There was a time when my husband and I were paying $850 a session to get help with our marriage.
We’d gone to the big dog: Terry Real, the author of How Can I Get Through to You? among others. Kurt and I knew he had our number. We’d read his books together and I’d done professional training with him.
So we start working with him, and in essence - I’m going to just lay it out to you the way my ego reacted to it - he tells me I’m being a bitch! I felt smacked in the face. He told me I was indulging in unbridled self-expression in how I talked to my husband in front of him and that I was probably up in Kurt’s face even more than that when we weren't in a couples’ session.
My inner junkyard dog snarled, like “Oh, yeah, you think THAT was scrappy? I’ll show you scrappy! Do you have any IDEA the way this man PROVOKES my anger?!” But Terry had written years earlier that there are 5 core approaches that
(a) really don’t work to get you what you want
(b) make things worse between you and your partner, and
(c) are really tempting and easy to rationalize when you’re in the white-hot fire of marriage.
So when he told me about them in our private work, I was offended at one level, and then really embarrassed at another level because it was such a cliche to be engaging in what he had already told me - and what I loved to teach clients - was a bad tack to take!
I share this story so that you know I’m not pronouncing these things from on high. I GET IT and I have BEEN THERE being confronted with my own losing strategies… Feeling like they were the only reasonable response to A Husband Like Mine. They ARE understandable. They ARE forgivable. But the bottom line is: they simply. do. not. work.
So if you want the marriage you say you want - and I know you do, and I want it for you, too - AND if you want to become the grounded, centered, peaceful, powerful person I know you can be, flex the muscle required to RESTRAIN YOURSELF from engaging in these behaviors and the attitudes that drive them. The practice will polish you till you shine like a freakin’ diamond!
The Five Losing Relationship Strategies
Each of these is an approach people employ in relationships - even when we think we’re good at relating - that only produce bad results.
Being right
Controlling your partner
Unbridled self-expression
Retaliation
Withdrawal
Let’s dig into the first one:
Losing Strategy #1: Being Right
This might look like:
Arguing about whose view is more accurate
Holding “I told you so” over your partner’s head
Failing to discern “is this something worth arguing over, or would I rather be loved than right?”
Being right fuels self righteous indignation, which let's be honest, feels pretty good. It may give you kind of a high, but your partner will feel competed with, put down, unsafe and unloved. And that really means that the long term effect for you is loneliness, disconnection, also feeling unsafe and unloved, and not getting to have the joy of being someone who is a sanctuary for your partner.
Losing Strategy #2: Controlling Your Partner
This pattern can look a few different ways:
It can look like directly controlling behaviors like telling them what to do, forbidding them to do certain things, go places, be connected with certain people, and so on… OR
It can be subtler - where you don’t directly control, but your own mood swings, facial expressions, interest in sex, willingness to participate in family events or willingness to cook, and so on all hinge on your partner pleasing you by doing what you want.
For me, I’ve come to recognize that there are little things down at the level of suggesting he change lanes when he’s driving or insisting that he go to this grocery store vs. that one - LITTLE ways I can be controlling, and here’s the effect: it’s simply self-defeating.
The reason it’s self-defeating is that nobody responds well to even the merest hint of being controlled. Here’s how I put it: THE ONLY REASONABLE RESPONSE TO TYRANNY IS REBELLION. Your partner will respond with rebellion and retaliation, either overtly or subtly. They HAVE TO because our dignity, our sense of self-love has to defend us against subjugation.
This is why self-abuse and shaming and controlling behaviors toward ourselves backfire, too, and result in us overeating when we were trying to diet or getting injured or sick when we’re tyrannical about our exercise… Nobody likes a tyrant, and everybody finds a way to get around them.
You cannot be loved and controlling in the same relationship.
Losing Strategy #3: Unbridled Self-expression
This may look like:
a) Saying whatever is on your mind with no kindness or respect
b) Letting your emotions in the moment color your thoughts and letting that turn into words you may not mean later but that do lasting damage now
c) allowing your tone, facial expressions, and/or body language to convey disrespect, resentment, contempt, or withdrawal, even if you do bite your tongue
Unbridled self-expression can show up as
Raising your voice, slamming doors, throwing things
Interrupting your partner
Condescension, sarcasm, big eyes, a curled lip and backed up head that says without words “are you friggin’ kidding me? You gettin’ a load of this guy ovah heah?”
“You’re unbelievable!” or “You never….” or “You always…”
The effect of unbridled self-expression is that, in the immediate term, you get high on the release and on the superiority. But it’s at the cost of injecting your own anxiety, anger, and/or fear INTO your partner’s space. You’re shitting where you eat, in essence. Believe me: takes one to know one.
Terry Real confronted me on this and I was incensed. I had thought he was really GETTING what I was reporting about my husband’s refusal to see my needs and to show up fully, available and open, in the relationship. So why was he now busting my chops on how I TALK to KURT?! FFS!
But what he showed me was that I DID have a leg to stand on in what I was asking for. Kurt was hitting the escape hatch in our relationship. But I was then undermining my own position and ENSURING I wouldn’t get what I wanted by flipping my own lid. I needed to settle down and slow down, to behave like someone I would want to be loved by, and to take enough care of MYSELF and my own wounded little girl inside so that I didn’t have to let the pissed off, vengeful, adaptive child inside me - my inner bodyguard, go marauding in my relationship. Only my inner adult, I’ve learned, gets to talk to Kurt. The others are MINE to deal with.
Losing Strategy #4: Retaliation
This is where you inflict pain, humiliation, rejection, or confusion on your partner because you yourself have suffered at their hand, at least by your own perception.
It looks like anything that you know is bad behavior or that you wouldn’t appreciate from them, that you’re doing “because they did ____.” “If they’re going to do XYZ, then I have a right to…”
You know you’re retaliating if you can imagine someone asking you “why did you speak to him that way, why did you do that, why aren’t you doing this?” and you saying “well, he never ___” or “because he always” or “because he did ____”
This is what Terry Real calls “offending from the victim position.” You tell yourself your partner knocked you to the ground. But you’re the one lying there in the dirt, aiming the gun at your partner, and feeling all the while like you’re the good guy in the story. There IS no good guy if you’re retaliating.
Retaliation may look clear-cut or, more likely, it’ll be subtle. A withholding of affection. A disinterest in sex or shared time. Little ways of not doing what you know makes your partner happy and makes them feel loved.
We retaliate IN ORDER TO HURT. We do it to make them suffer like we suffered… Or worse. The effect of retaliation is that it DOES hurt our partner. And whereas their initial action or inaction may or may not have been intended to hurt you, you both know that this one on your part was vindictive, carried out with the intent to wound.
So when we show our partner through retaliation that we believe that a hurt person has a right to inflict hurt in retribution, we run the risk that our partner will follow our lead and now inflict pain on us deliberately, as well. And then we enter a race to the bottom.
OR if we’re blessed with a wise and centered partner, they call us on it. They say “The way you’re treating me feels awful. It’s not like you. What’s going on?”
To stop retaliation, it takes a similar move. When we see that we’re tempted to retaliate or that we’ve already engaged in some deliberate inflicting of pain in retaliation for perceived wrongs, we have to back up and address those directly.
It takes real humility to admit we’ve been retaliating or tempted to retaliate, and vulnerability to simply say “ouch” to the action or neglect that our partner engaged in. But that’s how we stay out of this losing strategy. We recognize we’re not all good or all bad… That we’re both loving and vulnerable to hurt by our partner AND we’re capable of vindictiveness and responsible for reeling in those urges.
Losing Strategy #5: Withdrawal
I want to make a distinction here: slowing things down when you’re getting triggered or flooded is not the same as withdrawal. Pausing a conversation that’s going nowhere so that it CAN go somewhere when you’re both centered is a winning move. The difference is whether and how you convey the intention of the distance you’re creating. If you pause a conversation, be clear about why and about when you’ll circle back, and offer any reassurance you can.
For example, we’ll say something like “I can tell I’m so triggered no more good can come from talking about this right now. I need to pause and calm down. I love you and I want to work this out but I can’t right now. How about we circle back and pick up the conversation in 2 hours after I’ve had a walk and some lunch?”
But actual withdrawal looks like moving away from your partner without connection:
Pulling away because you’re experiencing stress, and not letting them be of support in that
Pulling away because you’re angry with them or disappointed or hurt, but not sharing what’s happening or creating any opening to be soothed or met or to let them make it right
Withdrawing into yourself because of a mood or energy fluctuation or illness, but not signposting that with your partner
Signaling disapproval, anger, or displeasure with your partner by denying them your companionship, conversation, sexual availability, or courtesy
The effect of withdrawal is that it conveys to your partner “you don’t have access to my heart. We are not a unit.” John Gottman calls this “stonewalling” and names it as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - the four indicators that in his Love Lab, reliably predicted couples’ unhappiness and eventual divorce, over the long term.
Super-quick recap:
The love you want is NOT on the other side of these 5 things:
Trying to be right
Trying to control your partner
Indulging in Unbridled self-expression
Retaliation
Withdrawing or stonewalling
If you’ve been engaging in them, you’re my people. I can relate! AND if you’re willing to quit justifying them and look, with clear eyes at your own behavior and see that the relationship you really want is on the other side of releasing these patterns and being willing to cultivate a new set of responses.
Your homework:
Reflect on these five strategies and look for the one, two, or three biggest insights into your own behavior. Let me emphasize: NOT into how your PARTNER does these things - that’s Losing Strategy #1 - looking to be RIGHT about what’s wrong about THEM --- Find what you can see ABOUT YOU and just spend this week looking, with compassion, at how you have repeated these behaviors and where they come up now. Finding the choice points is the key to making new choices.