There is a pervasive myth that somehow happy couples just agree on everything automatically all the time. Believing this myth, we enter relationships convinced that whatever problems or differences we have with our partners will be easy to solve. But, in reality, the individuals who make up a partnership will disagree frequently, and often struggle over even minor issues.
In the course of building and sustaining a lifetime relationship, every couple encounters many problems.
Different backgrounds and experience, discordant perception of each other and events, unequal rates of education and growth, conflicting needs for self-expression and contact, and differing values and beliefs about relationships complicate and often block attempts at creating partnership together.
If you or your partner believe you have to "win" in a relationship, you'll tend to compete rather than cooperate. Earlier in life, you may have learned to believe that if you aren't the best, don't fight hard, or manipulate you won't get what you want, so you either fight to win, or give up. As partners, you struggle because you believe it's the way to get your needs met.
This kind of competition becomes stressful, counter-productive and toxic, poisoning the relationship by turning you into adversaries, and undermining the mutual support and encouragement you need to succeed in your relationship.
Differences can be frightening, and make resolving problems and conflicts with your partner tense and difficult. In a relationship intimate enough that you feel a deep bonding or sense of commingled identity, it's easy to experience disagreements as threatening. Disagreeing seems to indicate you are separate individuals who perceive everything differently, and have different needs and wants, and create fear that you'll be rejected or disapproved of if you are different.
Relationship models based on the idea that one person must lead and the other follow, or one "win" and the other "lose" can easily become power struggles, where the partners fight bitterly. Each partner struggles to be in control, or they avoid disagreements altogether because it isn't worth the struggle. Hence they spend a lot of their time either fighting for what they want or feeling deprived.
The belief that someone has to be in charge of the relationship causes couples to compete for power rather than cooperate. Otherwise loving partners can struggle because they believe it's the way to get their needs met. Between partners in intimate relationships competition becomes stressful, counter-productive and toxic, poisoning the relationship by turning us into adversaries, and undermining the mutual support and encouragement vital to satisfactory relationships.
Sometimes relationship problems are only indirectly connected to your partnership: your car breaks down, your kids need to get to school, your boss is difficult to get along with. These issues become partnership problems because you bring their effects, big and small, into the relationship with you. Anger at your unreasonable boss can quickly become a difficult evening with your partner if you bring your frustration home, are irritable, and the two of you wind up arguing unnecessarily.
Unskilled couples easily become tangled in a web of blaming, hurt and anger and, after years of similar unresolved conflicts, can build a backlog of bitterness that can't be healed.
Some problems are directly related to your relationship: you fight about housework, time, money, child care or sex. One or both of you becomes hurt or angry. For couples who don't know how to cooperate, such issues can escalate into a big problem or accumulate over time. When problems cause friction and never get resolved, they undermine an otherwise loving and viable partnership.
Only recently have psychologists and sociologists begun to discuss the elements of effective decision-making. Among other discoveries, they found that decision making (even in business) is more effective when everyone contributes their views of priorities, needs, wants, goals, and their thoughts about possible solutions. This cooperative approach means that both contribute their understanding to the problem (which often makes it clearer) and both feel involved in the process and committed to the success of the solution they agree upon.
In the course of building and sustaining a lifetime relationship, every couple encounters many problems.
Different backgrounds and experience, discordant perception of each other and events, unequal rates of education and growth, conflicting needs for self-expression and contact, and differing values and beliefs about relationships complicate and often block attempts at creating partnership together.
If you or your partner believe you have to "win" in a relationship, you'll tend to compete rather than cooperate. Earlier in life, you may have learned to believe that if you aren't the best, don't fight hard, or manipulate you won't get what you want, so you either fight to win, or give up. As partners, you struggle because you believe it's the way to get your needs met.
This kind of competition becomes stressful, counter-productive and toxic, poisoning the relationship by turning you into adversaries, and undermining the mutual support and encouragement you need to succeed in your relationship.
Differences can be frightening, and make resolving problems and conflicts with your partner tense and difficult. In a relationship intimate enough that you feel a deep bonding or sense of commingled identity, it's easy to experience disagreements as threatening. Disagreeing seems to indicate you are separate individuals who perceive everything differently, and have different needs and wants, and create fear that you'll be rejected or disapproved of if you are different.
Relationship models based on the idea that one person must lead and the other follow, or one "win" and the other "lose" can easily become power struggles, where the partners fight bitterly. Each partner struggles to be in control, or they avoid disagreements altogether because it isn't worth the struggle. Hence they spend a lot of their time either fighting for what they want or feeling deprived.
The belief that someone has to be in charge of the relationship causes couples to compete for power rather than cooperate. Otherwise loving partners can struggle because they believe it's the way to get their needs met. Between partners in intimate relationships competition becomes stressful, counter-productive and toxic, poisoning the relationship by turning us into adversaries, and undermining the mutual support and encouragement vital to satisfactory relationships.
Sometimes relationship problems are only indirectly connected to your partnership: your car breaks down, your kids need to get to school, your boss is difficult to get along with. These issues become partnership problems because you bring their effects, big and small, into the relationship with you. Anger at your unreasonable boss can quickly become a difficult evening with your partner if you bring your frustration home, are irritable, and the two of you wind up arguing unnecessarily.
Unskilled couples easily become tangled in a web of blaming, hurt and anger and, after years of similar unresolved conflicts, can build a backlog of bitterness that can't be healed.
Some problems are directly related to your relationship: you fight about housework, time, money, child care or sex. One or both of you becomes hurt or angry. For couples who don't know how to cooperate, such issues can escalate into a big problem or accumulate over time. When problems cause friction and never get resolved, they undermine an otherwise loving and viable partnership.
Only recently have psychologists and sociologists begun to discuss the elements of effective decision-making. Among other discoveries, they found that decision making (even in business) is more effective when everyone contributes their views of priorities, needs, wants, goals, and their thoughts about possible solutions. This cooperative approach means that both contribute their understanding to the problem (which often makes it clearer) and both feel involved in the process and committed to the success of the solution they agree upon.
Comments
Post a Comment