According to psychologist John Gottman’s decades-long study, 69% of relationship conflicts are “intractable.”
What this means is that more than two-thirds of problems in relationships stem from irreconcilable differences personality, parents styles, political beliefs, core values and behavioral patterns that are likely to change just as the cows come home. Introverts and extrovertsmorning people and night people, impulses and planners, spenders and savers, adventure seekers and security seekers, dogs and cats, bad boys and good girls. These are differences that cannot be resolved, only managed, and trying to resolve them will only lead to frustration and gridlock.
Relationships, of course, don’t start out that way. Opposites famously attract, drawing you to people who challenge or complement your dominant habits, thereby bringing balance, chemistry, innovation, and a kind of mental adventure into your life.
Under the spell of love, even deep differences don’t bother you, and for a while before the spell wears off, you know you’re loved and all your flaws are magically transformed into charming eccentricities. As a character in a movie Closer says: “We are in the first flood. This is paradise. All my bad habits make him happy.”
But dopamine levels inevitably reset, hidden agendas emerge, power struggles ensue, and you admit that your partner’s adorable eccentricities are actually kind of annoying now that you think about it.
But the problem is not the differences themselves. It’s how you treat them and what they inspire in you.angerfrustration, judgment, ego, moral superiority and fear for your relationship.
That’s what’s required, says Gottman What makes love lastit’s trying to understand and empathize with each other’s differences, not trying to understand or argue into oblivion. Compatibility does not mean similarity, and irreconcilable differences are not necessarily fatal to love.
But pick your battles. Know which problems are solvable and which are not. Who removes the waste is a solvable problem. Changing a slob into a freak isn’t easy.
Move beyond the right-wrong argument – neither side is right or wrong; it’s just preference and personality and start making deals that work for both of you. Maybe you clean up after the slob, and the slob does the grocery shopping. Maybe both of you visit the maid’s house twice a month. If you prefer to eat immediately after dinner and your partner wants to wait until tomorrow, maybe agree to use it on the night when your partner is at the plate.
And while the water is still, explore the genealogy of your respective positions: why you each hold the position you do, what your emotional logic is, what motivates your arguments and delays, and what it feels like when your position is challenged.
Empathy and perspective are more helpful than solving a problem that never solves a problem—”We’ve been over this a thousand times.” And it is more productive to sit on the same side of the table and look at a mutual problem summonerrather than sitting on opposite sides of the table looking at each other as problems.
Back in my twenties, my twin brother and I fought over our….cleaning habits. Seriously. I don’t remember what the fight was really about, but then and ever since, we’ve found a shorthand way of notifying ourselves when we’re probably arguing about something deeper and older than the topic at hand. “Ian the tooth!” one or the other of us suddenly says something in the middle of a conflict, which reminds us to step back and reframe the conversation, pointing it to what’s really going on—a hidden agenda, a deep story about an issue, an unresolved grievance, or anxiety which is emerging in the present but has its roots in the past, perhaps even in other relationships. “Couples don’t fight as much about certain things,” says relationship psychologist Esther Perel, “but for certain things like control, connection or trust. Find out what your partner is struggling with for.
Arguments about housework Maybe you really feel overwhelmed, your time and contribution is not appreciated. Fights about your partner hardworking trends can be about solitude and the fear of losing touch. Getting angry at the teasing comments your partner makes about you in front of friends may mean that your partner respects and supports you. Arguments about money may arise childhood shame around scarcity.
Research tells us positively stress is stimulating – meeting new people, speaking, learning a new skill – and similarly, the differences we face in relationships can help us ramp upbeing different is a gift of life and all. But it’s one thing to yearn for someone to complement or challenge your internalized habits and beliefs, and quite another to actually get it.
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For example, my partner extroversion and communication is part of what attracted me to her, but yikes. I didn’t calculate what normal problems it would cause to my inner self introvertmy threshold for communication, my love of solitude, and how often I am challenged to step out of my comfort zone in the name of togetherness. Oscar Wilde once said, “The gods have two ways of being rude to us.” “The first thing is to deny us.” dreamsand the second is to give.”
This difference in our tolerance for socialization is fraught with the inevitable possibility of conflict, but it is also rich with opportunities for growth and the enlivening challenge of moving into one another’s worlds, meeting their needs and values without compromising our own. I enjoy socializing and building community more than ever, and I feel more confident in speaking up for myself. borders and limitations, and he enjoys idleness and solitude more than ever.
The ability to tolerate the tension between competing needs and values—sustaining paradox—also creates great things. stability to people’s partnership and diplomacy. The ability to expand yourself to embrace conflicting approaches to life against the kind of oppression that can enter relationships – one side is superior at the expense of the other – allows them to inform and learn from each other and elbow room for different perspectives and preferences in a way that doesn’t judge or direct.
Psychologist Robert Johnson even considers this skill a kind of religious practice, in the sense that re-ligare means to re-ligare, to connect opposites and restore them to each other. He talks about the land between the warring forces as a sacred place and in his book Transformationclaims that this is where one grows up. “Fighting Paradox to Revelation: This is Divine Progress.”
Author PL Travers once wrote about maintaining paradox and managing differences: “We both walk through fire.” “A single flame embraces us both. So let us continue to burn together. Arms wide, we bend toward each other, and a passing angel pauses for a moment, standing majestically in the air, bearing witness to our embrace.”
