Forgiveness

I've been talking with a couple of friends recently about infidelity. Across my conversations with both of them, the thing that echoed in the back of my mind was the matter of forgiveness. More specifically, I have been thinking about the fact that forgiveness central to the restoration of trust which is the foundation on which the relationship going forward will be built.

The question, then, is: how do we come to forgiveness?

In the course of writing my dissertation, I came across a chapter written by Tedeschi and Nesler (1993) that talked about how people work through being on the wrong end of someone else's bad behavior. Their model had a couple of additions, but the essence of what they argued was this:

• First, a betrayal is committed (after all, without a betrayal, there is no need for forgiveness)
• Second, a responsible party is identified as having committed the betrayal
• Third, the responsible party accepts ownership for commission of the betrayal
• Fourth, the responsible party makes some reparation for the betrayal
• Finally, the person who was betrayed moves toward forgiveness

So in plain English: someone does something wrong to someone else. The person who did wrong has to own what s/he did wrong and attempt to make up for the wrong-doing in a way that is roughly proportional to the original betrayal.

What I love about this model is that it expects that the person who committed the wrong-doing to take responsibility for him/herself and try to fix it. Now, seeing as we can't get into a DeLorean and go back in time to the moment just before we made a wrong choice, what can we do (or avoid) to take responsibility for a major betrayal we have committed against someone we love?

I've got some thoughts on that: 

1. Apologize. For heaven's sake, apologize. And not one of these perfunctory, I'm-apologizing-because-it's-the-socially-appropriate-thing-to-do-but-I'm-not-really-sorry-and-I'll-likely-do-it-again apologies. No. Like a legit statement of recognition of wrong doing and a sincere display of remorse for what you've done and the hurt the other person is feeling because of it.

2. Don't confess unless you expect the relationship to end. Okay, so now we get into some ethical gray area about whether a betrayal that your partner wouldn't know about unless you confessed it should be confessed at all. I am not prepared to get that dirty right now. What I am prepared to say, though, is that if you know you violated a major relational rule, you should should expect there to be negative consequences. One of these consequences may very well be a loss of the relationship. If your partner doesn't want to be with you as a result of your betrayal, you have to deal with that as a foreseeable outcome of your actions. What you don't get to do is accuse your partner of being crazy, irrational, unreasonable, unfair, blah blah blah if that's what s/he decides is necessary and/or appropriate.

3. Don't give more information than you're asked for. One of my rules for existing as a human being is to never ask a question that you don't want to know the honest answer to. I would amend that rule to say that if a person tells you that they don't want to know, then don't tell them. You have to understand that you just confessed to a major betrayal. That is a lot to deal with unto itself without a barrage of information coming at your partner that they aren't even sure they want to know. What's more, is that chances are that you're being ultra-disclosive for one of two reasons: either you are trying to unburden your conscience or you're trying to get your partner to break up with you. Neither helping you feel less guilty nor giving you a way out of initiating a break up conversation is your partner's responsibility in this situation.

4. Don't berate, belittle, or insult yourself. Yes, you probably feel like a big pile of poo if you genuinely feel remorse for your betrayal and if you really do want to mend your relationship. And you might really, truly honestly feel like you have nothing to say except to call yourself names. I'm telling you, though, find something else to say. If you insult yourself you're trying to beat your partner to the punch - if you call yourself a(n) [insert your favorite ugly insult here], your partner has no reason to also call you a(n) [see previous insult]. This may seem like a harmless self-protective thing to do, but it's a problem because your partner, if s/he loves you, will feel the need to reassure you that you aren't whatever insult you've called yourself. Let me put that differently: you (the betrayer) are asking your partner (whom you have just confessed to betraying) to console and comfort you in response to your well-deserved guilt. That's an awfully manipulative thing for you to be doing if you've just confessed to a major relational violation. 

5.  Don't ask your partner how they want your betrayal made up to him/her. Like alleviating your guilt, or ending the relationship you didn't want, this puts work and responsibility on your partner for repairing something s/he didn't break. You should be thinking to yourself "how can I prove I love him/her?" and then go do it. I'd like to point out that buying flowers or candy or funding shopping sprees or bringing home puppies are not expressions of love. On a good day, they are gestures of affection. If they come following a betrayal, they are small and trite and comically insignificant as compared to a major betrayal. You may have to prove your love by being willing to give something up in order to invest more in your relationship.

As is always the case, this list isn't by any means exhaustive. It is, however, a compilation of some of the major missteps I've witnessed people making in the course of confessing betrayals to their loved ones.

In the end, you can avoid all of this by really truly trying, every day of your life, not to suck. 
 

References

Tedeschi, J. T., & Nesler, M. S. (1993). Grievances: Development and reactions. Aggression and Violence: Social Interactionist Perspectives. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Something Personal: Why I'm Single

My last post was titled "In Defense of a Single Woman Giving Relationship Advice". The point of that post was to reinforce the point that despite my being without a romantic partner, the delightful relationships I have with friends and family are evidence that my advice is sound and useful and that I have the experienced-based credibility to give it.

In the course of that post, I called attention to the fact that I am single. I didn't get into the reasons I am single (they would have been off-topic and made for an unnecessarily lengthy post). I ventured to guess, though, that people might be curious about why a person who makes a habit of giving relationship advice doesn't have a romantic partner. So, here's the list:

1. My parents have set a crazy high bar for what relationships ought to look like.

This coming August, my folks will have been married to each other for 38 years. Having been born one month before their first wedding anniversary, I can truthfully say that I can't speak to the quality of their relationship as I was growing up. As an adult, though, I look at my parents' relationship with one another as an ideal form of love. They honor and respect each other. They collaborate on every decision they make. They are similar enough to have a strong foundation on which to build love and closeness while also being different enough to off-set one another's imperfections. They laugh together, they play together, they seek out one another's company. They are as comfortable sitting silently in one another's presence as they are talking about things ranging from the mundane to the critical. They are the definition of love. The reason they are so important in my singlehood is that I refuse - and I do mean patently and unequivocally refuse - to settle for anything less than what they have. This necessitates my being patient enough to indulge my spectacular selectivity.

2.  I'm not what most people would consider conventionally attractive.

Not that I've ever taken a survey, but I'd venture to guess that if 100 people were randomly asked to rate my attractiveness on a 1-10 scale, I'd end up being a solid 4.5. I'm short, overweight, my hair is coarse and wild (thanks in no small part to my grandmother's Puerto Rican roots), and my nose is too big for my face while my eyes are too small. No, I'm not nitpicking my imperfections. I'm simply making a candid statement about those features that consistently work to undermine people finding me aesthetically pleasing.

The reason my looks matter are that a) physical attraction is an almost inevitably necessary component of romantic interest, and b) because I don't meet most men's standard of attractiveness, it shrinks the pool of available partners. In my experience, men who are attracted to me are approximately as (un)attractive as I am. As it happens, being not-particularly-attractive doesn't exempt a person from wanting to be with a person whom we find attractive. So, speaking purely statistically, if we take into consideration the available, heterosexual men in an appropriate age range in the geographic area in which I live, the number of men who find me attractive whom I also find attractive is extremely small. Trying to catch that fish in the great big sea poses a logistical challenge I'm not too terribly interested in expending a lot of time and energy on. I would rather spend time doing things I already do that make my life awesome.

3. My life is stupidly awesome.

I have a job I love. I write this blog. I casually give people advice about how to navigate a hitch or a problem in their close relationships. In about four weeks I'm going to be legally certified to do family mediation. I have friends and family whom I love and who love me back. I live in the beautiful Appalachian hills. I have enough money to pay my bills, buy a few small indulgences, and have drinks with friends. My life is awesome.

The reasons the awesomeness of my life contributes to my singlehood are two. First, I don't want to divert energy away from the things that already make my life great to go on an effortful fishing expedition to find my future husband. Second, I'm looking for someone who can make what is already awesome even more awesome. I don't need a partner to make my life great or whole or complete. If I felt like my life had a hole in it that only a romantic partner could fill, I would be a bit less selective in my screening process and likely be able to find someone who could give me a sense of wholeness that I was missing. Instead, a fella has to be positively amazing in order to make my already fabulous existence better (heck, I don't even know what is more fabulous than fabulous). In my experience, dating to screen for people who have that potential has been more frustrating and anxiety-producing than fruitful.

4. I hate dating.

My relationship history is full of men who absolutely fell short of making my awesome life better. More than that, though, the men in my history have all (with the single exception of my last serious relationship) been . . . how do I say this without cussing . . . you know what, never mind - shitbags. They've all been absolute shitbags. They were really, honestly dreadful people. Liars, cheaters, emotionally abusive, unable to disclose their feelings, unable to decide where I fit into their lives, blah blah blah.

My point is not to bash my exes (after all, I did pick them, at least for a short time). My point is that dating for me has been painful. I made the decision shortly after I broke up with my last serious partner that I didn't want to date anymore. It occurred to me that I was unhappy while I was dating. I was always anxious and stressed out. Dating isn't something that I enjoy. Now, there are things we must do that we do not enjoy - like eating veggies, going out into the snow to go grocery shopping, or flossing - dating is not something that I must  do. It's totally optional. Which means I could opt out. So I have.

Let me be clear: this post isn't designed to advocate for being single. Singlehood isn't for everybody. Lots of people are much happier in a relationship than they are alone. As it happens, I'm not one of them - at least not right now. I haven't totally ruled out the possibility of being willing to reenter the dating pool at some point. I also haven't ruled out the off chance that some serendipitous meeting with a stranger may turn into a lifetime of pair-bonded happiness. I've just decided that, for right now, at this stage in my life, given the people in my dating pool and given the high expectations I have for a partner and a relationship, I'm happily and voluntarily single.

In the meantime, my life is full of love and joy and I'm content to let that sustain me.

Something Personal: In Defenese of a Single Woman Giving Relationship Advice

As I start this post, there are about 55 minutes remaining in Valentine's Day 2014. Being single, and being friends with mostly pair-bonded folks, I spent the majority of my day alone - delightfully so. I listened to the sound of the week's snow melting on an unusually warm day, ate left over pizza, and trolled about on social media. In checking both my Facebook and Twitter feeds, I noticed an abundance of the inevitable Valentine's Day-hating posts. As a person who believes in love, I find these types of posts irritating. Valentine's Day is about celebrating love, no matter who that love is with. As I often do when something annoys me, I went on a short little Facebook rant asking the offenders to quit posting such cynical junk (If you care to read it - it's all of 125 words - you can find it here).

In the course of writing that post, I found myself arguing something that I have argued countless times before in my own defense as a single woman who gives relationship advice. So, in the spirit of openness, honesty, candor, and love, I'd like to call attention to my own singlehood, and in the course of doing so defend my credibility as a giver of relationship advice.

So, I am single. Not just unmarried, but entirely single. My last serious relationship ended about 2 years ago (at least I think it was about 2 years ago; I'm terrible with dates). Since then, I have had one date with one guy, after which I enthusiastically decided to take an indefinite hiatus from dating. (If you're nosy about why I'm single, I wrote a separate post to address that point which you can read here.)

The reason I thought it was important to mention my singlehood, finally, was because I get asked a lot (mostly by men) what business I have giving relationship advice if I'm not in a relationship. Like the begrudgingly-single Facebook posters I mentioned above, I find people who ask me that question to be short-sighted and narrow-minded.

The fact is that on every single day of my life I actively and mindfully live every piece of advice I have ever given in this blog in all of my non-romantic relationships. I have had the same best friend since I was 14 years old (that comes out to about 61% of the total time I've spent on this planet), I have close relationships with my parents and my sister (who is a very, very different kind of human being than am I), my cousins who live about five hours away in North Carolina, and the handful of close friends I've made over the last six and a half years living and working in Johnson City, Tennessee. I have been able to form, grow, and maintain these relationships because I know what I'm doing - not just in a theoretical way, but in an actual, practical way. The old adage about those who can't do teach does not apply to me.

So you see, dear readers, love and intimacy aren't just the stuff of romantic bonds. They are the force that brings life to any close relationship. The advice I give here shouldn't be applied just to your romantic relationships. Rather, you should use it in every relationship you ever have. Do that, and I can about assure you that your life, like mine, will be characterized by an overflowing abundance of love, warmth, and affection. To that I say, more of that. 

Happy Valentine's Day.

Relationships are Like Gardens Part III: Even Good Ones Have Pests

A few months ago, I was in attendance at the wedding of a dear friend in the delightful city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. On the morning of the wedding, with a few hours to spend alone in the city, I made my way out to find a wedding gift. I will note here that gift-giving isn't my strong suit (I'm great with doing favors, but less brilliant at giving gifts), so I had been thinking for days about what to get the happy couple. Finally, as I was waiting in line that morning to buy my faithful companion, giant iced coffee, I made up my mind.

I left the coffee shop and headed to a bookstore where I picked up for them a copy of John Gottman's Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. I know, it could be construed as cynical to give a book on marital management as a wedding gift, even for people who know me well (and know how much I value knowledge and education as the foundation of happy relationships). Truly, I mean nothing negative in this gift. Elizabeth and David are a wonderful match for one another, they clearly love each other dearly, and they are both committed to making a lifetime of happiness together.

Naturally, then, you should be asking, "CarrieO, if they understand how to do a relationship well, what do Elizabeth and David need with a book on marital functioning". Good question. To answer it, I present to you Part III of Why Relationships are Like Gardens: Even Good Ones Have Pests.

Sometimes, You End Up With Slugs

Tapping back in to our analogy of a garden, the truth is that no matter how much we've learned about how to grow cilantro or tomatoes, and no matter how much we've planned and executed our planting to maximize our success, we can't prevent every  problem. Bugs, slugs, rabbits, birds, and plant diseases are things that our knowledgeable planning can help mitigate, but may not be able to prevent entirely. When the pests start creeping into the garden, we have to manage them well if we expect to be able to harvest.

Our relationships are not unlike this. Being well-matched to our partners in terms of our values, skills, and dedication to our relationship can stave off a lot of challenges that crop up (no pun intended) in our relationships. In spite of all of that, though, it is inevitable that in a lifetime together, we will occasionally encounter situations that create relational strain.

Realizing that we can't predict or control every source of relational strain, part of our becoming knowledgeable and skilled is being able to anticipate, recognize, and effectively manage unavoidable relational stressors. The upshot of this is that stress unto itself doesn't necessarily adversely impact relational quality. Rather, how we manage that strain does.

You Would Never Set Your Garden On Fire

Consider it this way: suppose you've chosen to plant tomatoes. Let's also suppose that some time after you plant, you end up with a situation in which your garden is infested by slugs that eat your plants before they bear fruit. We could manage the slugs by way of, say, setting the garden on fire. As much as that may kill the slugs, it would also decimate the garden. In setting your garden aflame, you've accomplished nothing productive. Sure, you've killed the slugs, but you've also prevented your ability to harvest the fruit of your garden. You've shot yourself in the foot because all of that planting and pruning leads to nothing productive.

You may be thinking that talking about setting a garden on fire to get rid of slugs seems like an insane and irrational example that doesn't really extend into relationship management. I would beg to differ. The reason setting fire to a garden seems insane is because it is an obvious overreaction to a problem in the garden. Interestingly, human beings aren't always quite so adept at recognizing the irrational overreaction that some of our reactions to relational strain may be.

Set Down the Matches, and Get Some Self-Control

Rather than yelling, pouting, giving your partner the cold shoulder, or retaliating by doing frustrating things in times of relational stress, the best thing we can do is muster some self-control and perspective.

The challenge in gaining perspective is in controlling emotions - hurt, anger, frustration, annoyance - that interfere with both our willingness and ability to simply speak our needs to our partners. If we allow our strong emotions to dictate our behavior in a moment then we may, in fact, do more damage to our relationships than we mean to. Much like a fire in a garden, if we act rashly out of emotion and without forethought, the damage we do to our relationships out of unhappy emotion can lead to consequences that are vastly more difficult to remedy than we intended.

So, the sum total of all of this is that when we bind ourselves in loving bonds to other human beings, we have no choice but to contend with the quirks our loved ones possess. If we want love and closeness to grow like a garden, then we have to learn to patiently cultivate the parts of the garden that nourish us without destroying the entire thing out of frustration.

Stay tuned for part four.

Relationships are Like Gardens Part II: Success Requires Skills and Planning

This is part 2 of a 5-part series drawing the analogy between gardening and building good relationships. Part I talked about how knowledge is central to success in both endeavors. Here in Part II, I discuss how the acquisition of the right skills, and the development of a sound plan are important to success in gardening and close relationships.

I introduced this series with a very sad tale about how I tried once to grow cilantro and failed miserably because I didn't know how to do it. Not knowing how to do it prevented me from being able to generate a plan for when and where to plant (as it turns out, I failed on both these points) or knowing whether I had the skills to do it (I still wonder if I am capable of seeing the difference between the edible first round of leaves and the frilly, lacy, bitter leaves that the plant produces as it matures).

My cilantro fiasco (as I'm now calling it) was rooted in a lack of knowledge, but that lack of knowledge ultimately resulted in my total inability to know how to plan for planting and then tend the plant once it started to grow. These same pitfalls in relationships can cause them to fail to flourish.

Strategy: Identifying a Desired Outcome and Developing a Viable Plan to Get There

The word "strategy" can be off-putting for people in reference to their relationships. Strategy sounds like something we do when we are playing games or going to war - both of which are categorically terrible comparisons for relationship management. Curiously, when we begin what we hope is a romantic relationship, we often strategize like champs. We know what we want (to form a romantic relationship with potential-partner X) and we know how to get there (by a series of tactical moves that are part of a larger playing-hard-to-get strategy that minimizes our availability and maximizes our desirability).

Something happens, though, as we become confident in the persistence of the relationship. We stop approaching it strategically. We let the relationship, for lack of better language, "do what it's going to do". Here's the thing about relationships "doing what they are going to do" - they don't. Relationships don't do a thing. Relationships are a result of human action. If we don't behave well, our relationships won't be well.

If we want our relationships to be well, our over-arching strategy should be to take care of the relationship and each other. If caring for ourselves, our partners, and our bond is what is at the front of our minds every time (and I do mean every time) we communicate, then our tactics should match that.

Let's take a recent example from my own life. My sister and I were hanging out a couple of weeks ago. I had intended that we would hang out together with my niece, Doodle, and have dinner and catch up. She spent the first two hours of my visit working on something else and only half-listening to me during our visit. I became increasingly frustrated but said nothing to her about it until I had utterly lost my patience and felt hurt and dismissed as a result of her inattention. My hurt and anger caused me to lose sight of that big relationship objective of caring for our bond and I yelled at her to stop what she was doing.

This was a major, massive tactical fail on my part which happened because I was more concerned with expressing my annoyance with her behavior and getting her to stop rather than the bigger strategic objective of taking care of our relationship. As you can imagine, my behavior hurt and upset my sister, and we proceeded to waste the better part of the next 3 hours yelling and crying. A mildly annoying situation turned into a huge, hurtful incident because I prioritized my own emotion over the relationship. I made a bad tactical decision that I would have avoided if I adhered to my strategy of caring for us both.

If we have a good plan and commit to adhering to it, we make better choices and have better relationships (and cilantro).

Strategy Can't Work without Skill

Okay, so it's all well and good that we decide that our primary strategic objective is to care for our partners, ourselves, and our relationships and that we should devise a set of tactics that enable the meeting of that objective. The trouble is, we may not have the skills to do so.

I can assure you, that while I don't remotely have the skills to be able to grow cilantro, that I absolutely have the skills to be able to have good conflict. I simply chose not to use them in the situation with my sister that I referenced above.* But what if I didn't have the skills? What if I knew that barking wouldn't end well, but didn't know what else I could do? What if I didn't know how to express frustration and ask for us to change what we were doing without sounding angry? Would I be doomed to failure in relationships? No. Certainly not.

Skill comes from practice, but we have to practice the right things. If you have a friend who is good at the thing you want to get better at, ask if they might role-play and practice while they give you feedback. There are also people who provide relationship and communication coaching** (myself, included) who, like an athletic coach or trainer, will identify skills fundamentals that need improvement and help you to develop them. You can ask your partners to tell you how they would prefer for you to behave in a given situation. If they can alert you to the troublesome behavior and motivate you in the midst of a conversation to do a better behavior, this can help you grow as well.

Growth is the End-Game

In the case of cilantro or relationships, what we're ultimately trying to do is grow them. Our closest relationships are the most valuable things many of us have. In order to grow them, to make them closer, warmer, more stable, we need to be mindful about how we approach communicating within them. We've gotta be knowledgeable, strategic, and skilled if we intend to reap the enormous benefits of our closest bonds.

Of course, all of the knowledge, strategy, and skill in the world can't prevent the occasional pest or hassle from creeping into our relationships and cilantro beds. We'll come to that in my next post, so stay tuned for Part III.

Notes:

* Yes, dear readers, being an expert doesn't necessarily mean I always do the right thing. I'm well-educated, but I'm sure not perfect. And yes, I absolutely did apologize to my sister.

** If you're looking for a relationship coach, scrutinize credentials. There are lots of people who will sell relationship coaching services with no educational or experiential credentials that would justify their charging you for their alleged expertise. Find someone whose academic or experiential credentials are clearly identifiable, and ensure that their degrees, certifications, or experience are in an appropriate field (e.g., you don't want an MBA in Management teaching you interpersonal conflict management but they may be perfect for business communication coaching). Many certified legal mediators with specialties in family mediation may also offer coaching services.

Relationships are Like Gardens. Go on, Roll Your Eyes, then Keep Reading

Love is like a garden - feed it, tend it, and it will bloom. Blah blah blah.

Some cliche analogy isn't where this post is going. Instead, I want to share a comparison I often use to talk about the choices we make and actions we take in our relationships. Analogy is useful for teaching, and the big-picture comparison I use to talk about relationships is gardening.

To make my point that relationships are basically like tomato plants, I'm going to post a 5-part series on why building good relationships is like growing a garden. Each post will deal with one of the five following characteristics of both relationship building and gardening:

They require knowledge.

They require skills and planning to execute well.

They require ongoing tending.

They present their fair share of pests, annoyances, and hassles.

They should result in something that feeds you.

I'm going to kick off the series by addressing the first point:

Building Relationships and Growing Gardens both Require Knowledge
I tried to grow cilantro once. It was a miserable failure. I was mystified by my inability to grow cilantro because I was under the impression that growing it was about as easy as growing a wild onion (i.e., it's easy to be successful by accident). Apparently, that is not the case.

So, the question is: why did I fail? The answer is: because I didn't know what the blazes I was doing.

It's my feeling that most people attempt to manage relationships in the same way that I attempted to grow cilantro - with the misguided assumption that they are natural and they will essentially grow themselves. We come to this impression because most of us have had relationships forged for/with us for a very long time with little thought, work, or input of any sort on our parts. We form relationships with our parents, siblings, classmates, neighborhood kids, etc. We meet people, tell them things about ourselves, we like the same things, we become friends, and tah-dah - instarelationship.

That our relationships are forged for us for most of our formative years sets us up, I think, to assume that we inherently know how to form, grow, and maintain relationships. That assumption is as problematic as my assumption that I can grow cilantro because it's a plant and plants grow by themselves all the time. When I say it like that, it sounds slightly crazy that we all think we just get how to be in relationships.

Here's the truth: we have to learn how to do relationships the same way we need to learn how to grow cilantro or tomatoes. Part of learning means understanding that why an action (giving a plant too much sun, or yelling in a conflict) results in one outcome or another (plant death, or hurt and anger). I am positive that had I known the first thing about how to plant cilantro, I would have been more successful than I was. Similarly, if we want to grow relationships, we need an education about how to do so.

There are any number of ways to educate yourself. Take classes in communication or social psychology to understand what scholars have learned about relationships. Seek out relationship coaching or couples therapy to learn about how to interact with one another more fruitfully. Read a relationship blog.

Better yet, you should learn about your partner. Talk to your partner about how something they do in a conflict, for example, affects you (and vice versa). Deliberately try communicating differently to see if you get a different outcome (because whatever the outcome is, you've learned something). Talk to each other about how your experiments are going and adapt your communication to what you've learned about one another.

Whatever you learn, how ever you learn it, you should be learning it mindfully. We improve our odds of having successful relationships when we are deliberate and purposeful about learning what we need to in order to address our most important relationship concerns.

In retrospect, it occurs to me that I never googled how to grow cilantro. How easy that would have been. Instead, I embarked on an adventure armed with nothing but a desire for fresh cilantro all the time. I ended up with nothing to show for it but frustration. Be better about approaching your relationships than I was about approaching gardening. If you do, you will amass knowledge and information that will help you plan better, acquire more skills, and  have more tools in your repertoire to be able to succeed at building solid relationships.

Stay tuned for Part II. 

Lesson 3, Part II: Managing Conflict: Successful Conflict Means Everybody Wins

A while back, I wrote a post on differentiating between a conflict and a fight. Really, if you haven't read it, you ought to. It will make this post make more sense . . . and it's just a darn good lesson to learn.

Today, I wish to revisit the issue of conflict in relationships and talk about what makes for good conflict.

Remember that a conflict is a conversation between two people who have stated their needs to one another and found that their needs are incompatible. Conflict isn't a sign that the relationship is dysfunctional. In fact, it suggests that you and your partner recognize that an important function of your relationship is to meet your respective needs (our lesson on what I affectionately refer to as Glowworm Theory gets at this).

How to Have Bad Conflict
Conflict goes awry in a relationship, though, when we don't express our needs in a manner that demonstrates respect for our partners. Yes, we form relationships with the expectation that they meet our needs. But, our expectation that our relationship partner meets our needs doesn't entitle us to whatever we want, nor does it obligate our partners to give it. This sense of entitlement is often the reason that we are motivated to behave badly in conflict. We feel like our partners have to do what we ask. When they refuse, for whatever reason, we take this personally. This displeasure with our partners' refusal to meet our needs often manifests as anger or hurt.

If we feel hurt or angry enough, we might choose to demonstrate our negative emotions rather than attempting to resolve the conflict issue in a productive manner. Some things we do in destructive conflict include:

• Avoiding the issue or your partner
• Yelling or doing other things that express our negative emotions
• Acting defensive or refusing to take responsibility for unreasonable requests
• Insulting or criticizing our partner
• Being emotionally manipulative (e.g., trying to make our partners feel guilty)
• Retaliating (i.e., doing something we know will hurt our partners because they hurt us and we owe them one)
• Engaging in violent actions including threats, damaging property, or harming our partners

If we do these things in a conflict, we show our partners the worst version of ourselves. If we show our partners the worst version of who we are, it makes little sense that we we should expect our partners to give us the best of themselves.

How to Have Good Conflict
Clearly, there are plenty of things that we can do in a conflict episode that can adversely impact our relationships. There are, however, plenty of things that we can do to make sure that a conversation about what we need doesn't turn the relationship toxic. So, here's some strategy for you for how to make your conflicts work for your relationship rather than against it.

• Really think about whether the need you're asking your partner to fulfill is reasonable.
  A reasonable request is one that:
  a) you have the right to expect from your partner,
  b) that your partner has the means to give you, and
  c) that your partner is comfortable giving you.
• State your need in a manner that is respectful and consistent with the rules of the relationship.
  You can't reasonably expect your partner to do anything to meet your needs if you express your needs aggressively, passive aggressively, ambiguously, or in any manner that doesn't promote clear, honest, respectful talking about your needs.
• Identify whether the incompatibility that exists between your needs and those of your partner is real or perceived.
  This point is more easily addressed with an example: Sue has a bad day at work and comes home to her romantic partner, Bob. She asks Bob if he will sit with her on the couch and hold her while she tells him about her awful day. Bob replies by saying that he can't do that because he has a paper he has to finish for the next day. Bob perceives that he cannot both provide support to his partner and complete his work. If they let the conversation get past the initial request, though, Bob would have found out that Sue really only intended to sit and snuggle for about 15 minutes because she, too, had other things she needed to get done before bed. Surely, Bob can spare the 15 minutes. Because he can spare the 15 minutes, his need to write his paper is, in reality, not at all incompatible with Sue's need for support.
• Be open to negotiation.
  In conflicts, we generally start by stating our need and our preferred means by which that need should be met. In the example of Sue and Bob above, Sue's ideal outcome was to be snuggled while she vented about her day as soon as she got home. Bob's ideal outcome was to be able to work on his paper, uninterrupted until it was finished. When we strip away all of the preferences and extras, all Sue wanted was support and to be held, and all Bob wanted was to finish his paper before his normal bedtime. If Sue and Bob would negotiate, they could talk through what their bottom lines are - what is it that they each really mean to achieve. Negotiation allows us to separate what we really need from the preferences we have about how that need gets met. This, in turn, promotes resolution.
• Shoot for collaboration, not compromise.
  I don't know about you, but the big conflict management strategy I learned in school was compromise. Teaching compromise to children is easier, I suppose, than teaching collaboration, but it breeds a shortsightedness about how to have really great conflict. Here's the fact about compromise: it means that everybody has to give something up. The word compromise means to reach an agreement by way of mutual concession. When we begin a conflict with the frame of mind that we are going to have to give something up to get what we need, we start the episode on the defense because we want to give up as little as possible. Our partners approach the conflict the same way, and the potential for excellent outcomes to arise is diminished. If, on the other hand, we approach conflict as a collaboration, we are in a different and more productive frame of mind. Here's the fact about collaboration: everybody wins (or at least has the potential to). The talking that we do in conflict should be, more than anything else, about how we get everything we both need. When we come at a conflict with the belief that everybody can get their needs met and that we don't have to start by giving something up, we tend to be more creative about how we solve the problem. We generate better ideas, we are more open to suggestions for alternative solutions, and we are thus more likely to arrive at a solution that is good for everybody. 

Good Conflict Makes Relationships Better
The majority of students to whom I have taught conflict management have come to me with the belief that conflict does harm to a relationship. They aren't wrong. Conflict can have very detrimental effects on a relationship - if we do it wrong. If we spend more time trying to inflict hurt or protect ourselves than negotiating the conflict issue, then yes, conflict can diminish relational quality. On the other hand, good conflicts draw people together. This happens because the trust, validation, and self-esteem that come from a successful collaboration makes us feel closer to and more invested in our partner. And all of that is on top of the fact that we resolved the initial conflict issue.

So you see, when we do conflict right, we get what we need, our partners get what they need and our relationships improve. Everybody wins.

Class dismissed.