Mini-Love-Lesson #190
FREE over 200 Mini-Love-Lessons touching the lives of thousands in over 190 countries – worldwide!
Synopsis: How successful loving couples powerfully
succeed at handling disagreements, differences, opposing views and
conflicts in three surprisingly different patterns is the focus of this
mini-love-lesson.
The Best Use of Power When in Conflict
Sooner or later, every love relationship has conflict. Some
relationships are destroyed by it, some survive but are damaged, others
repair fully and are even better than before while still other love
relationships thrive on conflict right from the start. What makes the
differences?
Sooner or later, every love relationship has power issues whether
they know it or not. That is because it takes power to get anything
done. In love relationships, especially those called couples, families
and comradeships, enormous amounts of hard to do things get done. In
the doing, conflicts arise and harmonious, effective teamwork power
often is not easily achieved but when it is, everything is better and
everybody usually is benefited.
Sooner or later, every couple has love issues because the giving,
getting, growing and cycling of love effects and is effected by every
couple’s way of handling conflicts and power issues. It is the
successful ways loving couples use power to handle conflict and differences with each other that concerns us here.
The Surprising 3 Most Love Successful Ways
Couples research into
what works along with clinical
analysis, has discovered three main ways or patterns of successfully
dealing with power issues and conflict. They are rather different from
what the experts have previously thought and taught. The titles,
descriptions and details vary from study to study and presentation to
presentation. Here these three couple patterns of successfully dealing
with conflicts and power issues are introduced and synthesized,
summarized and given the following descriptive names.
The first one I call the
Avoid and Finesse pattern, the second is the
Volatile and Confronting pattern and the third is the
Validating and Affirmational
pattern. Each of these patterns has its own benefits and advantages as
well as its own drawbacks and dangers. All three patterns involve
couples who have been evaluated as healthfully having real love for each
other. They also have been measured as relationally positive in
various ways such as being generally happy, stable and constructively
functional.
1. Avoid and Finesse When difficulties arise the
successful couples using this approach work hard at avoiding directly
confronting and conflicting with each other over the issues involved in
the difficulty. They tend to bring up that which is positive about
their relationship and about each other more often. They only very
indirectly address the areas of possible contention, if at all.
At first they seem to, sort of, non-verbally agree to live with
whatever is the source of this dissonance or disagreement perhaps to see
if time alone will help solve the problem. However, with close
observation over time they can be seen to be gently, with finesse,
handling the difficulty individually and then as a couple. It is
interesting that this can be done completely nonverbally by some couples
using this system. Eventually any lasting areas of possible dissonance
and discord are verbally dealt with gently, in little bit segments,
often starting with the easiest parts first.
Avoiding and finessing couples tend to be quite patient, kind, very
seldom rude and genuinely nice to each other. They highly value being
in harmony with each other which is far more important to them than
being right, defeating or winning over the other one.
It is not that the areas of continuing disagreement are forever
unattended to. Rather they are slowly and much more indirectly, subtly
and carefully handled. Compromise and synthesis-evolving-solutions are
grown rather than openly confronted and decided. In this system there
is much less strong, negative, emotional expression. There also
sometimes is more strongly expressed
positive emotion leading up to, during and after dealing with areas of oppositional disagreement and dissonance.
These couples usually are very comfortable with each other and see no
reason to change this Avoid & Finesse style of dealing with
conflicting opinions and opposing points of view. If one person does
get negative, the other frequently empathetically listens longer and
then just counterbalances the negativity by being more lovingly
positive. That usually brings the other one back to a more
love-positive way of interacting. Sometimes the more okay-feeling
spouse or love mate will directly but kindly ask their beloved to start
returning to a more positive state and that clear, direct request
usually is accepted.
Fairly good, healthy self-love seems to underlie this process for
both people in the couple’s relationship. In areas involving personal
weakness, poor functioning and low competence leading to difficulties
these couples tend to be very mutually supportive and cooperative with
very little blaming or demeaning. Gentle challenging for desired
improvements does occur.
One big drawback and danger to the Avoid and Finesse style has to do
with dealing with difficulties demanding quick resolution. Another has
to do with intractable problems that cannot be improved on without
conscious, direct, interactive discussion. Also some unsolved or
unimproved conflict areas result in individuals repressing or
suppressing negative feelings for a time, which then is followed by
cathartic explosion. At such times, these couples may distance
themselves overlong from each other but usually then come back together,
make up and go on. There is also the danger that some couples get
stuck in just avoiding and never get to the finessing improvements and
resolution part. This can be deeply destructive if it leads to a
growing lack of
self-disclosure loving and the closeness that brings.
Sometimes such couples, for various other reasons, go to family or
couple’s counseling and meet with a therapist who thinks direct
confrontation is
the only way to go. That might result in more harm than good being done.
2. Volatile and Confronting Successful couples
prone to using this style of dealing with difficulties and disagreements
quickly become intensely, persuasively and assertively emotional. They
appear to enjoy arguing, teasing and provoking each other as they each
combatively argue for their own case.
However, angry sounds, looks and
gestures frequently are accompanied by occasional shared laughter,
clever remarks, witty comebacks and even compliments when a point is
well made. Vigorous and heated debate is treated rather like a game and
sometimes leads into passionate, aggressive style sex. To outsiders
including counselors and therapists, this style can look like
purposeful, harmful fighting and destructive dysfunction.
It is important to note that couples using the Volatile &
Confronting style, though arguing passionately, usually are doing three
very positive things.
First, they are avoiding being seriously demeaning, personally insulting or trying to
tear down each other.
Second, both are doing a good job of what is sometimes called
owning their own okayness.
Therefore, they are not letting a sense of personal okayness be robbed
from them by anything the other one says or does. Thus, by way of
strong, healthy self-love they both remain independent and free to clash
vigorously.
Individually, both count on the other to remain emotionally okay
during this fight style interaction. If anyone’s feelings do get hurt
by taking something the other one said too personally, they usually
quickly convert to reparative, comforting interactions. Later they go
back to vigorous, confrontive sparring rather more carefully than at
first.
Third, Volatile & Confronting couples tend to occasionally
punctuate even the most volatile of their arguments with love-positive
messages. Not infrequently, this is done with brief, loving smiles,
gestures, touches or words of love, respect and high valuing of each
other.
Surprisingly, this often results in a final synthesis of opposing
views and arrival at a solution to the difficulties better than either
one of them could have individually devised. Harmony between them
usually then quickly follows.
Counselors not familiar with this kind of love-successful-interaction sometimes label such couples as
high risk and dysfunctional.
In truth, they usually are among the most stable, happy and generally
successful of couples. They also tend to be among the more highly
romantic, sexual, playful and lively of couples.
Drawbacks include sometimes having difficulty achieving serenity,
patience, tenderness and understanding people who take offense easily.
They also can be misidentified as intolerant, combative and difficult.
They also may get in trouble handling relationship rivals or threats too
aggressively.
3. Validating & Affirmational Successful
couples who deal with relational dissonance issues in the Validating
& Affirming style tend to be much calmer and more easy going while
handling disagreements openly and directly with each other. They fairly
frequently are prone to intersperse oppositional statements with
affirmational messages delivered with positive, upbeat tones and happy,
loving looks. They are more prone to active-loving-listening to each
other longer and asking interested questions for further knowledge and
clarification. They tend to do this at some length before undertaking
the teamwork of attempting solution building. It is obvious that they
usually treat each other quite kindly and with mutual respect.
This style leads to them being happily comfortable with each other as
they face differences and difficultly. Praises and compliments, with
an openness to each other’s ideas, helps them to be very co-functional
and positive as they mutually process oppositional points of view.
Occasionally they can become rather argumentative but, even there, they
are reciprocating positive looks, gestures, facial expressions , voice
tones, etc.. They definitely have a democratic approach but if they do
fight they make up easier and quicker with more forgiveness than do many
other couples.
Couples using the Validating & Affirming system are very consensus prone. They have an approach characterized by
unless we both win, we both lose and our love relationship loses. Seldom, if ever, is there a
one of us has to win and the other loses orientation.
Good-natured humor and increasingly growing to accept each other’s
influence characterizes their relational growth over time. Like the
other successful, happy and lasting couples, expressions of
love-positive words and actions occur more frequently than anything that
could be called anti-love or love-negative, even when conflicting with
each other.
Of all styles, couples using the Validating & Affirming approach
are the best at conjoint (team) functioning. Counter-intuitively, the
tendency of this joint way of operating is seen as highly contributory
to both partner’s individuality and personal actualization. Also this
system seems to make such couples quite proud of each other and their
union.
Couples who tend to be Validating & Affirming are the happiest
and healthiest of our three kinds of successful couples but there is one
big danger. If one of them gets unusually unhappy or negative about
something, the other member of the couple may also automatically get
unhappy rather than remaining more emotionally-up and able to help.
That especially can occur with a lack of understanding or
self-disclosure about what is wrong. In turn, that may give rise to the
growth of various suspicions and magnified fears. This, in turn, can
lead to considerable misunderstanding and discordant miscommunication
along with pronounced anxiety. Serious escalation of difficulty may
result and become quite destructive.
This is a situation which Volatile and Confronting couples tend to
handle quicker and best, and one which Avoiding & Finessing couples
usually dodge.
Becoming Power Usage and Conflict Resolving Successful
With the help of arriving at a good conflict handling system,
individuals and couples can change, improve, repair if needed and can go
on to bigger, better, healthy real love. This includes couples working
at learning to much more successfully deal with conflicts,
disagreements and discord in their relationship. This, of course, takes
well-informed conjoint (team) effort. With such effort, couples can
become conjointly, harmoniously and wonderfully powerful and, thus,
successful in the ways described above. That is the challenge facing
you and all of us.
The Big Problem of Mismatches
When, in a couple’s relationship, one partner uses one of these three
styles and the other uses another style, big relational problems can
result. It is like one of them is playing football, and the other
basketball and both can’t understand why the other one doesn’t play
right. Both are likely to try getting the other to do it their way, but
not know how to achieve that goal. Couples counseling with
love-knowledgeable counselors and therapists can help.
I recommend checking out therapists credentialed by their countries’
marriage and family therapy professional accreditation organizations,
and especially those trained in the well researched Arts and Science of
Love (ASL) approach created by Doctors John and Julie Gottman, and those
trained in the Emotions Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) of Dr. Sue
Johnson. Information to do so can be found online via standard search
engines. The above, as well as others and my own considerable clinical
experience, have contributed to the research and clinical views
informing this mini-love-lesson.
As always – Go and Grow with Love
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly
♥ Love Success Question
Which of the three styles of dealing with opposing views and conflicts
in a couple’s relationship (or other close relationship) may fit you
best?
