Never Fight Again
Before we get into how to STOP fighting so damned much, we have to do three things:
- We have to cover some BIG concepts about love and relationships you may not have heard before (and maybe you’ve even been told the opposite).
- We have to identify the REAL reasons you get into so many stupid (or not so stupid) fights in the first place. (Some of this might piss you off.)
- We have to establish what your DEAL BREAKERS are (the impor- tant stuff you absolutely won’t ever bend on) so you don’t end up in the wrong relationship or with the wrong person.
And then FINALLY we’ll get into the actual Never Fight Again step-by- step techniques.
Got it?
Good.
Let’s get to work.
Love Me How I NEED To Be Loved (Big Ideas About Love And Romance)
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“No, I LOVE you.”
“I love you, too.”
“No, I LOOOOOVE you.”
“I know.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘I know.’ ”
“I know you said, ’I know.’ I heard you say, ’I KNOW.’ Why are you being such a jerk?”
Before we get into all the fighting stuff, I need to tune your brain a bit with 8 core concepts about love and relationships that make this whole “being with somebody forever” thing 1000 times easier.
Each of these ideas could really be a booklet all by itself, and I’ve ex- panded on a lot of them in newsletters, videos, and other programs, but for the stake of getting to the meat as quickly as possible, I’m just going to hit the core points.
Some of this is going to sound like common sense, and you’re going to feel like you should write me an email saying, “I already KNEW that.” But did you? And just because you knew it intellectually, does that mean you were actually acting on it?
“Love” means different things to men and women
A while back, I ran a webinar for 5,000 women called “How To Know If A Man Really Loves You Or Not.” (If you want, you can check out the replay of that webinar here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= SnH7C_PpdMk)
I wasn’t surprised by the response, because “does he really love me” is the number one question we get from women ALL the time. (We’ve never once had a guy ask this question.)
Whenever I get asked that question, I always have to look whoever is asking in the digital eye and throw a really simple, weird question right back at them. A question that seems really stupid at first and then settles in like cold, bitter pudding in their stomach.
The question is. . .
“Well, what the heck do you mean by ’love?”’
Now, I can hear you guffawing right now and saying, “Mike, don’t be a stupid idiot. EVERYBODY knows what love is.”
But the fact is, in the REAL world love means VERY different things to different people.
As I like to say, love is like snow. Every flake is different. (In this case, you are the flake.)
Actually, we should really have different words for what we mean by “love,” because in the crazy world of dating and marriage and divorce and drunken bachelor parties, love can easily get mixed up with lust and companionship and respect and fear of being alone and obses- sion.
To A LOT of women, love means. . .
“Is he obsessed with me like that vampire from Twilight (the one with the pasty skin and the stalker complex), does he desire me and ONLY me, would he protect me from dragons, does he think about me ALL the time, does his penis shrivel up if he even THINKS about another girl, will he be MINE forever and ONLY mine, does he love ME??????”
(Every guy who’s reading this just had their skin crawl with invisible crazy passion beetles of revulsion. Yikes!)
To most guys however, (excepting the crazy artist types) love means. . .
“Do I like how I feel when she’s around?” or “Am I satisfied day to day with her?” or “Do I really just like her as a person and how she makes me feel?” or “Does the idea of her with somebody else make me want to go all Captain Caveman, rip off his skull, and go bowling with it?”
In other words, after that initial CRAZY spark of attraction wears off (and it almost always DOES wear off over time), what men and women really WANT in a relationship are completely different.
In general, women want “excitement,” “passion,” “devotion,” and “drama.” I don’t mean drama in the “Oh my god, she’s so DRAMATIC” sense, I mean it in the “I want my love affair to be a story that’s going to be told until the end of time where he EARNS me and treats me like a princess” sense. In other words, I mean what the word actually means. =-)
And guys want appreciation and respect.
For the ladies reading, that “respect” thing is huge. One of the absolute biggest reasons guys get antsy in relationships is because they funda- mentally don’t feel respected by the woman they love. Again and again, guys write in talking about how they feel they can’t do anything right, and how the beautiful, happy woman they fell for has become an angry shrew. (Yes, you’re rolling your eyes right now saying he MADE you that way. Let it go for now. Sheesh.).
I could ramble about this for days, but just to boil it down: to be happy in a long-term relationship, a woman needs to KNOW how a guy REALLY feels about her (this is partly his job–he has to show her how he feels– and partly her job–she has to have enough self esteem to be able to ACCEPT it when he shows her).
And a guy needs to KNOW that his woman RESPECTS and APPRECI- ATES HIM for BEING A GUY…(Yes, you can get mad at him for not changing diapers or doing the dishes, but you also need to give him props for starting your car on cold days, pulling your hair properly when you have sex, going out and hunting a boar, grunting a lot, and BEING A GUY.)
Just as a quick sidebar. . .
It’s a slippery slope, but one of the EASIEST ways to make a GUY happy in a relationship is for a woman to BE happy herself. There’s an old adage that says, “Happy wife, happy life,” and a lot of guys swear by it. Man after man writes in to say “Everything would be great if she just weren’t so mad all the time. I don’t understand it.”
On the other end of things, the easiest way for a guy to make a woman happy is to show that she is ONE of your TOP THREE priorities at all times.
I’m not saying she has to be your NUMBER ONE priority all the time (then you’d be a stalker) but you’d be shocked how much easier it is to be in a relationship when you show that you’re willing to drop EVERY- THING for her when necessary and when you’re willing to make at least some sacrifice for her on a regular basis (even if you hate her boss and would rather fry your own tongue and eat it than go to dinner with him again. It’s called compromise.)
Nobody can MAKE you happy (or miserable) but you
Let’s be vulgar for a second.
No man or woman can “make” you happy in your life any more than they can “make” you have an orgasm.
Actually, years ago, a girlfriend and I found this out the hard way. We were at the edge of a relationship apocalypse. I was at a bad place in my life and was pulling away. And, using her crazy female emotional radar, she was getting more and more anxious (which was pushing me further away, which was making her more anxious, which was…you get the idea).
At one point she asked (begged) me to read a book called Passionate Marriage.
It’s a dry book, but it’s got some good ideas in it. I read through the first chapter then went rushing back to my girlfriend all excited.
All during our relationship, she’d been trying to slip a chain around my neck about how I should do things to make her happy and how mad she was at me for “rebelling.” (Sheesh, she didn’t understand guys at all. What was I, a pet? I mean, yes, she bought me a collar at one point, but I thought it was more of a joke or a toy than a metaphor. Guess I was wrong.)
Anyway, in the book the author talked about something that blew my mind at the time.
He said: “It’s not your job to make your partner happy. And it’s not their job to make you happy, either. The only one responsible for your happiness is you.”
I was all excited about this. I thought it would save my relationship. But somehow, even though she read the exact same words, she got a totally different message out of it. Somehow she thought it said, “Mike should change everything about himself in order to make this relation- ship work.” We broke up. She’s married now to a really nice guy and we’re still kind of friends. Or at least we can see each other at parties without wanting to draw the knives out. And she can shake my girl- friend’s hand without trying to dig her fingernails into her palm. So that’s good.
Anyway, this is a BIG concept. WAY too many men and women get into relationships thinking this is going to be the guy or girl who finally makes them happy. But it just doesn’t work this way.
Your job in a relationships isn’t to MAKE your partner happy, it’s to be a good partner. To be in their corner. To give them love. To be a shoulder to cry on. And to do everything you can to be happy yourself.
Now, am I saying you should stay with someone who makes you mis- erable? Of course not. And it’s not really THEM who’s making you miserable. Nobody can make you feel anything unless you give them the power to do so. You’re responsible for your own emotions and your own reactions to the craziness and joy and trauma of the world.
Honestly, if you just give up on the idea of your partner making you happy (or breaking your back and killing yourself trying to MAKE them happy. . . ), you’ll feel a huge amount of weight come off your chest and will be able to get to work on your actual job in a relationship: Being an awesome partner and HELPING your partner find the happiness you want them to experience.
You don’t have to agree on everything (or even most things) to have a great relationship
“I say, ’potato,’ you say, ’Compilation copy of Gary Larsen’s Far Side cartoons.’ ”
Ahem. Time to kick some emotional puppies. (I LOVE kicking emotional puppies. It’s probably my favorite part of this job – no real puppies are ever harmed. I love dogs.)
Your partner is not “your other half.” Your partner is not there to “complete you.” Your partner is not some weird cosmic extension of you thrust into the universe and given the penis (or vagina) you don’t have.
Nope, your partner is a full-on person who can’t (and shouldn’t) read your mind. And because they’re a person, they’re ALWAYS going to have fundamentally different ideas about everything from politics to religion to the right way to take the top off a stuck jar of peanut butter (it involves a blow torch, cream cheese frosting, and a really skilled dwarf with very dexterous fingers).
And there’s no “perfect” person for you out there. There’s no “the one.” Like I said in one of my more popular newsletters, the one is MADE, not found. And I don’t mean that you find a guy or a girl and go at them with a psychic scalpel until they are suddenly THE ONE for you. I mean that you meet someone who makes your heart flutter, you get to know them, you love them, you compromise, you grow together, and one day you wake up and realize they have BECOME the one because you have BECOME the one for them, too, without even really noticing.
Couples who “never fight” don’t never fight because they agree on everything. They never fight because they love and respect each other enough to realize that they are separate beings skipping and jumping through the universe and that you can love someone passionately while disagreeing with them just as passionately.”
Does it ACTUALLY MATTER if your wife realizes what a crazy African Socialist-Who-Is-Trying-To-Destroy-The-Country Obama is like you do? Or does it matter more that you love cuddling up next to her at night, the feel of her breath on your skin, the kindness in her heart?
Does it ACTUALLY MATTER if your husband accepts Gary Sinise as the new messiah striding the earth and spreading the gospel of For- rest Gump…or does it matter that he’s a damned good dad and good provider who’s always willing to mow the lawn so you don’t have to do it?
Fact: The longer you’re with somebody (and the longer the “love goggles” you got when they first picked you up at the bowling alley are off), the more stuff you’re going to find that you ABSOLUTELY disagree with them on.
And you’ve got a choice:
You can DESPERATELY try to convince them you’re right. (Which al- most never works. Arguments don’t convince folks to change their opin- ions, conversations do. And only sometimes.)
You can get angry and develop CONTEMPT for who they are and how they look at the world (but that will KILL your relationship faster than a bullet shot from a gravity-defying assassin in a John Woo movie).
BIG NOTE: Dr. John Gottman from the University of Washington has shown again and again that the number one indicator of whether a relationship will stand the test of time or not is NOT whether couples agree on everything or not. It’s whether they have CONTEMPT for who the other is. Contempt is the toxic sludge that chokes love and it shows its teeth often and with crazy viciousness. If you have contempt for the TV shows your wife watches (“Jesus Christ, Maria, you know Toddlers and Tiaras is the harbinger of the apocalypse, right?”) or if you have contempt for how your man spends his free time (“I just can’t believe I married a guy who plays VIDEO GAMES. What are you, five years old?”), you’re slowly (or not so slowly) stabbing your love in the heart. Sucks, huh?
OR you can just let it go. You can realize that the vast majority of stuff that makes your blood boil and gets you screaming at the television just doesn’t MATTER when it comes to happiness in your relationship.
Does SOME stuff matter? Sure. We’ll talk about that in the deal break- ers section. But the “stupid stuff” is just stupid stuff.
Love isn’t always enough (don’t be a love victim)
Here’s a kick in the gut: “loving” someone isn’t enough. You have to like them too.
Years and years ago, I had a girlfriend I was DESPERATELY in love with. We were together for three years. We were goofy and silly and loved each other like two smitten koala bears. But she hated all my friends, we had no sex life to speak of, and we got so bored hanging out together that I would pull out my toenails just for amusement.
Heck, I get emails every day (mostly from women) saying. . .
“Mike, I love this man. He is my moon and my stars. I adore him. He says he loves me. But he keeps getting my sisters pregnant. How do I make him stop getting my sisters pregnant so he just loves ME?”
And the answer is: “Get the hell out.”
Love is a powerful force burned into our genes by biology and evolution so we’ll make cute and annoying babies. . . and love can make us stay in REALLY bad situations.
I’ll say it again, loving someone isn’t enough of a reason to stay with them. You have to LIKE them, respect them, and adore them, too.
What you LOVE about your partner is also what you HATE about your partner
Jim met Sarah at a night club. He fell head over heels for the hot little Latina on the dance floor in the tight black dress. She had joy on her face. She LOVED to dance. It was electricity in her veins. He got up the nerve to talk to her, and she looked at him with soft eyes and melted her body against his. . .
But now it’s two years later and he HATES it when she goes out dancing with the girls and gets dressed up when he just wants to stay home and watch Project Runway.
Listen: I see this again and again, but the thing that first ATTRACTED you to your partner is almost always the first thing to REPULSE you from your partner and piss you off in the long run.
Hell, I’ll use my own (pretty awesome) relationship as an example.
My girlfriend is VERY laid back. She’s basically a hippie. She’s got a hippie van. She had a hippie dog. And I LOVE that she’s so laid back. When I first met her I couldn’t believe how LITTLE anxiety she had, how she just went with the flow, and how unconcerned she was.
But she’s also LATE ALL THE TIME. I mean ALL THE TIME. To the point that if I want to be somewhere ON time I actually go without her and meet her there (because I’m a stupidly punctual person who thinks 10 minutes early is right on time).
And you know what? Her being laid back and being late all the time is the SAME thing. Being late all the time is just the mutant extreme extension of her laidbackedness.
Turning it around, she LOVES that I’m tall and strong and funny and can fill up a room…
And she HATES that I’m loud and raucous and have this desperate need to be the center of attention.
But it’s the SAME thing.
Make a list of what you LOVE about your partner and what you HATE about your partner and you’ll be shocked at how it’s really the same list. And you can’t get rid of the part you REALLY hate without getting rid of the part you really like.
6You can’t “win” a fight with your partner… ever
Here’s a question:
Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? Because the only way to be happy in a relationship is to stop trying to win all the time.
(“Mike, I want to be right AND I want to be happy!” Too bad. It doesn’t work that way.)
Couples who have healthy, loving long-term relationships never try to beat the other person (except at board games – and maybe not even then).
I know, I know, some of us are incredibly competitive (um, me) and have a need to be right and to grind our competition into the dust like Conan the Barbarian.
And that’s great for the football field or your job or when you’re playing Halo.
But it’s a really STUPID attitude to have in a relationship. Your partner isn’t (or shouldn’t be) your enemy.
Actually, this is a pretty good place to talk about what a “fight” is in the first place.
And we’ll do that by breaking down the differences between disagree- ments, arguments, fights, and wars.
A disagreement is when you (duh) don’t agree on something. It can be on something big or it can be on something small, but the key is that with a disagreement, you’re usually able to keep the emotional aspect under control.
Yeah, you disagree with your husband about where the cream cheese is supposed to go in the refrigerator or whether the president is an alien, but you don’t feel ATTACKED that he disagrees with you and you don’t feel the need to ATTACK him because he disagrees with you.
You just disagree.
And generally in a disagreement, you’re at least PARTIALLY open to the idea of changing your mind or changing your position on something if you’re convinced to do so.
In my own relationship my girlfriend and I disagree on. . .
- Religion (and no, I’m not going to talk about what I believe here. Because I don’t want to fight =))
- The right way to clean a bathroom.
- How many kids we want and when.
- Where we’d really like to live in the future.
- Whether traffic laws are stupid or not.
- How early or late we should be for stuff.
- Other stuff that’s none of your business.
These are decently big things to disagree on but they don’t cause a huge rift in our relationship because. . .
- We can both see the other person’s viewpoint on the issue. (Or just don’t care. I couldn’t care less about what she believes religiously.)
- We don’t feel the need or the desire to ATTACK the person for the issue.
It’s just a disagreement. And because we’re not SUPER EMOTIONAL AND COMBATIVE about this stuff, we can discuss it like rational hu- mans and even make compromises.
An argument is when you feel passionately about something and feel like it’s important to you. You’re willing to take hits for it and are willing to do some damage to get what you want, but it’s still about the THING you’re arguing about and not about hurting the other person. There’s nothing wrong with arguing in a relationship as long as you both know where you stand and know exactly how you feel about each other.
As a brief example, a few months ago I was talking to my sister-in-law’s father about gun control. He’s a hunter. He has a lot of guns. I’m not, I don’t. We both had PASSIONATE ideas about the issue and were discussing it animatedly. . . but we were arguing, not fighting. There was never any attempt on either of our ends to insult or belittle the other person. It was about the ISSUE, not about defeating the other guy.
A fight is when you want to HURT the other person and win. In a fight the actual issue or problem you’re fighting about stops really mattering. You’ve passed the point of rational discourse, let emotion run rampant, and are fighting either because you feel attacked and need to defend yourself or because you want to HURT the other person (often in revenge for hurting you).
We’ll talk about the real reasons people fight in a minute.
And finally, a war is when you’re going for scorched earth. You’re not trying to convince the other person of anything. You’re not even neces- sarily trying to win. You’re just trying to DESTROY them, punish them, subjugate them, make them pay.
A lot of divorces are wars. Which is stupid, because the only people that win are the lawyers who take all your money.
THE BIG KEY HERE is that when there are issues in your relationship (and there are issues in EVERY relationship), you want to have disagree- ments and even arguments, but keep away from fights and wars.
We’ll talk about how to do that in a minute.
No one will ever love you unless you love yourself first
Remember when I said that nobody can make you happy but you? Well, you can’t expect the man or woman in your life to give you all the LOVE you need either.
Plain and simple, if you don’t like yourself (love yourself, actually) it’s going to be almost impossible to have a life-long committed relationship with somebody.
And like I’ll say in a minute, most of the big fights couples get into have a lot more to do with self esteem than they do with whatever the hell you think you’re fighting about.
And if my inbox is any indicator, lack of self love (eww) is one of the biggest reasons folks get dumped.
Sometimes you just have to walk away
I know, I know. I’m the big quasi-famous-best-selling-author-relationship- advice guy. I’m supposed to tell you to cling to each other like desperate baby spider monkeys no matter what and stroke your hair while I tell you that ANY relationship can be fixed.
But that’s just &##$shit. (Umm, I think I blanked out the wrong part.) A couple quick things:
ALL relationships end. All of them.
Plain and simple, any relationship you’re in is going to end SOMEDAY. Either you guys are going to break up (for good reasons or bad rea- sons) OR one of you is going to die (and the relationship is going to end because corpses can’t go on dates).
So many folks write in asking me about how to make love last “forever.” But forever is a myth. Forever doesn’t exist. And, honestly, 20 or 30 years is a REALLY long time to be together. Focusing on forever is actually a great way to kill a relationship because it takes your focus off being in a good relationship NOW that actually makes you happy and that sends electricity to your naughty bits.
KNOWING it can end is a good thing.
A healthy relationship is a relationship where both folks involved know they COULD leave if it made sense to. I know full well that my girlfriend doesn’t need me and could meet somebody else to share her future with, and that makes me work harder to keep her. She knows full well that I don’t need her and could cry myself to sleep in a bottle for 20 years before dying bitter and alone (OK, not really), and that makes her work harder to keep me.
To paraphrase Steve Jobs: Death is a great motivator. Knowing that you don’t have forever is a great way to focus you on having a good relationship now.
And once you accept the other seven principles I’ve laid out – once you start being responsible for your own happiness, loving yourself, refusing to be a love victim, it gives you a wonderful power. The power to know that you CAN leave if you need to and you’ll be OK.
Now, I’m not saying you should be one of those awful couples who’s always threatening to “leave you like a dog and you’ll never see your son again.”
That’s awful.
But just know in your heart that you are strong. You are independent. You’ll be OK. And then CHOOSE to be in a relationship and to be in love every day because you WANT to. Not because you have to.
Whew!
OK, reread this whole section really quickly before we move on.
Love So Hard It’s Like a Punch in the Face (The Real Reasons You Fight So Much Now)
Hate isn’t the opposite of love. Apathy is.
OK, now that I’ve given you Remedial Relationships 101 With Professor Michael Fiore (I am not actually a professor. Or a doctor. Or a lawyer), let’s get into the main event.
So why do we fight so often and so damned viciously when what we really want is love?
When I was writing this little booklet I asked my (awesome) Facebook page http://ttrb.me/facebook (Go like it. I promise you’ll be glad you did. I’ll wait. Back? OK, cool.)
“What’s the number one thing men and women fight about in relation- ships?”
And I got a bunch of answers.
Hundreds of answers, actually (some of which were WEIRDLY specific having to do with the exact geography and dimensions of certain body parts.)
But out of all those HUNDREDS of answers from both and women (the women seemed ANGRIER. Why is that?), they all really boiled down to a few basic categories.
What are the categories?
I bet you can guess because YOU fight about them all the time, they were. . .
- Money. How much you make, how much you spend, what it means when she makes more than him, why she has to blow so much on clothes, why he HAS to have the new iPad, how the hell you’re going to pay for Jimmy’s braces. Money makes the world go round and rips relationships apart like an industrial-strength paper shredder.
- Free time. Not having enough free time. What you do with your free time. Why don’t you want to spend your free time with ME? I feel like I’m in competition with your hobbies, can’t we just sit on the couch and BE together? DAMMIT I have to go to work now and you’re just going to stay home all day and watch Oprah. GAH!
- Household chores. I folded the laundry LAST time and it’s YOUR turn this time. You are SUCH a slob. No, we can’t afford a maid. NO it’s not OK to just leave the bed unmade all day. What, were you raised in a barn? OK, we’re going to make a grid that lays out EXACTLY how many chores each of us has to do each week and I need you to fill it out and we’ll put gold stars when the chore is done and we’ll put BLACK stars if it’s not done and if you get too many BLACK stars I’m going to rip your scrotum off, OK?)
- Sex. She wants TOO MUCH sex, he wants too LITTLE sex, why does he have to get so FREAKY about it? Doesn’t she know that a man’s penis is NOT a construction crane? I just wish he would look at me like he USED to look at me before we got married. Why does he watch so much porn? Why does she watch so LITTLE porn? I feel like the testosterone humming through my body has damned me to a life of frustration, anger, and pain.
- How to raise the kids. I want the kids to be Mormon Scientologist Humanists and SHE wants the kids to be Catholic Universalist Ali- ens. Should you ground the kids or let them run free like rabid dogs? Do grades matter? Should Jimmy get a job? NO you are NOT telling my son it’s OK to smoke weed when he’s 16. Sheesh!
- Jealousy. Ex-boyfriends. Ex-girlfriends. Sexy baristas with tongue rings. Why are there still pictures of you with THAT WOMAN on Facebook? Female friends. Male friends. Would you PLEASE not eyef##k the waitress when I’m sitting right here?
- Other basically stupid stuff. Religion. Politics. The damned remote control. Yes, I called religion and politics stupid because when it comes to relationships and having GOOD relationships they basically are.
And again and again, men and women ranted and raved about how they had the SAME fight with their partner again and again and again (and again and again).
In fact, most people said they only really had a couple of fights with their partner, and that it was pretty much always about the same thing, with the same words and the same white hot anger and the same unsatis- factory results and/or awesome make-up sex.
What’s funny to me about almost all the answers I got and all the answers I found when I went around the internet looking at articles about this stuff was how fundamentally dumb and WRONG most of them are. (I can say this because I’m an expert. Rachael Ray told me so.)
Don’t get me wrong – sex, money, free time, jealousy, uneven distribution of household chores, who gets to hold the remote, and all that are perfectly fine reasons for a discussion or a disagreement. I mean, they’re STUFF you have to deal with, and it can be REALLY frustrating when the person you LOVE doesn’t walk lockstep in tune with you on exactly how you want to handle something.
But after helping thousands of people have better relationships, I can tell you this stuff isn’t the REAL reasons couples fight at all.
Nope, in the real world (of messy emotions that is love), we really only fight about five things.
So what do we REALLY fight about?
I could list out a WHOLE BUNCH of psychobabble here about why folks go for the throat of the person they supposedly love. . .
But if you peel back the layers of the onion and examine human beings for the crazy, passionate, incredibly irrational creatures we are, you’ll realize that (if we actually love or even like our partner) we only fight for five simple reasons. . .
We fight because. . .
- We feel insecure in the relationship and aren’t 100% sure that our partner really loves us or is there for us. (Women in particular have a tendency to pick fights with the men in their lives because they want to get a “hot” response out an emotionally shut-down guy. To a lot of women getting ANY emotion, even a really negative one, is better than getting no emotion at all.)
- We feel disrespected in the relationship and don’t feel like our partner celebrates us or likes us enough. (Guys in particular are prone to this.
- We have crappy self esteem, are emotionally needy, want our partner to fill the gaping hole deep in our hearts, and get MAD at them when they don’t do it or make us happy.
- We have crazy or unrealistic expectations about what a great re- lationship is supposed to be and rage against the cage of our own disappointment when Prince Charming or Miss Perfect turns out to be an honest-to-god human being.
- We’ve got “Lady MacBeth Syndrome” and are worried about what our partner’s actions, inactions, reputation, body, or whatever else says about US (because we see our partner as an extension of us when really they’re a totally separate person we choose to have around).
The really important bit to understand here is that the reason we get into a FIGHT with our partner has VERY little do with their actions and almost EVERYTHING to do with OUR emotions and our own imperfect understanding of what a relationship is supposed to be. (Or we’re dating or are married to a psychopath who keeps shooting us with acid-coated Nerf darts. Better leave.)
In other words, we are ALL crazy, egotistical, and (above all) irrational freaks. (Me too!)
And we’re the most evolved species on the planet.
Cool, huh?
(QUICK NOTE: I’m not saying the people we love aren’t responsible for their actions. They are. And if they’re not willing to do the work the way you are because you’re reading this booklet, that’s a problem. We’ll get to that in a second.)
