In relationships, everything goes fine when everyone wants the same things, when no one is ever annoying or aggravating or stressful, when people do their fair share and keep their agreements. Things go well when that’s true.
But what do we do when it’s not?
Sometimes we need to work through an issue with another person. It could be minor, or it could be something really fundamental in the relationship. Either way, we need ways that are skillful for working through it.
There are eight of them, and they build on each other.
One: Establish the Facts
Sometimes it’s perfectly clear what happened, but much of the time the facts aren’t that clear, or people disagree about them. Independent of what the facts mean, the facts are the facts, and establishing them grounds whatever issue you’re working through in objective reality, which tends to narrow disagreements. When raising kids, my wife and I might have a different view. I might say, you never do something. She might say, well, I always do something. Somewhere between never and always, the truth might lie.
Grounding things in facts sets you up to move toward solutions. Slow it down in your own mind, at least for an hour, or a day, even a week, and clarify for yourself what the facts actually are. When you’re done, you might realize the thing that bothered you really is that big, or alternately, you might realize it isn’t. Either way, you go into the conversation equipped with real clarity.
The next seven steps take you from there, from getting clear on values, all the way to a discipline most people never learn: knowing when to actually stop.
