The DNA of Relationships (10 page)

1. 1.
   The external problem is rarely the problem.
   What we think is the problem—finances, the other person—is not the core problem.
   
2. 2.
   The core problem is our fear.
   The problem in nearly every conflict is that something touched each person’s core fear. We wrestle with a core fear.
   
3. 3.
   Each of us is involved in a Fear Dance.
   Triggered by a core fear, we get stuck in a destructive Fear Dance that involves our hurts, wants, fears, and reactions.
   
4. 4.
   Don’t expect the other person to be the solution.
   When we hurt, we want the other person to change so that we won’t feel the hurt. But the solution is not to change the other person.
   
5. 5.
   The Fear Dance is functionally dysfunctional.
   Because the Fear Dance is the only dance many people know how to do, they “function” in the midst of dysfunction. They adopt coping mechanisms, which often only deepen the problem.
   
6. 6.
   We can break the rhythm of the Fear Dance.
   By identifying our core fears and by understanding that the other person isn’t the problem, we can begin to learn new dance steps to healthier relationships.
   

My son Michael and his wife, Amy, also have been on the dance floor with their Fear Dance. And their reactions have not always been pretty.

One day Michael came home with a new cell phone and plan—about the sixth one in six months. He easily succumbs to the newest telecommunications gadget and the coolest “free minutes” plan. He was fully aware that Amy and he had recently discussed his cell-phone addiction and that he had promised not to purchase any new phones unless they discussed it. But he was confident that if he broke the news to her right, with humor, she would not be upset. He walked in the door, happy and enthusiastic about his new acquisition. “Hey, Baby, want my number?” he announced with a grin.

When Amy responded, “I already have your number,” he thought he was home free. He smiled and proceeded, “Oh, you don’t have
this
one,” and showed her the phone.

The humor evaporated and Amy exploded. “You’re so irresponsible!” she yelled. “How could you do this? We don’t need another cell phone in this house!”

While Michael listened, Amy vented her frustration. Soon he noticed their young son, standing with them in the living room. Michael pointed to Cole, hoping Amy would take the signal not to display her anger or belittle him in front of their little boy. She noticed his signal, all right.

“Well, I
want
Cole to hear how irresponsible you are!” she fumed, and she continued her tirade.

Michael doesn’t typically escalate an argument, but
that
comment sent him through the stratosphere. Amy had never done anything like it before—and Cole stood there, dumbfounded. You could almost see his bewildered brain wondering,
What is going on?

Amy realized she had gone way over the line, and she fled into the bedroom. Michael ran right behind her, but not before he turned and instructed Cole, “You stay here!” Overcome by his anger, Michael started pointing at Amy and shouting, “This is all
your
fault!”

Of course, their problem had nothing whatsoever to do with his unwise purchase! After all, how could he be expected to control the way he used the family’s money? After all, he was addicted. But none of that occurred to him at the time.

Amy responded to his barrage of accusations by retreating all the way into the closet. He followed right after her, pointing his finger at her. “What were you thinking, talking that way in front of our son, accusing me of being
this
and
that
?”

“Don’t you point at me!” Amy shot back.

Michael sucked in his breath and retorted, “Oh
yeah
?” Then he began pointing at her in rapid-fire succession, with both hands, as if his fingers had become bullets from a machine gun. As he did, he says he saw himself as the smartest, coolest guy in the world.

Amy did not. She
laughed
. We’ll tell you “the rest of the story” later, about how they came to a place where they stopped blaming each other and focused their eyes on themselves, taking personal responsibility for their actions. But what Amy did sent Michael into a completely different realm altogether. He could no longer contain himself.

Let me suggest that most of us are like Michael and Amy. Oh, you may be less explosive, but I suspect you do a destructive dance nonetheless. You do the Fear Dance in any number of ways. You may have tried to stop but can’t. You wring your hands, thinking,
If only he would…If only she would…If only my daughter would…If only my neighbor would…
It’s always the same dance, and it always appears to be the other person’s fault.

How do you break the rhythm of the dance? If neither of you budges, the dance could go on forever. And for some people it does.

How do you stop the madness? It takes two to tango. It takes two to do the Fear Dance.

But it takes only one person to stop the madness.

I call that the Power of One. And this new dance step can revolutionize your relationships.

You Already Have the Power of One
Your fear buttons get pushed every day. Yet it’s your
reaction
to those fears that determines whether you get stuck in the Fear Dance—and
you
control the thoughts that control your reaction, not your external circumstances.

Just pause for a moment and ponder this statement:
You can choose your reaction, and your reaction is based on your thoughts.
But from all of your thoughts will come your actions and your emotions, either negative or positive. Your thoughts are the basis for your feelings and reactions. That’s awesome to me.

You have a choice about how you react when someone pushes your fear button. No one else controls how you think. No one else controls how you react. You alone do that.

Suppose you’re walking down the streets of New York, and some guy you’ve never seen comes up and calls you a disgusting name. What do you do? Probably nothing. You keep on walking. You don’t want a fight, and what some loon says on the streets of the Big Apple doesn’t affect you. Let him blather all he wants.

What happens, though, if your wife or your boyfriend or your coworker calls you the very same name? It probably pushes your button. Why do you react differently? The name-calling itself hasn’t created a button; the button was there in both cases. But in the second instance, the name-calling tapped your fear of rejection, failure, or disconnection (or whatever). In the first case, it didn’t. This means that the Fear Dance
can’t
be about the external; it
has
to be about the internal, about—what’s in your mind. It’s not about the existence of your button, but about the way you
choose
to think and react when it gets pushed.

Do you see how this empowers you?
You
control how you think and react. You can’t control whether anyone pushes your button, but you can control how you think and react to its getting pushed. If this were not the case, then life would simply be an elaborate system of manipulation. But it isn’t!

What’s the Real Problem?
Most couples we see in our marriage intensives come with two very long lists:

1. The specific problems they’re having as a couple (finances, kids, sex, etc.)
2. All the behaviors they want the other person to “fix.” In other words, “If my spouse would only change ___, I’d be happy.”

The couples are very clear about both things.

Is the problem the list of issues? Research over the past several years has consistently listed financial issues as the number one conflict that leads to divorce. But do you want to know something amazing? Financial problems never caused even a single divorce! They may provide the topic of angry discussion, but they don’t
cause
anything.

Remember the relationship truth: The external problem is rarely the real problem. The problem is never about a list of issues. The issues themselves are just like the guy yelling at you in New York. And you have a choice about how you will react to them. You have the Power of One.

Is the problem the other person’s behavior (or attitude or personality)? How many times do we hear, “My wife is always belligerent? I want her to quit yelling at me.” “My husband spends too much time at work.” Remember another DNA truth: It’s never just about the other person. What these spouses really need to change, however, is almost always their
reaction
to the issues on the list. When we explain this, the guy usually says, “Oh, so I
don’t
have to get her to stop yelling.”

No, you don’t. And in fact, you
can’t
“get her” to stop yelling or to stop doing anything else without dishonoring her. But you
can
control your thoughts and how you react when your button gets pushed. You
can
choose to plug into the Power of One. You
can
take personal responsibility.

The problem is, most of us spend all our time and energy talking about what the other person is doing or not doing. We focus all our efforts on complaining or describing the hurtful activities of our friend or partner. Sue talks about what she doesn’t like about Anne. Bill fumes about how Steve’s actions drive him crazy. Roberta complains about Jim’s handling of their money. But discussions like this go nowhere. They lead only to frustration and anger and disappointment. Worse yet, they merely keep the music going to the Fear Dance.

There is a better way. A
much
better way. We want to give you six steps to take control of your emotions and reactions to life.

1. Take Control of Your Thoughts, Feelings, and Actions
Whenever you focus your attention on what the other person is doing, you take away your own power. You make yourself weak. In focusing on the other, you try to control things you can’t control. For that reason it’s an exercise in total futility, inefficiency, and ineffectiveness.

How much better to have some say in the matter! How much more effective to take control of something you can actually control! When you focus on yourself rather than on the other person, you vastly increase your odds of being able to enjoy some impact and influence over the relationship problem that bothers you.

Remember when Michael’s fear button got pushed? At that instant, he had a choice to make. He couldn’t control that his button got pushed, but he could determine how he would think and react once it did. He couldn’t control Amy or what she did, but he could control himself and what he thought and did. In other words, he could choose whether he would exercise personal responsibility for his own actions. He could choose whether he would take advantage of the awesome Power of One. But he chose what most people do: “Let’s see if I can change Amy.”

You and I have the same choice to make—and our choice will largely determine whether we enjoy deep, satisfying relationships, or fragile, disappointing ones. I can’t stress enough how crucial it is that each of us takes personal responsibility for how we think and respond when our fear buttons get pushed.

By nature, most of us want to blame those who upset us. We work hard to try to get them to change how they treat us. We attempt in many unhealthy ways to manipulate them, to force them to quit pushing our buttons. But what usually happens when we take this approach? It succeeds only in pushing that person’s own fear button, which in turn continues and accelerates the Fear Dance. We wind up feeling hurt, abused, estranged, and lonely—and yet another relationship takes a tragic turn for the worse.

To take personal responsibility means that you refuse to focus on what the other person has done. Too many of us think,
If only my friend would say this
or
If only my husband would do that
, rather than thinking,
I can’t change him, but I
can
change how I react to him
.

Personal responsibility requires you to take a hard look at your own side of the equation. You might say to yourself, “You know what? My fear button just got pushed. Normally I would withdraw and run away, even though that solves nothing. But I’m not going to do that this time. This time I’m going to take responsibility for how I act, rather than trying to manipulate this person into acting toward me in a way I prefer.”

Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the best-selling
The Five Love Languages
, highly endorses this strategy. He advises struggling spouses to keep doing what’s in their power rather than focusing on what the other person should do. He helps husbands and wives identify their love needs and then counsels them to keep on loving their spouses, using the person’s love language, for six months, regardless of how the person reacts. The spouses do this not to manipulate the other into acting the way they would like but to enjoy life more. And usually, in time, the relationship greatly improves.

Before we leave this step, I want to come back to a point I’ve been making throughout the book so far:
Your thoughts control your feelings and reactions.

Think about that. If you want to control your reactions, you need to control your thoughts. You can take personal responsibility for all of your thoughts and actions and take your eyes off of blaming others for how you feel. This amazing truth has changed my life over the past two years more than anything else.

Dr. Archibald Hart’s book
Habits of the Mind
has shaped my perspective about the power of our thoughts. He says, “Our body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed. Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought.”
¹
He goes on to say that feelings are the consequences, not the cause, of our emotional problems. Our emotions are good sources of information about how we are thinking. We cannot control our emotions directly, but we can influence how we are feeling by changing our thoughts.
²
Change our thoughts first, and the desired feelings will follow. Our reactions, our emotions, our attitudes are the result of our thoughts.
³