The Secret to Agreement is Creating Something Neither of You Imagined

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PHIL: When you’re making plans or looking for solutions, how do you come to agreement? You need to find something that works for you and works for the other person, too, or maybe even people, because this is something that comes up not just between couples, but with neighbors, in meetings, everywhere.

This takes a certain mindset, which is that there are similarities as well as differences, and it is by looking within the similarities that you will be able to find a mutual solution. Now obviously you can’t see that solution now, and you can’t imagine what it could be.

The route there is to look at what you want and why you want it, and to describe that to the other party. By looking at the why and describing it, you create the conditions for finding something else that satisfies it. Perhaps you’ll think of it, or perhaps the other person will suggest something; either way, a new possibility enters the room.

When both of you do this, meandering over the territory and paying attention to where the other person is at as well as exploring what is important for you, you will converge on a mutual solution. It may take a considerable time. That’s OK.

During this time, you need to avoid becoming hostile. You might both have different visions for how things should be, but that doesn’t make either of you wrong. It just invites getting more information about what each of you wants. The mindset to firmly hold on to is that you are both on the same side.

There can be situations where your desires are irreconcilable, such as whether to have children, but in general, an answer is always there to be found. You’re brainstorming together, and a mutual solution is out there; you just haven’t found it yet.

Maude and I have interacted like this for years now. We have been successful every time, and those successes make it easy to handle the issues in life, big and small, with love and caring. So when this is possible, why do it any other way?

MAUDE: A few weeks ago, Phil and I celebrated our anniversary of meeting. We had a lovely time creating what we would do and planning how to have the most fun celebrating together.

We followed a form of making plans, decisions, and finding solutions that we have employed for most of our relationship. We do not need to use a theory of how to do this. We naturally fall into it whenever we are faced with finding a mutual solution, making a plan or decision. We have written about this often, calling it various names and originally referring to it as Our Process.

Over the years, it has evolved into a way of being together, and it is a path for finding mutuality that I have employed in many of my other relationships, and with groups as well. There is a give and take involved in doing this that, in and of itself, brings greater intimacy.

Even when you start out in what feels like two different places, you can find your way to something that satisfies what each of you is looking for. You will discover a path that makes everyone happy and brings you the exquisite pleasure of creating that together.

In order to find your way together, a few things are necessary. The first is that each of you has to want to find such a path and reach such a conclusion together. Next, you each have to find what it is that you want, what you are looking for in the outcome. This happens out loud to one another as you share back and forth ideas and possibilities, searching for what sounds and feels right to you as you speak it.

You go back and forth, talking and sharing with each other, listening and hearing each other and yourselves, being open and honest. Explore what you want, reach deep, look at what arises, and then speak it. It’s important to have the sense of doing this together, and of being aware that you are on the same side. Your exchange will be permeated by the feeling that you are enjoying what you are doing, and there is no rush to get to the end of the experience. It is the experience itself and not just the outcome that will bring that extra ingredient of closeness that affirms to each of you the path you are on.

There is no push-pull. There are no raised voices or stepping away from each other. You come closer and closer as you make your way together. And then it happens. A shape appears out of the exchange; an answer, an idea. It is something new, something that was not there before. It is something that you have created together. Neither of you had this on your own. It grew and came into being between you; you birthed it together. It is so much more than anything either of you could have come up with alone.

Photo credit: Maude Mayes
Photo note: Connecting in the park

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