Successful Relationships Reading Corner
This week, we said that conflict is not inevitable in your relationships. In our links this week, Dr. Heitler is prominent, and with good reason: she explains clearly why fighting in relationships is wrong and harmful.
Beware Of Mistaken Marriage Advice That “All Couples Fight” “Stressful situations that are becoming adversarial between loving partners can escalate into ever more stressful arguments. Alternatively, they can be handled with calm, productive, collaborative talking together that dissipates stress and yields the creation of mutually comfortable solutions. In this regard, one paragraph in psychologist Harriet Lerner’s otherwise excellent post, “My Partner and I Can’t Stop the Fighting,” troubles me. The offending paragraph about how to fix marriage problems states a conventional wisdom that is wrong and sets needlessly low and even harmful aspirations for people who believe it.”
Solve Tough Dilemmas With the Win-Win Waltz “The three steps of win-win waltzing help you to understand each other’s concerns instead of locking into adversarial positions. The more understanding you gain about both your and others’ deeply felt concerns, the more likely it becomes that you will be able to be nice to yourself and simultaneously nice also to others.
Based on the ideas first written about in Fisher and Ury’s book Getting to Yes, the win-win waltz can enable you to dance through collaborative problem-solving to resolve your differences like partners instead of becoming enemies. Conflicts occur often between folks. All duos, at home and at work, from time to time have different preferences. One wants to turn left and the other to turn right. Fortunately, differences needn’t lead either to fighting to establish who wins and who will lose, or to giving up on what you want. There’s no need to compromise either, or to get mad. Here’s further good news. The same strategy for talking through problems that works between two people works also within groups of any size.”
14 Ways to Resolve Conflicts and Solve Relationship Problems “Decide if you’ve got a problem or just a difference. If an issue isn’t threatening your health, safety, or financial security, doesn’t work against your shared vision for your marriage, and doesn’t put an unfair burden on you, then it may simply be a sign that the two of you are two different people. Perhaps you’re an extrovert and love parties, while your partner’s introvert personality makes him or her crave quiet nights at home. Perhaps you’re great at starting projects, while your partner’s terrific at sticking with it until every last detail is finished. Or maybe one of you is a morning person, the other a night owl. In that case, the solution is acceptance, not trying to change your partner. Look for the ways that your differences are marriage-strengthening assets.”