You’ve tried to avoid fighting because you know that it doesn’t really solve anything. But you get so upset by the way your spouse treats you, or ignores you, that you can’t help yourself. And when you try discussing problems with your spouse, you get even more upset by the way he or she reacts.
Does that describe your situation?
It’s a vicious cycle. The problems you face in your marriage upset you terribly. They must be solved now. You’ve tried to communicate their urgency, but your spouse isn’t cooperating. So you break the cardinal rule of negotiating by being demanding, disrespectful, and angry. That gets your spouse’s attention, but instead of seeing the urgency of your problems, your spouse comes to believe that nothing you discuss can be resolved rationally. So instead of even attempting to solve your problems, your spouse ignores them, which upsets you terribly.
The primary advantage to being emotional in marriage is that conflicts keep getting addressed even if it means having nasty fights. But the disadvantage is that the conflicts are rarely resolved. And the way an emotional person tends to go about trying to get his or her spouse’s attention makes massive Love Bank withdrawals. The conflicts remain while their love for each other is slipping away. So how can an emotional person ever hope to have a marriage that works? How can such a person be happily married when they can’t seem to resolve any of their conflicts?
Well, I have good news. Emotional people can resolve their marital conflicts. I’ve witnessed their success in thousands of marriages. But the solution begins with the realization that they can learn to discuss their problems calmly and rationally. Regardless of how emotional you have been in the past, you can learn to approach life’s problems with grace and wisdom.
Begin your quest to become a calm and wise negotiator with the assumption that win-win resolutions to marital conflicts can be found only when spouses discuss their problems calmly and rationally, looking for solutions that make both spouses happy. Any attempt to be demanding, disrespectful, or angry will prevent you from resolving your conflict, and it will destroy your love for each other.
Next, assume that only you can control your emotional reactions—no one else can do it for you. And you can learn to do it.
Granted, your spouse can be frustrating. He or she can fail to provide what you need in life, and can say and do things that make you very unhappy. But the way you respond is up to you. No one forces you to make demands, show disrespect, or have angry outbursts.
Let’s stop here to think this through for a moment. If you don’t agree with these two assumptions, you’re not ready for my plan. Unless you realize that your problems will be solved only if you discuss them calmly with a win-win goal in mind, and take full responsibility for your emotional reactions, not blaming them on your spouse, you will not be able to develop the right frame of mind to tackle the conflicts that are common in marriage.
But if you accept these assumptions, your first step toward becoming an expert marital problem-solver will be to learn to be calm in the midst of frustration.
Train Yourself to Relax
An angry outburst is only one of many emotional reactions to frustration, and I’ve not only helped train others to completely eliminate them, but I’ve also learned how to eliminate them myself. When I was young, I had a very bad temper, as did most of the other members of my family. But when I came to realize that my anger was self-defeating, and that no one made me lose my temper, I set out to eliminate my outbursts completely. In spite of some very frustrating experiences I’ve had in life, I have not lost my temper in over fifty years.
The procedure I recommend to overcome angry outbursts is very similar to the way most emotional reactions can be overcome. It begins with the realization that no one makes you react emotionally. Whether it’s an angry outburst or any other intense emotional reaction, it’s yours and you are completely responsible for it. Your spouse can’t control your emotional reactions. Only you can control them.
Most intense emotional reactions are neurologically similar. An angry outburst and a panic attack have many of the same features—and the way to overcome them is essentially the same.
When faced with a threat, we either fight or flee. Either we stand up to the threat and defeat it, or we run for cover. If you fight, you’ll have an angry reaction, and if you flee, you’ll have an anxiety reaction. But in either case, it’s the adrenaline in your system that magnifies your reaction.
So the best way to control an angry outburst or a panic attack is to reduce the adrenaline in your bloodstream. While there are many dietary and medical ways to help achieve that objective, or prevent it from happening in the first place, one of the simplest approaches to controlling your emotional reactions is to learn to relax, and to be able to do so almost instantly. Effective relaxation techniques can be learned within a few days if they are practiced often enough. And if they are practiced while thinking about some of your most frustrating situations, you prepare yourself for effective negotiation.
Just as you might prepare for a marathon by training your body to run ever-longer distances, you can train your brain to approach frustrating situations with intelligence rather than emotion. Every frustrating situation you find yourself in is a training opportunity. By relaxing instead of attacking (or fleeing), you create an opportunity to approach the situation with thoughtfulness.
While most of us know if we’re tense or relaxed, some people find it helpful to use some form of biofeedback to help them quantify their efforts. A simple galvanic response meter can do the trick, and they can be purchased online for between fifty and one hundred dollars. An audio CD that teaches relaxation techniques often accompanies the meter.*
The purpose of relaxation training using a biofeedback meter is to learn to relax under conditions of high stress. At first, you simply learn to raise and lower the meter reading by changing your thoughts. Think of an unpleasant stressful situation, and the reading rises; think of a pleasant non-stressful situation, and the reading lowers. After you can manipulate the meter by simply thinking stressful and non-stressful thoughts, your next challenge is to keep the reading low even when thinking about a stressful situation. You do that by deliberately relaxing every muscle in your body, thereby flushing out all of the adrenaline. With practice, your relaxation can be demonstrated on the biofeedback meter in a matter of seconds.
When you have mastered relaxation while alone, the next challenge is to keep the biofeedback reading low when you discuss a problem with your spouse. At first, you may think that all of your training doesn’t amount to much when applied to real-life situations. But with some practice, you will be just as successful with your spouse present as you were alone.
By keeping the meter reading low, you are controlling your emotional reactions, giving your brain a chance to think of real solutions to your problems. But when you become emotional, your creative ability is seriously downgraded, leaving you with few ideas that are worth considering.
If both you and your spouse can guarantee that your discussion will not lead to an emotional outburst, you will not only be far more creative and successful in finding solutions, but you will be more likely to raise problems with each other. Joyce and I tackle conflicts as they arise, and at least one will arise just about every hour we’re together. Obviously, if we did not handle our conflicts the right way, our lives would be filled with arguments—or we would not be dealing with them at all.
By controlling our emotional reactions, Joyce and I follow the first guideline for successful negotiation in marriage: to make the discussion safe and enjoyable. You are to avoid making any demands, avoid showing any disrespect, and avoid becoming angry. In other words, you’re to avoid becoming emotional.
If you can’t control your emotional reaction, you can’t follow the second guideline: to understand the conflict and its possible resolutions from each other’s perspectives with profound respect for each other—something terribly missing when spouses become emotional.
The third guideline, to brainstorm solutions with the goal of making both spouses happy with the outcome, is impossible to follow without the second guideline in place. And finally, the fourth guideline, to select a resolution that makes both spouses happy, can’t be followed if the third guideline isn’t followed.
So it all comes down to knowing how to control your emotional reactions. If you can learn how to relax, keeping your emotional reactions at bay while discussing marital conflict, you’ll have a much easier time resolving your conflicts. But if you can’t control them, your problems will remain unsolved. It’s that simple.
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*The GSR2 Biofeedback Relaxation System with CD by Bio-Medical Instruments, Inc. costs about $75.