I hope that by now you are convinced that win-win solutions to marital conflicts should be your goal. But you still may not quite be sure how to actually reach an enthusiastic agreement. After all, democracy isn’t easy. And neither is marital negotiation using the democracy strategy. But for civilizations and marriages alike, the rewards found in considering the interests of others are well worth the added effort.
Unlike the sacrifice strategy, the dictator strategy, the dueling dictators strategy, and the anarchy strategy, the goal of the democracy strategy is mutual thoughtfulness. Those other strategies miss the very point of marriage. They don’t lead to a blending of two lives the way the democracy strategy does. Instead they ultimately cause a couple to grow apart.
If you want to grow in compatibility and love for each other, the first step you must take is to accept the Policy of Joint Agreement as the rule you will live by for the rest of your lives together. That rule helps create the question, How do you feel about what I’d like to do, or what I’d like you to do for me?
When the question is asked and you receive a negative response, I wouldn’t be enthusiastic about it, the POJA offers you two choices: either abandon the idea or try to discover alternative ways of making it possible—with your spouse’s enthusiastic agreement. And that’s where negotiation begins.
With practice, you and your spouse can become experts at getting what you need from each other. Once you agree to this policy, fair and effective negotiation will become a way of life for you. And you’ll also be forced to abandon the strategies you may have been using that have led to arguments and the loss of love.
At first, asking the question “How do you feel about . . .” will seem very strange to you, and possibly even humorous. That’s to be expected, because any new behavior usually seems awkward at first. Yet that question is at the very core of every fair negotiation in life, and you must force yourselves to ask it until it becomes a habit. Then it will feel natural to you.
But even after you’ve agreed to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement, you may not understand what goes on between the question and the enthusiastic agreement. You may not have had much experience negotiating effectively with each other.
So I suggest that you learn to follow a step-by-step procedure that is used by almost all successful negotiators. First I’ll explain the basic guidelines and give you a chance to use them with simple conflicts that are not emotionally charged (such as grocery shopping). Then, when you have learned to follow the guidelines, we’ll tackle the real conflicts that you have been facing.
Four Guidelines for Successful Negotiation
Guideline #1: Set ground rules to make negotiation pleasant and safe.
Most couples view discussion of a conflict as a walk through a minefield. That’s because their efforts are usually fruitless and they come away from the experience battered and bruised. Who wants to try to negotiate when you have nothing but disappointment and pain to look forward to? So before you begin to negotiate, set some basic ground rules to make sure that you will both enjoy the discussion. Since you should negotiate as often as conflict arises, it should always be a pleasant and safe experience for you both.
To help you achieve that outcome, I suggest three basic ground rules.
GROUND RULE #1: TRY TO BE PLEASANT AND CHEERFUL THROUGHOUT YOUR DISCUSSION.
A conflict can create a negative emotional reaction so quickly that you may think you can’t control it. But with practice, you can do what most negotiators learn to do—be cheerful in the face of adversity.
I realize that you will view the refrigerator salesman’s situation to be completely different than yours. He can distance himself emotionally from a sale much more easily than you can with a marital conflict. But take my word for it: effective negotiation, whether in business or in marriage, requires a smile.
GROUND RULE #2: PUT SAFETY FIRST—DO NOT MAKE DEMANDS, SHOW DISRESPECT, OR BECOME ANGRY WHEN YOU NEGOTIATE.
Once the cat is out of the bag and you’ve told each other what you’d like to do, what you would like the other person to do, or what’s bothering you, you’ve entered one of the most dangerous phases of negotiation. If your feelings have been hurt, you’re tempted to retaliate. And unless you make a special effort to resist demands, disrespect, and anger, you will revert to the dueling dictators strategy and your negotiation will turn into an argument. But if you can keep each other safe from your own abusive instincts, your intelligence will help you find the solution you both need.
GROUND RULE #3: IF YOU REACH AN IMPASSE WHERE YOU DO NOT SEEM TO BE GETTING ANYWHERE, OR IF ONE OF YOU IS STARTING TO MAKE DEMANDS, SHOW DISRESPECT, OR BECOME ANGRY, STOP NEGOTIATING AND COME BACK TO THE ISSUE LATER.
Just because you can’t resolve a problem at a particular point in time doesn’t mean you can’t find an intelligent solution in the future. Don’t let an impasse prevent you from giving yourselves a chance to think about the issue. Let it incubate for a while, and you’ll be amazed what your minds can do.
If your negotiation turns sour and one of you succumbs to the temptation of becoming a dictator (demands, disrespect, or anger), end the discussion by changing the subject to something more pleasant. After a brief pause, the offending spouse may apologize and wish to return to the subject that was so upsetting. But don’t go back into the field until it has been swept clear of mines.
Guideline #2: Identify the conflict from both perspectives.
Once you’ve set ground rules that guarantee a safe and enjoyable discussion, you’re ready to negotiate. But where do you begin? First, you must state the conflict and then try to understand it from the perspective of both you and your spouse.
Most couples go into marital negotiation without doing their homework. They don’t fully understand the conflict itself, nor do they understand each other’s perspective. In many cases, they aren’t even sure what they really want.
So, at least while you are first learning to resolve your conflicts the right way, I recommend that each of you use a notebook (or smartphone) to document everything you learn about a certain conflict. On the first page, state the issue. What do you want to do, or want your spouse to do for you? Then, on the next few pages, describe each other’s conflicting perspective. You might put a happy face at the top of each page to remind you to be cheerful. In the margin, remind yourself to avoid demands, disrespect, and anger. An example of how your notebook should be laid out can be found in appendix A, the Marital Negotiation Worksheet. Use it as a guide to help you find win-win solutions to any conflict you face.
Respect is key to success in negotiation, and it’s particularly important in this information-gathering phase. Once the problem has been identified, and you hear each other’s perspective, try to understand each other instead of trying to straighten each other out. Remember that your goal is enthusiastic agreement, and that can’t happen if you reject each other’s perspective out of hand. You may eventually be able to respectfully change each other’s point of view, but that should be attempted only after you thoroughly understand it. The only way you’ll reach an enthusiastic agreement is to find a solution that accommodates both of your perspectives.
This last point is so important that I will state it another way: you will not solve your problem if you are disrespectful of each other’s perspective. Both perspectives must be accommodated. In this stage of negotiation, you are to simply gather information that will help you understand what it will take to make each other happy. If you reject the information provided by your spouse, you will be ignoring the facts. You should not interrupt or talk over each other, or even use mannerisms (such as rolling your eyes) that could be interpreted as disrespectful.
It’s much easier to negotiate the right way when your goal is enthusiastic agreement. It helps eliminate all the strategies that attempt to wear each other down with abuse. But when some couples can’t be demanding, disrespectful, or angry, they feel helpless about discussing an issue. They’re so accustomed to being dictators that being respectful seems unnatural and phony. They feel as if they are communicating at a superficial level when they’re actually learning how to communicate at a much greater depth of understanding.
Is that how you and your spouse feel? If so, remember that with practice you’ll begin to feel more comfortable approaching every conflict with respect and the goal of mutual agreement. You’ll learn to ask each other questions, not to embarrass each other or to prove each other wrong, but to gain a fuller understanding of what it would take to make each other happy. And when you think you have the information you need to consider win-win solutions, you’re ready for the next step.
Guideline #3: Brainstorm with abandon.
You’ve set the ground rules. You’ve identified the problem and discovered each other’s perspective. Now you’re ready for the creative part—looking for mutually acceptable solutions. I know that can seem impossible if you and your spouse have drifted into incompatibility. But the climb back to compatibility has to start somewhere, and if you put your minds to it, you’ll think of options that please you both.
You will be tempted to sacrifice—to give in to your spouse’s wishes. But as I have mentioned earlier, that approach will ultimately get you into trouble. It’s not a win-win outcome. Your goal should be mutual happiness with neither of you gaining at the other’s expense.
You also won’t get very far if you allow yourself to think, If she really loves me she’ll let me do this, or He’ll do this for me if he cares about me. Extraordinary care in marriage is mutual care. That means both spouses want the other to be happy, and neither spouse wants the other to be unhappy. If you care about your spouse, you should never expect, or even accept, sacrifice as a solution to a problem.
A subtle form of sacrifice is the “I’ll let you do what you want this time if you let me do what I want next time” solution. For example, if you want to go out with your friends after work, leaving your spouse with the children, you may suggest that you take the children another night so that your spouse can go out with his or her friends. But this isn’t a win-win situation if one of you ends up unhappy whenever the other is happy. And once you’ve made this agreement, it can easily turn into a habit that pulls you apart.
Win-lose solutions are common in marriage because most couples don’t understand how to arrive at win-win solutions. Their concept of fairness is that both spouses should suffer equally. But isn’t it better to find solutions where neither spouse suffers? With a little creativity, you can find solutions that make both of you happy at the same time.
With both sacrifice and suffering out of the question, you’re ready to brainstorm. And quantity is often more important than quality. So let your minds run wild; go with any thought that might satisfy both of you simultaneously. When you let your creative juices flow, you are more likely to find a lasting solution.
Take your notebooks with you throughout the day so you can enter possible solutions as they come to you. Modify your entries as you think of ways to improve upon them. Try to think outside the box. Come up with a long list of ways that you and your spouse might resolve the conflict with enthusiastic agreement.
Guideline #4: Choose the solution that meets the conditions of the Policy of Joint Agreement—mutual and enthusiastic agreement.
After brainstorming, you’ll have a list of both good and bad solutions. Good solutions are those both you and your spouse consider desirable. Bad solutions, on the other hand, take the feelings of one spouse into account at the expense of the other. The best solution is the one that makes you and your spouse most enthusiastic.
Many problems are relatively easy to solve if you know you must take each other’s feelings into account. That’s because you become aware of what it will take to reach a mutual agreement. Instead of considering options that clearly are not in your spouse’s best interest, you think of options you know would make both you and your spouse happy.
Consider the problem we mentioned above. You would like to go out with your friends after work, leaving your spouse with the children. Before you followed the POJA, you may have simply called your spouse to say you’d be late, or worse yet, arrived home late without having called. But now you realize that if you want your spouse to be in love with you, you must come to an enthusiastic agreement prior to the event. It certainly restricts your freedom of choice, but on the other hand, it protects your spouse from your thoughtless behavior—and it safeguards your love for each other.
After having presented your case, you’d probably hear immediate objections. Your spouse might feel that he or she does not appreciate you having fun while he or she is home battling the kids. “Besides,” your spouse might mention, “our leisure activities should be with each other.” In response, you might suggest that your spouse drop the children off with your parents (whom you will call to make the arrangements) and join you.
If your spouse enthusiastically agrees, your conflict is resolved. Your parents take your children for a couple of hours, and your spouse joins you wherever it was you were planning to meet your friends. In fact, if going out after work with friends becomes a regular event, you can plan ahead for it by arranging the childcare in advance.
Getting in Shape to Negotiate
Reading these four guidelines is the easy part. But putting them into practice will be a challenge for you. As I’ve said earlier, the democracy strategy is not easy. But it’s the only one that actually resolves your conflicts and keeps you in love with each other.
So to help you start applying these guidelines to your conflicts, I suggest the following exercise. It will not require notebooks since each conflict will be rather simple. The purpose is to help you begin to think about each other when you can’t agree.
Go to a grocery store together, without your children, and for about fifteen to thirty minutes find items for your cart that you would both be enthusiastic about buying. This shopping is to orient you to making mutually enjoyable choices, and you don’t necessarily have to purchase your items when you are finished. I recommend grocery shopping for practice because there will be so many different choices that you are bound to find some that you would both enjoy.
Make sure that every item that goes in the cart is chosen with an enthusiastic agreement. The very act of asking each other how you feel regarding each item in question, and holding off on making a decision until you have agreement, is an extremely important habit to learn if you want to create a mutually enjoyable lifestyle.
It’s perfectly okay to try to persuade each other by accepting an item on a trial basis. “Try it, you’ll like it,” is a legitimate negotiating strategy if one of you isn’t sure how you would react to it. If your spouse is willing to try the item, take it home and taste it. If it’s acceptable, add it to your cart the next time you practice. If not, leave it on the shelf. You can be enthusiastic about trying something that your spouse likes just to see how you would react to it. But if your enthusiasm disappears after sampling it, the trial should end.
When you think that you’ve gotten the hang of coming to an enthusiastic agreement about groceries, tackle some real conflicts you’ve been unable to resolve, this time using the notebooks I recommended. You’ll probably be amazed at how quickly the POJA takes root.
Practice Makes Perfect
If you follow the four guidelines I’ve suggested, negotiation can be an enjoyable way to learn about each other. And when you reach a solution that makes you both happy, you’ll make substantial deposits into each other’s Love Banks. In the end, the Policy of Joint Agreement not only helps you become a great negotiator, it also protects your love for each other.
If you and your spouse have found yourselves acting more like dictators than sweethearts, it may sound overwhelming to switch to successful negotiations. The four guidelines may just seem like too much to remember.
But thankfully, once you establish the habit of negotiating with each other, it will be easy to run through the steps whenever there is a problem to solve. It’s like learning to type. At first it seems impossible, but with practice it eventually becomes almost instinctive.
I often repeat a very accurate observation about my own marriage: Joyce and I have a conflict just about every hour we’re together. But almost every conflict is resolved quickly and with enthusiastic agreement. Conflicts are to be expected when two people who are very different share life with each other. That being the case, knowing how to resolve these conflicts enjoyably and safely is absolutely essential to marital satisfaction.
By the time you become experts in finding win-win solutions to the problems you face, you will have learned what Joyce and I now know: we both need each other’s perspective and judgment to have fulfillment in life.
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In the second part of this book, I will be introducing five of the most common conflicts in marriage. As you read through the examples of how to go about resolving these conflicts, you will have an opportunity to practice negotiating with each other. And the more you practice, the easier and faster it will be to resolve other conflicts.
But before you begin learning how to resolve the five most common types of conflict in marriage, I’ll introduce you to some important exceptions to following the Policy of Joint Agreement. While finding win-win solutions to marital conflicts should be your goal, there are some situations in which the default condition, doing nothing until an agreement is reached, can be unhealthy or even dangerous. In those situations, you must be able to protect yourself.