Strike These 5 Losing Strategies From Your Relationship
Terry Real’s five losing strategies to avoid in relationships, and how they relate to Gottman’s four horsemen.
As a couples therapist (or any kind of therapist) I don’t like focusing on the negative, but it can be valuable to know what doesn’t work so you can stop doing it. Renowned master couples therapist Terry Real, PhD has a set of five losing strategies that should be kept to a minimum, if not eliminated from your relationships.
Let’s take them one-by-one:
Being Right
This one is almost a no-brainer, except losing it is much easier said than done. There are sayings like “You can be right and be alone,” and Rumi’s famous quote about meeting in the field beyond right and wrong. The Rumi quote may actually mean something slightly different from what it sounds like, but most people that come into my office like the quote and identify with it at face value. In a nutshell, the problem is that the idea of rightness in an interpersonal conflict creates a binary winner and loser — a one-up and a one-down — and nobody wants to be a loser, especially with the one you love. For a fuller account (and how to think differently) see Right/Wrong.
Controlling your partner
I don’t generally like the label “controlling” as applied to people as it tends to be pejorative and triggering. However, we all know what this refers to: micromanaging, giving lots of directions, being picky about how things are done, etc. Usually this comes from a place of anxiety, whether acknowledged or not. It often is a corollary to wanting to be right as in, “You’re doing it wrong. Do it my (better) way.” At the extremes it can take the form of domestic violence driven by severe possessiveness, in which the partner is not allowed to go out, be with friends, etc. Yet even at lower levels of intensity, most people don’t like being told what to do unless there’s some kind of implicit or explicit agreement between the parties (e.g., you know more about gardening, so I’ll take your direction in that context).
Retaliation
I see this one all the time in my office, and it’s such a natural impulse! But natural is not the same thing as good, or helpful (see Unnatural Acts). When we’re hurt we reflexively want to hurt back. But this just makes things worse — now both of you are hurt and the situation is 10x harder to repair. As a friend once said, pain has a way of focusing your attention on itself. If both partners are hurt it can become impossible to empathize with each other. Things get gridlocked until one or both can settle their nervous systems back down, either with time, or deliberate self-soothing strategies (see 11 Antidotes, especially paced breathing). So hold your tongue and resist the urge to fire back.
Unbridled Self-expression
This is one of my favorites of Terry Real’s set. These are the folks that are “just being honest,” or who have to say it their way, at length, in order to be “authentic,” or “be themselves.” No matter that they are delivering withering criticisms or contempt, or subjecting their partners to a shame bath. If you want a solid, caring, reciprocal relationship you have to be willing to reflect on yourself and recognize that some habits you have may be destructive to your relationship.
Withdrawal
Just as it can be hard for criticizers to see the painful effects of their criticism on their partners (they often believe they’re trying to be helpful), it can also be hard for withdrawers to see how their shutting down or removing themselves hurts their partners. I often hear things like “but I’m not the one doing the attacking!,” or “I didn’t start it,” or “I wouldn’t withdraw if s/he wasn’t the aggressor.” The partners of withdrawers, however, can feel the pain of disconnection just as acutely as the pain withdrawers feel when under attack. And one person trying to escape the pain of disconnection while the other tries to escape the pain of criticism becomes a vicious cycle that puts both partners at their worst and drags the relationship down with it (see Do You Trust Me?).
While I presume that Dr. Real came up with this essential list intuitively and through his extensive experience with (probably thousands of) couples, they tie in well with John Gottman’s solidly researched “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” When rife in a relationship these four modes of communication predict doom with over 90% accuracy. They are criticism, contempt, stonewalling and defensiveness.
Being right, controlling your partner, and unbridled self-expression all involve varying degrees of criticism and contempt. Contempt is defined as a hostile superior attitude, which is usually a core component of insisting on being right and often undergirds controlling behaviors as well. As mentioned, unbridled self-expression is usually critical or accusational.
Retaliation is a form of defensiveness. It’s a way of deflecting blame and responsibility. In effect it says “you’re at fault as much as I am,” which cancels out your partner’s concerns, usually escalating the conflict.
Finally, withdrawal is fundamentally synonymous with stonewalling. While at its most extreme, stonewalling may be refusing to talk or interact at all, at lower levels it includes defensive deflections and general shutting down.
The first step in improving any of these behaviors is to become aware of them in ourselves. Most of us do some of these at one time or another, but if we’re especially prone to them (and/or our partners are complaining about them!) it’s crucial for the sake of our relationships to reduce them and find alternatives. By the way, pointing them out in our partners risks being critical or contemptuous, so best to stick with working on ourselves. In doing so we also model the better behaviors for others. (However, we don’t need to feel superior about it! That could lead back to contempt!)
For a guide to antidotes to the Four Horsemen, see this.
(I’m a psychologist with a private practice in Noe Valley, San Francisco. Now available for teletherapy anywhere in California.)