I know they hurt you, and have violated your trust.
I know you feel disrespected, and need to protect yourself.
And it agonizes me to know that the other person has not met your needs and has failed your expectations.
How do you get your needs met without taking any more losses?
Understanding the beauty and perfect imperfection of our humanity releases the frustration we experience when we are stuck in cycles of unproductive conflict with others.
At our core, we desire similar things --safety, significance and satisfaction. Yet what makes us so complex is the manner we pursue these things, communicate them, and express frustration when we don't have them.. Consider these three keys to discover whether you have been inadvertently fueling the fires of cyclical conflict in your relationship.
1. We both have the right to make our choices
Whether you like, love, or hate it, the other person has an absolute right to his or her own choices. Of course, we depend on one another to help us develop a 360 degree perspective whether we can make better choices. But each person must be respected for this right.
What too many people do is lose respect for one another when we do not agree with the choices someone else makes. Do you have to agree with the other person's choice? No. But do you lose respect for the person in exercising his or her own choices?
This is an important question to ask. And if you are completely honest, if you do not agree with the other's choice, and do not respect the person for the choice he or she has made, then you have remained in power struggles because you have chosen to respond in one or both of the following ways which disrespect the personhood of the other.
2. Nobody wants to be controlled
Control is a powerful response when we disagree with another person. In essence, the controlling behavior seeks dominance rather than collaboration. The questions I encourage you to consider are:
How do you feel when someone attempts to control you?
Are you driven by the need to be right? To prove the other person is wrong?
What frightens you the most about the other person's freedom to make choices?
Getting a handle on your motivations for control, and respecting the choice of the other person--right or wrong--is one of the most effective and immediate ways to immediately transform the power struggle you have been stuck in.
3. Nobody wants to be lied to
More subtle, yet equally destructive, is the manipulative response. It says, "since you won't give me what I want right now, I will get it from you by deceiving you and anyone else that can trick you into giving me what I want."
Manipulation is the device children often use with caregivers. They recognize they do not have power or control over the authority figures. So instead, they find crafty ways to get what they want without direct confrontation or open defiance. What is so tricky about manipulation is that the person who is deceiving someone else has first lied to themselves. The manipulator has tricked themselves into believing that they will secure safety, satisfaction, or meaning by dishonoring the personhood of another person.
The Garden of Honor
When is the last time you stopped focusing on your own demands? Let's say that today you decide you want a tomato salad. There are no tomatoes in your house. You don't have access to buy a tomato. You can't get one from Amazon. But you have a tomato seed in your house. You take the seed outside. You place it in the ground.
After 5 minutes pass, you demand the seed to give you a tomato.
What if you give the seed another hour?
Another day?
In relationships, we often treat the choices and attitudes of other people like microwave popcorn. We have become so accustomed to having what we want, when we want. As a culture, we no longer see other human beings as organisms, such as plants, flowers, and fruit trees. Rather, we see each other as vending machines. We violently press buttons, kick, and even shake the machine when it doesn't give us what we paid for.
When is the last time you made a choice to become a better version of yourself and everything totally changed the very next day? Week? Year?
How long is fair for the other person to give you the space, time, and acceptance you need to come into full bloom for your own personal growth and development?
When we shift our perspective from demanding our needs being met by others, we find something amazing. . .
When I no longer yell at the tomato seed....
And I give it the water, space and time it needs...
And I go and redirect my energy towards becoming the person I have been expecting others to be towards me...
I will walk past the place where I planted the tomato seed. And it will yield to me 3 tomatoes. It will give me more than I planted. But it will happen in the course of time, with the right conditions, and in its proper season.
These are the fundamental principles I share in my training: Think Like a Lawyer, Fight Like a Lover: Introduction to Relationship Diplomacy. Love, like gardening, is strategic. That is what legal minds are good at—strategy. And when we learn to strategically honor the personhood of others, resolve our own internal conflict with radical honesty, and renounce the temptation to control others, love finds us. And in finding us, love rewards us with feeling safe, significant, and satisfied--regardless of the choices someone else has made.
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