DR. BILL’S INTENTIONAL RELATING FORMULA
All You Need to Know about Getting and Keeping a Great Relationship.
Great relationships evolve from mindful awareness, psychological flexibility, self-management, and conscious and intentional choices that have become habitual. Want a great relationship? It happens when the right choices become routine. Let’s look at the “right” choices that make up what I call “Intentional Relating.”
The following are the six intentional relating choices I want to help you develop.
- Adopt and maintain an intentional attitude. Make the relationship a top priority, and more important than winning or being right. Tell yourself: "I intend to help this relationship work."
- Tune into your body and mind, calm and center yourself, and choose to make a shift to openness and non-defensiveness. Get yourself under control and shift to a focus on your partner’s needs and feelings —and focus on what’s best for the relationship.
- Tune into your partner, calmly, non-reactively, and respectfully. Listen empathically to understand. Agreement is not necessary, but understanding is vital.
- Open up and put your cards on the table, assertively, not aggressively. Describe your feelings; don't attack with them. Openness is choosing vulnerability. Assertiveness is respectful.
- When there is conflict, or an issue arises, turn toward your partner with empathy and understanding, and a willingness to learn. Let go of defensiveness.
- Make it a priority to learn and practice intentional relating skills and keep learning and practicing! It's a lifelong journey. It will never be perfect. It just gets better. Conflict is an opportunity to develop and strengthen your relationship.
Most of us are uncomfortable with conflict, and this is particularly true in close relationships. Most of the couples I work with love each other. That’s not the issue. The problem is feeling threatened by conflict and responding with fear, anger, defensiveness, or avoidance.
How do you feel about conflict? Take the following quiz. In each pair of statements, pick the statement you most agree with. Spoiler–the correct answers are on the right.
Conflict is inevitable in a relationship. After all, you are two different people with different perceptions, memories, feelings, and goals. What’s important is how you respond to conflict. Your habitual response may determine whether your relationship will survive.
Imagine routinely responding to conflict with confidence, strength, and a clear sense of direction and purpose. Visualize conflict as an opportunity to build your relationship, something to be welcomed rather than feared, avoided, or perceived as an invitation to battle.
Few can experience conflict without an emotional reaction, a reaction often conditioned by painful and relationship damaging experiences. Usually, such experiences go back to childhood and learned beliefs that made anger and conflict seem dangerous.
Attitudes toward anger and conflict are shaped early in life by messages we hear from family and others. Many of us heard things such as "Button your lip," "Turn the other cheek," "Fighting won’t solve anything," "Don’t be selfish," "Keep your opinions to yourself," "Children are to be seen and not heard," and "You shouldn’t feel that way!" What messages did you hear? Most people learn that conflict is unpleasant, even dangerous. Some learn they must fight back at all costs. Others learn to avoid or clam up. Most of us learn that anger and conflict are wrong. Choices learned early become enduring habits. Few of us learn to be calm, confident, and skillful in dealing with conflict.
The major reason couples come to me for couples’ therapy is difficulty in dealing with conflict. Because of old tapes from childhood or past relationships, partners may see conflict as wrong and their partner as dangerous. They may perceive a "win-lose" situation where there can be only one winner, and of course, no one wants to be the loser. Avoiding losing may mean choosing self-protection through controlling behaviors, compliance, indifference, or escape and avoidance. Each partner may avoid taking responsibility for their part of the conflict, instead seeing the other as "the problem."
The process for responding to conflict that I teach is a process I call "intentional relating."
What is intentional relating? It's a way of relating to others developed through learning specific skills and practicing those skills until they become conscious, intentional, and routine — until they become habitual. It's a way of relating that involves making a shift from being closed and defensive to being open and willing to learn. It means having the ability to calm down, slow down, relax, give up having to be right, give up having to win, give up needing a quick fix. It means tuning into your partner with empathy and understanding. It means having the skill to help the other person stop being defensive, instead having a willingness to open to you and work with you toward a collaborative solution. It’s about making emotionally intelligent choices.
What is the opposite of intentional relating? It's hit-or-miss, haphazard, often unconscious, flying by the seat of your pants reacting. It's what happens when you perceive conflict as dangerous and choose to respond defensively. It's closing down and resisting hearing what the other has to say. It's not taking responsibility for your part in the dispute. It's behaving in a way that virtually insures the other person will react in a similar manner or avoid you altogether. It’s responding in such a way the dispute may be unresolvable, and your relationship may be irrevocably damaged. Certainly, warmth and trust are not being developed. An opportunity for personal and relationship growth is lost. It’s being on autopilot with knee-jerk habitual reactions. It’s being mindless!
Let's take a closer look at each of the Six Intentional Relating Choices. Each strategy is based upon clear choices and intentions and requires time, energy, and practice firmly establishing new patterns of behavior, but the benefits in terms of life satisfaction, reduced stress, and overall well-being are enormous.
CHOICE 1: ADOPT AND MAINTAIN AN INTENTIONAL ATTITUDE
It would be impossible to develop or maintain conflict management skills without having what we call an "intentional attitude." This attitude conveys a profound respect for your partner's different needs and desires. It's an attitude based on the belief that the relationship is important and needs to be maintained and strengthened. It's an attitude that accepts responsibility for either contributing to the problem or being part of the solution. It's an attitude that includes a belief that the best outcome to a dispute is a collaborative team effort. It's an attitude that sees conflict not as a danger to be defended against or avoided, but as an opportunity to build a relationship.
An intentional attitude is based on five principles:
Conflict is inevitable. It's going to occur whenever people are in relationship. That's because we're all different and it needs to be okay for different people to want different things. Each of us has our own unique set of wants, desires, preferences, fears, and goals. We each have our own unique awareness of the world. We have our own perceptions and memories. It is not a case of good guy vs. bad guy so much as the need for parties in a dispute to acknowledge and respect differences and choose a process that is cooperative rather than avoidant, aggressive, threatening, or competitive.
The choice in response to conflict matters. Conflict is neither good nor bad; It's simply a fact of life. The important thing is not whether conflict exists, but how you respond. There are two choices: a defensive or avoidant response, or openness and a willingness to learn.
The other person's needs are valid. Often the thing that most undermines a relationship is trying to figure out who has a more valid argument. Trying to invalidate the other person's needs is almost sure to cause a defensive reaction and lead to a breakdown in communication. The easiest way to move beyond this impasse is to hold fast to the principal that both your needs and your partner's needs are equally legitimate and important.
It only takes one person to change an interaction. At any point in a dispute, either party can choose to shift away from defensiveness toward intentional relating. By doing so, they make it much more likely that the other person will respond with less defensiveness and more openness.
Conflict resolution requires partners, not adversaries. In an adversarial situation, there are winners and losers, and usually only losers if a valued relationship is damaged. In a valued relationship, there is no such thing as win-lose; there is only win-win or lose-lose. To build and deepen a relationship, conflict must be viewed as a problem both partners must solve. The fifth principal of intentional relating is based on the belief that the best solutions usually result from a collaborative team effort.
CHOICE 2: TUNE INTO YOUR BODY, AND MIND, AND CHOOSE TO MAKE A SHIFT
We like the phrase "up-tight." It is one of the most descriptive phrases in the English language. When you're up-tight you're carrying all of your tension in your upper chest, shoulders, neck and head. You breathe shallowly, even hyperventilating when under sufficient stress. If you're prone to stress headaches, this is how they begin.
When you're up-tight it's almost impossible to respond non-defensively unless you first tune into your body and change your inner state. You must first be “mindful” of your physiological state, as well as what is going on in your head and your emotions.
The first step is to change your breathing pattern. Visualize moving your center from your upper chest to your abdomen. This means shifting from upper chest breathing, to breathing from your diaphragm, or “belly breathing.” If you've had voice lessons, participated in Lamaze, or yoga, you probably already have some idea how to do this. Even if this is the case, you probably need practice. It’s not just knowing how to do diaphragmatic breathing – it’s it’s practicing to the point where it’s virtually second nature. That’s what gives you a learned relaxation response when you need it.
Breathing diaphragmatically is the easiest and quickest way to relax yourself, and quickly become mindful and focused. If you've never done this before, place one hand over your chest and one hand on your abdomen just below your belly button. Now practice breathing in such a way that the only hand moving with your breathing is the hand over your abdomen as the movement of your diaphragm causes your abdominal wall to move in and out. It may take some time and practice but it's well worth it. You will discover an instant self-calming skill you can use whenever you catch yourself being up-tight.
Once your breathing pattern has changed through practice move, it now becomes possible to calm down, slow down, relax and choose to make the all-important shift to being open, non-defensive, and willing to learn. Such a shift is not likely to happen without self-calming skill based upon well practiced diaphragmatic breathing.
Incidentally, we ask our anxious clients to practice diaphragmatic breathing for 10 minutes a day, for the next year (or until a daily breathing practice has been incorporated in a meditation practice). We see such breath retraining as vital. Not only to managing anxiety and stress, but to cultivating mindfulness.
Two more steps are necessary before the shift is complete. The first step involves an awareness of what's going on in your head. Do your thoughts during disputes generate increased calm, or do they serve to arouse and maintain your distress and adversarial attitude? Consider for example the following self-distressing and conflict-perpetuating thoughts:
- " He’s not going to get away with this. I'll get him back."
- " I don't dare say what I really think. I can't risk her getting angry."
- " I'm right. He should just accept my point of view."
- " She just wants to push me around. She always thinks she can have it her way."
- " He's always such a jerk"
Examples of self-calming thoughts that lead to a more effective responses are as follows:
- "She has her own point of view. I need to hear her thoughts."
- "This relationship is important. We both need to feel heard and understood."
- "We need to find a win-win solution."
- "We have a problem. We can only solve it as a team, as partners."
- "We see things differently. It's important that we understand each other."
The final step completes the shift and is the essence of intentional relating. Simply put, be willing to be influenced by the other. This step cannot be over-emphasized. Unless there is a willingness to open up and learn from one another, a willingness to be influenced, there can be no relationship. In studies of marital relationships it has been found that those who were unwilling to be influenced by their partner were probably doomed to fail in their marriage. The same is true of any relational dispute. If there's any chance of conflict resolution each party must be open to hearing and considering what the other has to say.
CHOICE 3: TUNE INTO YOUR PARTNER
This step doesn't have to precede STRATEGY4. The order could be reversed, or the strategies could be implemented simultaneously. At any point in the discussion, be willing to follow your partner's lead. Perhaps the quickest way to enter a collaborative team effort is to let the other person express his or her thoughts and feelings about an issue. It helps to follow your partner’s awareness of the issue wherever that may lead.
This strategy involves putting your own concerns temporarily on the back burner. This is a chance to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Do this by following what the other is saying without evaluating or trying to control the conversation. You may not agree with what the other has to say. That's okay. It is unnecessary to agree, but vitally important to understand. If understanding leads to feeling and expressing empathy, so much the better!
It may not always work but usually this strategy will reduce tension, create rapport, and build trust. It generally leads both partners to feel good about themselves and each other. It insures that information being gathered is more complete and accurate and this kind of listening earns the right to be heard.
CHOICE 4: OPEN UP AND PUT YOUR CARDS ON THE TABLE
This strategy involves honest, assertive communication. It takes you right to the heart of the issue as you disclose information about yourself, particularly your feelings and wants. It's a focus on your own unique awareness of the issue and involves willingness to express your complete truth. Rather than a defensive posture, this strategy allows you to channel your energy into positive change, inviting your partner to do the same.
The strategy is often difficult as it involves risks. There may be fears of rejection, abandonment, or a nasty argument. For many it's a matter of assertiveness training, gradually building skill and confidence. The fears are usually groundless. The truth is that others will generally like you and respect you more if you are assertive and self -disclosing. In discussing a difficult subject, theft a straightforward approach often leads to a collaborative outcome.
A straightforward, assertive, respectful approach in which you're sharing more of yourself often leads your partner to do the same. Certainly, you increase his or her choices for constructive responding. Disclosure leads to disclosure, and new understanding, relationship satisfaction, and conflict resolution.
CHOICE 5: WHEN THERE IS CONFLICT, OR AN ISSUE ARISES, TURN TOWARD THE OTHER WITH EMPATHY AND UNDERSTANDING, AND A WILLINGNESS TO LEARN
Well-known couple therapist Dan Wile states: “Accusing turns your partner into someone who can’t listen. Listening turns your partner into someone who might listen.” Wile maintains that we have three choices in dealing with conflict: we can turn against the other in an adversarial cycle, away from the other in a withdrawal cycle, or toward the other in an empathy cycle. You can also choose to respond in what John Gottman, another well-known couple therapist and researcher, calls a “softened startup,” engaging the other calmly and respectfully, and with a willingness to learn.
CHOICE 6: MAKE IT A PRIORITY TO CONTINUE TO LEARN AND PRACTICE INTENTIONAL RELATING SKILLS
Relationship building is an ongoing job. I’m assuming that your relationships are important to you, important enough for you to invest time and energy in building and maintaining positive relationships. I am assuming you'd like the power to transform conflict into conflict resolution and the building of stronger relationships. You have the power to create a supportive communication climate that encourages your partner be to work with you rather than against you.
These choices are difficult. They require ongoing work in self-awareness and self-management. Mastery of these choices will bring you book satisfaction in life.
In the beginning of this article, I asked: “Want a great relationship?” If you do, and I think that applies to almost all of us, commit to mastering the six choices of intentional relating.
Carpe diem!