The DNA of Relationships (22 page)

And what best leads to peace? What builds us up, as almost nothing else can? The sense that we have been genuinely heard and deeply understood! That’s the goal we’re after. That’s the treasure we seek.

It Gets Even Better
Remember my friend Bob, the one who flirted with his wife but didn’t get the reaction he wanted? He desperately wanted that treasure. He longed for the gold of true understanding. So do you know what he did?

Bob chose to create a list of things that would be surefire winners—things that would make Jenni feel really loved. He said. “I created that list either from things I witnessed or asked her about. And I created another list, equally long, of things she didn’t like, things not to do. I knew that if I stopped doing the things on the second list, she would begin to feel loved. I started doing the things on my first list, and sure enough, over time, she started to feel very much loved.”

But it gets even better for this man who chose to practice effective communication. “In fact,” Bob continued, “these days, Jenni feels deeply loved. We hardly ever fight anymore. We have learned to manage our differences wonderfully, and we trust each other. Things are in a very, very different place at this stage. I wouldn’t trade this relationship for anything. The last thing in the world I would ever want is to start over. I can’t think of anything more unappealing. I’ve spent more than two decades getting to this point, and I want to ride this out for as long as I can and enjoy it for the rest of my life.”

Would you like to enjoy your relationships for the rest of your life? Would you like to ride them out for the long haul? You can! When you choose to master the art of effective communication, you, like Bob, can help all of your loved ones to
feel
truly loved. And a loving relationship is a growing relationship!

How would you like to win most of your disagreements with others? Read on!

1. 1. Listen beyond the words to the feelings.
   People generally feel more understood, cared for, and connected when the communication focuses on their emotions and feelings rather than merely on their words or thoughts.
   
2. 2. The real message is often the emotion behind the words.
   When you listen with your heart and listen for the heart of the other person, you show that you care.
   
3. 3. Allow others’ emotions to touch you.
   People feel loved when they know you truly understand their feelings.
   
4. 4. Effective communication is a dynamic process of discovery that maintains energy in the relationship.
   When you see communication as a dynamic process of discovery rather than one of solving problems, you often solve the problems by default.
   
5. 5. Effective Communication starts with safety.
   When you listen rather than judge or correct, you create a safe environment for understanding to blossom.
   
6. 6. Communication is understanding, not determining who’s right.
   Your relationships will thrive if your priority is understanding the other person.
   

A number of years ago Bob Paul found himself in a heated disagreement with his son Chris, who was a young boy at the time. Because Bob felt passionate about his position, he pressed pretty hard with his son. Bob felt Chris was not agreeing with him and had “tuned him out.” More discussion was basically a waste of their time, but Bob continued the conversation. “Chris,” he said, “if you don’t get this, you could get into real trouble.”

No matter how Bob explained his deep concern, however, Chris kept missing the point. “I didn’t know if he was purposefully dodging me or what,” Bob says. “I was using the best persuasive skills that I could muster. I’d come at it from one angle, and he’d dodge it. So I’d rethink my strategy and try it from another perspective. This went on for an hour and a half, and I couldn’t understand why we weren’t getting anywhere.”

Eventually Bob broke through his son’s resistance, and Chris finally understood. Bob felt so relieved that he fell back on his bed, stared at the ceiling, and breathed a prayer of thanks. Even from his prone position he noticed his crestfallen son walking out of the room with his head hanging low, but he thought,
He’ll get over it. At least he understands my point
.

For fifteen or twenty minutes Bob sat on the bed, gathering himself after his grueling encounter. When he got up, walked out of the bedroom and down the hallway, he noticed Chris sitting in the dining room at the head of the table, all by himself. He looked totally dejected.

“At that moment,” Bob says, “I felt such a sense of conviction. And then God dropped an idea in my head that had never occurred to me before. It really made sense.”

Bob walked over to his son and sat next to him at the table. “Hey, Chris,” he said, “if you look back at that conversation, who do you think ‘won’?”

His son thought for a moment, then replied, “You know, Dad, in some ways neither of us. But for the most part, you did.”

Bob shook his head and said, “Son, if that’s the case, then I lost.”

Chris gave his dad a look that said, “What do you mean
you
lost? You are
so
weird.”

Back in those years, Chris played on a Little League baseball team with a friend named Chuckie. “Look at it this way,” Bob explained. “Is there ever a time when you and Chuckie are playing ball, when you win and Chuckie loses?”

“No.”

“How about when Chuckie wins and you lose?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“Dad,” Chris said in exasperation, “we’re on the
same team
.”

“Exactly, Son,” Bob replied. “And you and I are on the same team. I’m not your enemy; I’m on your team. And if our conversation made you feel as if you lost, then I lost too. If you lose, I lose. We both need to win.”

The Greatest Ploy
Does the power struggle between Bob and Chris sound at all familiar to you? Are you at odds with family members or friends? Do you often feel as if you win—or lose—in those relationships?

Power struggles can be very destructive. Why? In every power struggle, people become instant adversaries; they take up opposing positions and try to crush their opponent. And do you know what? Every time that happens, Satan is very pleased. He can just fold his arms and walk away. Why? Because he knows that friends-turned-adversaries will hurt and perhaps even destroy one another. If he can get partners to see themselves as adversaries, he’s already accomplished his dirty work. He doesn’t have to do anything more.

Never forget that your true enemy is not the other person. The enemy of our souls and relationships wants with all his evil heart to destroy your healthy relationships. If he can get you to perceive the other person as the enemy, as an adversary, he’s already won.

So if squaring off with our friends and partners causes so much damage, why do we so quickly make them into adversaries? Why do we so easily jump into power struggles? Once more, I think the reaction is rooted in fear. It is a very natural thing to feel threatened by someone who disagrees with us. Conflicts feel inherently threatening. We very naturally consider that our opinion or way of seeing things is the “right” or “better” way. If we didn’t, we’d change our opinion or way of seeing things. So when people suggest that our way
isn’t
right or better, we fear that they will take us someplace we don’t want to go—and that creates fear. We tend to dig in our heels and try to prove our point, to get them to see things our way, and to admit how wrong they are.

Once we square off as adversaries, however, the outcome is already assured. We don’t even have to play the game. We’ve already lost. Because when you’re on a team, win-lose is a total illusion. There is no such thing. You have only two options: You either both win, or you both lose.

A No-Losers Policy
After his encounter with his son, Bob started thinking about the way he handled most of the relationships in his life. When he applied the dynamics of his encounter with Chris to his own marriage, it dawned on him that he set up almost every interaction with his wife in an adversarial way.

“I always felt frustrated about whether or not I won my point,” he said. “I couldn’t understand why it always felt like a loss. Everybody knows that feeling—where you win something but still feel as if you lost. It’s a hollow victory, at best. I decided at that moment that I wouldn’t fall for this anymore. I was sick to death of being a relational failure. I was sick to death of being ineffective. I had a choice, and I chose to stop the madness.”

So Bob determined to abandon the old, failed model and make a commitment to a new way of doing things. He and his wife, Jenni, established what they called a no-losers policy. They agreed that from that point on it would never be acceptable for either of them to walk away from any interaction feeling as if they had lost. Each spouse had to feel good about what happened. That was their new goal. Both had to “buy into” whatever decision they made as a couple.

Such a commitment radically improves any relationship. No wonder author and speaker Zig Ziglar once said, “Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side.”

Remember the conflict between Bob and Mary Jo Burbee from the last chapter? They couldn’t agree on whether to have more children. Mary Jo wanted to add to their family, but Bob worried that he couldn’t provide for a larger family. Their conflict went on for some time. Eventually they managed to help the other understand their very different gut-level feelings, and each made a commitment to make sure that the other didn’t feel like a loser. So what happened?

“Interestingly,” Bob said, “the decision about more children was made for us. We discovered not long after this trip that in spite of using contraception, Mary Jo was pregnant.”

So did Mary Jo win and Bob lose? People often ask Bob this very question. “My answer,” he said, “has everything to do with those hours we spent on that road trip, listening and trying to understand one another in a fresh way. Without a new, expanded perspective on the issue gained from understanding what motherhood meant to Mary Jo, I have no doubt the news of our pregnancy would have been very difficult for me to take. The broader perspective didn’t eliminate my anxiety, but it did allow me to embrace the pregnancy and join Mary Jo in her excitement about another baby. In fact, I so enjoyed having the third child, I like to take credit for suggesting that we have a fourth. Eighteen months after Allison was born, our fourth child, Travis, joined our family—and I can’t imagine my life without them.”

And what does this have to do with a no-losers policy? “We kept talking because we chose to work on the issue until we both felt some satisfaction that kept us talking about the issue of more children,” Bob explained. “Mary Jo wasn’t going to trick me, and I wasn’t content to let her feel as if she were losing. It took us awhile, but the principle of no-losers kept us working at the issue until we finally hit on the mutual understanding that we so desperately needed.” And then God took care of the rest.

Once you establish a no-losers policy, things start changing pretty quickly, often dramatically. This is true even if only one person in the relationship commits himself or herself to the no-losers policy. Remember the Power of One. Once the other person discovers that you
will
consider his or her feelings and needs, those same feelings and needs cease to be something to worry about. Consider a no-losers policy a potent vaccination against the worry of getting the shaft.

Laura and her sister Sally are often at loggerheads. But if Laura makes it clear that she will not feel satisfied about a decision or issue until Sally also does, then all of Sally’s worry about losing goes away. She starts to relax and becomes far more cooperative. She knows that Laura will never force her to accept a solution that she doesn’t feel good about.

Shortly after a no-losers policy gets established in a relationship, it starts to become almost automatic. Neither person has to say, “Okay, let’s implement the no-losers policy here.” It becomes a constant, almost like the law of gravity. You both see it as a nonnegotiable: Either you both win, or you both lose. Period.

So does a no-losers policy end all conflicts in a relationship? Does it do away with all relational losses? That would be nice, but Bob Paul admits it hasn’t turned out quite that way.

“I’m not going to say that I never set up adversaries in relationships anymore,” he says. “It happens. It’s happened plenty of times—it’s just not okay. It’s not acceptable.”

Such a commitment goes a long way toward creating the kind of relationships that yield joy and satisfaction rather than grief and frustration. It’s worked for Bob and Jenni, it’s worked for Bob and Mary Jo, and it can work equally well for you, regardless of the type of relationship in which you apply it.

A Different Definition of Winning
To make this new dance step work for you, you have to come up with a different definition of winning. If you make winning about getting your own way—in any way, shape, or form—you’re still locked into the old pattern and still headed for the relationship rocks.

Many of us resist at this point because we really do think we know what’s best in any given conflict. We usually have a fairly high opinion of our own perception of a sticky situation. God knows this ugly fact about us; that’s why he calls us to humility. He asks us to admit that we really don’t have a corner on the wisdom market. He reminds us, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.”
¹
Sometimes, by insisting on our own way, we kill our most cherished relationships.

So be open to the possibility that even though a particular course of action seems right to you, it really may not be the best alternative. And it certainly isn’t the only one. Therefore, don’t lock yourself into a single view (yours). Don’t insist on your path and no other. Sure, you want to win. I do too. But maybe winning isn’t about getting your own way.

Remember, you’re part of a team. Therefore you have to redefine winning as
finding and implementing a solution that both people can feel good about
. A winning solution goes beyond a plan of attack that seems merely acceptable or tolerable to you both. That’s compromise, and compromises rarely make anyone feel good.

*  WINNING IS FINDING A SOLUTION BOTH PEOPLE FEEL GOOD ABOUT.*

“A compromise is a deal in which two people get what neither of them wanted,” says one anonymous definition. “A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in a way that everyone believes he has gotten the biggest piece,” declares another version.
²
Compromise usually leaves a bad taste in someone’s mouth, and therefore it seldom, if ever, is the answer. Collaboration works. Compromise and capitulation don’t.

A win-win solution that makes both parties feel good gives positive movement to the relationship and leaves it in a better place than it was before. You take a trip and end up someplace other than where you started, a beautiful and delightful place. And how do you get there? It varies.

“Sometimes we have ended up doing exactly what Jenni wanted to do from the beginning,” Bob Paul says, “but by the time we got there, I felt great about it. It didn’t feel like a loss for me. At other times the opposite has happened; we’ve done exactly what I wanted to do, but by the time we got there, Jenni felt fine about it. So it wasn’t a loss for her.”

The ideas generated through such a commitment to win-win solutions often come as a total surprise to both parties. At the beginning, neither partner may foresee or predict the eventual solution.

Bob and Jenni often feel this way. “Sometimes we come up with creative solutions that neither one of us would have thought about before,” he says. “At other times we negotiate and piece something together—a little of hers, a little of mine. But our goal—both of us feeling good about our decision—remains the same, no matter how we get there.”

Has this new way of defining “winning” changed anything in the Paul household? “It’s made a huge difference,” Bob says. “It’s positively affected our relationship in many ways. For one thing, our home feels safer. Neither of us has to worry about getting railroaded into something we don’t want.”