What is Your Losing Stragey Profile?

In today’s post, I outline five losing strategies couples use toward each other that can eventually kill their relationship. These five strategies come from Relational Life Therapy (Terry Real).

Being right

Objectivity battles never work. The reality is that objective reality has no place in personal relationships. What matters is answering this question: how are you two going to work your conflict out in a way that works for both of you? Saying the sky is blue, not it's red, and gathering your evidence as to why you're right and your partner is wrong - that never works. You are two imperfect people trying to negotiate an imperfect solution to an imperfect problem. Relationally: what will work? Give up your right to be right, and you'll have a happier life.

Controlling your partner

Controllers think they have a corner on the truth - what's best, what's the right way to do this or that. But marriage isn’t about reaching one vision we happily share; it's about negotiating two different visions that we both learn to live with happily.

Control the environmental variables (you!) that you can control, but don’t try to control the other person. You can tell them how their actions and words affect you. If you do this, start with love, not blaming. Then detach from the outcome. You can’t get someone to do something – that rarely works. Why? People don’t like being controlled. Healthy couples negotiate and contract.

Unbridled self-expression

This losing strategy is revealed when someone says, "I was just being honest." What they're saying now is, "I was weak. Now I’m strong. Go screw yourself."

Here's the truth: you do not have the inalienable right to vomit all over your partner. That’s not authentic. That’s just immature entitlement. Yes, you can share, but it needs to be respectful, loving, and informative. The vomit bag approach to intimacy doesn’t work.

Retaliation

Retaliation is my attempt at justice. I’m going to right the wrong, set the record straight, and hurt you as you hurt me. Retaliation is the root of much violence in the world. Retaliation is offending from the victim's position. I hurt you – without shame or compunction. It’s a form of righteous indignation and combines well with grandiosity and unbridled self-expression. In retaliation, I’m a hero. Retaliation is not justice. You will not get somebody to be more accountable to you or more empathic to you by hurting them.

Withdrawal

Intimacy is an endless negotiation of closeness and distance. Responsible distance-taking has two parts: Here's why I'm taking distance, and here's when I'm coming back. Unilateral distance-taking, which is what most people do, is "I'm done." And you can take distance and be sitting right in front of somebody. That's called stonewalling. Gottman estimates that stonewalling is a ~95% predictor of divorce in three years. So not a good strategy.

What is your LSP - Losing Strategy Profile? If you can learn what your profile is, then you can change it and improve the quality of your relationship.