Sand Onto Fire In A Fight: “HOW CAN I HELP YOU?”

 I posted a video on my Facebook page and YouTube channel some weeks ago. The focus was advice I’d read in a magazine article, about the value of asking your partner – mid argument – what you can do to assist them in getting through the concern that is troubling them. Literally using the words: “How can I help you?”, or: “What do you need me to do to assist in resolving this?”

I thought this was incredibly constructive. I also thought it to be a behaviour and a skill that so beautifully communicates ultimate solidarity and commitment, even in a fight. I like the advice, and I like what it represents, as a stance to take in an intimate relationship. Fights, arguments and disagreements must happen. And sometimes they will be explosive and even nasty. But they should never, ideally, feel like a civil war.

“How can I help you?” represents a softening. A humility. And an assertion that there is only one “side” here, and it’s the side of the relationship. It’s also a gentle nod to our human limitations, and that sometimes one or both parties may require some specific comfort to overcome offense and insult.

I recently stumbled, experientially, upon a variation on this theme:

I had a fight with my husband…

 I had a fight with my husband. Well actually, he had a fight with me. I won’t bore you or betray him with the details. But the somewhat unusual reality was that… (wait for it…) … angry as he was, and in the dog-box as I was, I agreed with him materially…

I was upset with him for shining truth on a part of my behavior I don’t like either. I was irritated that he was reacting so badly to it… I was a little breathless because his fundamental ‘behavior change request’ was not a simple one for me to effect… In all truth, the thing he had ‘had enough of’ was the result of some pretty fundamental hard-wiring in me, that stemmed from my own childhood, and modelling from my own parents. There didn’t feel to be a quick or easy ‘fix’. And I think we’d both, for years, just accepted this ‘dysfunctional thing’ in me, and maneuvered around it. Until it reached a critical mass for him, and thus for me.

So, I had lots of feelings. But any true anger or vexation towards him was only due to the shame and indignation of exposure, and the suffocation of feeling unequipped to change. I was aware of kneejerk human nature, wanting to lash back about his shortcomings, similar and different to mine. And I wanted to attack the way he’d constructed and presented his argument (because this is such low-hanging fruit, and a common defense strategy in relationships). I was hurt by how angry and intolerant hewas.

But: bottom line, I agreed with him.It’s not an argument if both sides agree, right...?

And I said so. Mid shout. Mid growl. Mid huff and puff. I just said, “I totally agree with you…”; “you’re 100% correct…”; “I’m just not sure how to fix it because… [insert generic excuse]”.

It took a few recitations of this position for him to actually hear that I wasn’t putting up a fight. But once he registered my alignment with him, he was entirely disarmed, and the animosity, per se, dissolved. The frustration didn’t. Because the frustration was a result of the lived experience of this particular dysfunction. And that would only dissipate with behavior change.

But we had a consensus. We had agreement. We had a starting point.

And so, towards a point…

 The original article that I read in the British magazine suggested asking a partner what they need, in order to regain composure and comfort in the particular situation.

I reflected, after this recent issue, on how powerful it is to find agreement in an altercation. Now I know that, in my own life – and likely yours too – much of the time there isn’t overt agreement, as there was in this particular story. Life isn’t really like that, in the main. Moreover, I’m not for a second suggesting blanket capitulation for the sake of peace. The surrender obviously needs to be authentic.

But I’ll tell you for free that some of the most powerful exchanges I witness in my office, with my own psychotherapy couples, happen when one or both partners utter some semblance of these very simple phrases: “I guess I see where you are coming from…”. Or “well, when you put it like that, I do understand…”.  Or “I know you have a point”.

It is so affirming, and so constructive, to be emotionally generous enough to acknowledge your partner’s truths. It’s such a wonderful starting point to progress. I can do a little internal happy dance when I witness someone in my office cross that invisible threshold between their position, and their partner’s position. It’s such an exercise in emotional intelligence, emotional security and a spirit of conciliation to find what is common and reasonable, rather than only protecting what isn’t’.

I occasionally may even ask a warring couple to brainstorm what factors they do agree on. I may simply ask if there’s any elements in each other’s narratives, or even in their values, that they both hold as true and sacrosanct. Or, by extrapolation, if they could bend their minds at all to imagine where their ‘other’ is coming from, even if they disagree in principle and in reality.

And so, I learnt recently, how “how can I help you?” is important.

But also, the profound power of an authentic and truthful “yes, you are right; I agree”.

Sidebar nugget of truth #1, in parenthesis:

To be very honest, I was actually grateful to him. Because he was putting his foot down on something I had just accepted as my personality-flawed cross-to-bear. He was calling ‘bullshit’ on my resignation to this way of being. He was saying ‘it’s enough’. And his line in the sand forced my hand, and forced my heart, and created a situation where I simply had to grow beyond my strongly-entrenched belief that such growth was impossible. Thus, he helped me. And this is actually how intimate relationships and marriages are supposed to work, I think… M. Scott Peck, author of the profound “The Road Less Traveled” asserted how the definition of love is wanting to help your significant other become the best version of themselves. And this probably involves trashing their nonsense beliefs about why they cannot change.

Sidebar nugget of truth #2, in parenthesis:

It’s been about 6 weeks since this altercation. The change has been made. I heard him. I heard his seriousness. I realized how destructive this particular issue actually was to him, to me and to my kids. (And I’ve known how bad it is for ME; but never really brought it front and center, due to the hard-coded nature of it).

And so, I changed… And it took me 3 weeks to effect this change. And it was painless (I’m even surprised). Something I’ve avoided doing for decades… A boundary I’ve avoided putting in place for my entire adult life… Now applied. Now in place. And no carnage occurred… No blood on the walls. No chaos and devastation…

The sun rose and set today, as it will tomorrow.

It’s been quite a revelation, and we have all already benefited momentously from this.