “you’re the type of person who…” “why are you so…” You get the picture. The second of the four horsemen is contempt, being defined as “attacking your partner’s sense of self with the intention to insult or psychologically abuse him or her.” This can be seen as insulting or name-calling, hostile humor or sarcasm/mockery, and the body language or tone of voice you use.

The third horseman is defensiveness, being defined as “seeing yourself as the victim or warding off a perceived attack.” There are a litany of ways that we come across as defensive but here are just a few; making excuses, whining that “it’s not fair,” yes-butting (start off agreeing and then disagree). The last of the four horsemen is stonewalling, being defined as “withdrawing from the relationship as a way to avoid conflict.” This seems like a logical response to be neutral however, it conveys “disapproval, icy distance, separation, disconnection, and/or smugness.” This looks like stony silence, changing the subject, physically removing yourself, or giving the silent treatment.

According to Bob and Marlene Neufeld and Mary Ann Carmichael from the website www.marleneandbob.com in their article on the four horseman, there are several ways that they recommend remedying the habits listened above. The first is learning to make specific complaints and requests. This looks like the script “when X happened, I felt Y, and I want Z.” The second is validating your partner. This looks like telling your partner what makes sense to you about what they are saying and letting them know you understand what they are feeling, trying to see through their eyes. The third is to shift your focus to appreciation and highlighting what is helpful or good about any given situation. The Gottman’s research says it takes at least 5 positive deposits to neutralize a negative withdrawal. That one is a lot of work to simply connect.

The fourth suggestion is to claim responsibility. This looks like asking yourself, “What can I learn from this?” As well as, “What can I do about it?” The power of this is to shift from focusing on what they have done wrong or how they have offended you to focusing on what you can take ownership and responsibility on. The fifth thing they recommend is to re-write your inner script. This means that you replace your inner thoughts of righteous indignation or innocent victimization with thoughts of appreciation and responsibility that are soothing and validating. The sixth recommendation they have is to practice getting undefended. This looks like allowing your partner’s utterances to be what they really are: just puffs of air. To let go of the stories that you are making up in your head.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you! If you want to process this in your own counseling journey, you can start here.

When you say “I understand…” Do you?

I bet you are a bit like me and you tend to say “I understand” to someone simply to acknowledge that you heard them so you can say what you want to say. Most people default to this unhelpful use of acknowledgement because it feels like you are communicating understanding as a listener. This happens in the workplace, with your friends and especially damaging is with your partner.

An article written by Brandon Voss of the Black Swan Group, which specializes in negotiation and communication skills, described how saying “I understand” actually doesn’t communicate understanding.

Voss writes, “First of all we all know when someone says "I understand" to us they have no concept of what our problem or issue really is.  Basically a lazy way for them to get us to stop talking so they can interject with their own reasoning. Clearly displaying that they didn't hear a word nor have they taken it into account, but for some strange reason they expect us to think we have been heard.  But then we turn around and do it ourselves. You are doing more damage to your communication effort than you realize.”

With your partner, this dismisses their perspective and shuts down the relationship. You often follow this phrase up with “but” which means you are not showing that you care or are invested in understanding at all… You just want to make your side known and probably validated. You first have to start by trying to understand yourself instead of giving lip service to your partner’s vulnerability in sharing their experience with you.

To share your experience takes courage because you are vulnerable to rejection by the person you are sharing with. Next week we will talk through three simple tips to be understood while asserting for your experience instead of being aggressive and not allowing your partner to understand you or show you empathy.

You already know that what you are doing right now doesn’t work. You are primed to try a different approach. Start this week by being open to your partner’s vulnerability and really trying to understand what they are saying.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you! If you want to process this in your own counseling journey, you can start here.

Is your spouse someone to be loved, or fixed?

In the last post I talked about accepting your partner’s differences as a path to a better relationship. Often in my office I see couples who see each other’s differences as problems to be solved instead of something to love about them. The problem with that is when you see their personal values, perception, and experience as something to be fixed, you are covertly telling them that they are not enough.

This can come across in small moments that highlight the difference of how they do things different than you. This may be as simple as squeezing the toothpaste tube from the middle instead of the end. Or how they fold the laundry, how you dice an onion, or even how you park the car. When you experience these moments and you insist that your way is the “right” way… you are automatically saying that their way is “wrong.” And when they hear that their way is wrong they feel that you are saying they are wrong for you. All of these moments are opportunities to get to know your partner better.

You can learn to enjoy your partner’s quirks and routines just like you can appreciate a piece of art. If you are a bit like me, you may not think something is done the way you think it should be, but you can appreciate the gift of them doing it. Also, when they light up because of a certain music or task they find enjoyable, you can learn to enjoy them in their joyful activity. The good news is that it is never too late to start appreciating your partners differences and uniqueness (even if it doesn’t feel natural to you). So seek out the opportunity to show your appreciation for your partner and communicate that they are someone to be loved, not someone to be fixed.

If you want to learn how to improve your relationship please schedule your free consultation now!

Are differences between you and your partner causing tension?

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In my earlier post on conflict in your relationship, I described how having conflict in your relationship is a natural part of doing life with someone. You get to experience their differences which feels wrong because it is not natural to you and your idea of how it “should” be. You experience this all the time when you enter into a new or novel situation. It’s unfamiliar and does not align with your previous experience so it feels wrong and unnatural… which it is to you… However, that is someone else’s natural and familiar experience.

Being able to accept that your partner has a different experience, preference, or value than you is a relational skill. You may have not learned this in the family you grew up with. It may not have been modeled how to be understanding and accepting of another person’s differences. That’s ok… now is the time to develop the skill. Now is the time to start learning how to show acceptance and love to your partner.

The crazy part of this is that you start your relationship being open to these differences and actually delighting in getting to know them. As you get more familiar or comfortable with each other the desire to pursue them like you did while dating diminishes. You begin to think, “I know you, why do I need to pursue you like that?” Or, “You’re mine, I shouldn’t have to work that hard to win you over.” These scripts sound familiar?

To stay in a committed relationship and have it thrive, you have to constantly be pursuing each other. Because the reality is that your partner is constantly changing and adapting to their environment and experiences. So the person you decide to be with when you first started the relationship is a different person than you are with today. So when you look at your partner, see them with fresh eyes as a person who needs to be pursued and known. If you are a bit like me, you want to be accepted and loved for who you are. Start to show this kind of warm acceptance and love to your partner and see how you can build trust, resolve conflict, and have a deeper intimacy than you’ve experienced in a long time.

If you want to personally work on your relationship with a therapist schedule your free consultation with me and I will help you by either walking your journey with you or pointing you to someone else who can help you!

Why you don’t want a conflict free marriage…

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Let’s talk about vulnerability. When you are vulnerable, you share part of yourself with someone. This could be and experience that you had earlier in the day or something that was traumatic, or something that the other person did that you had an emotional reaction to. It is a risky endeavor to be vulnerable.

Why it is important to be vulnerable is because that is one of the best ways to build trust. This presents an issue if you have the mentality that the person you are sharing your life with needs to have the same values and experiences you do. The Gottman Institute, out of Seattle, has done a lot of research on this and shown that compatability or having “sameness” doesn’t actually create connection. It is actually the ability to meet your spouse in their difference with understanding and acceptance that creates connection.

Conflict naturally arises when your values, opinions, and beliefs are different from those of your spouse. This is actually exciting because you have the opportunity to show them that you care and want to understand their experience. When you approach this opportunity with openness and a willingness to listen for understanding, intimacy is actually forged through these differences. That’s right! The connection in the midst of the difference builds intimacy! The good news is that we have these opportunities every day and we will miss some and meet some. You get to decide how you show up for your spouse! If you are a bit like me, you will start looking for ways to connect through the differences and conflict instead of disconnecting. Stay humble and start with listening, extending the invitation for your spouse to be known and loved.

If you want help learning how to do this, please schedule an appointment.

Part 2: The second mental trap getting in the way of your dream relationship

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The second mental trap is that you may feel like there are just too many steps to achieve these “wild” dreams you have. The thought of getting started even feels overwhelming. Or when you try to have that hard conversation for the 200th time, you lose steam and give up. The effort required to be “the person who stops the fight” or “gives the trust again” seems too daunting. The dream of feeling secure in your relationship, building trust while still hurting, or resolving any conflict when you’re still angry seems impossible. The work of making this dream a reality feels too hard. This tends to turn into a magical thinking that makes you a victim to doing nothing.

You have subconscious assumptions that if you want something “hard enough” it will magically appear. This kind of thinking undermines logic. The distinction between seeing it logically and trying to will it into being is that our emotional response to the idea of change stops you from seeing the logic. You cannot act out a new process if we don’t think that the desired change takes a new process.

The good news is that you are not alone in this relationship. You can ask for your partner to be your teammate in this process. You both can work together to fight the common enemy of being defensive. You can tag-team the role of healthy boundary setting to create mutual respect and care.