"If Disputes have turned your relationship into a sour experience, this page may be the turning point to restore security and trust.

"If Disputes have turned your relationship into a sour experience, this page may be the turning point to restore security and trust.

NOW, you can have a step by step action plan to discuss and resolve any subject, with none of the pain that you are feeling today. Warranteed. "



Fort Lauderdale ,
Wednesday, December 30th

Dear friend,

Sometimes in life we do things without paying attention to their consequences….the way we relate to others seems to us "natural" and "the way we are…" without thinking of the necessary choices that brought us to this exact point. Nobody told you that there was a HEALTHY way to discuss shared issues, very much opposed to the DIRTY TRICKS way to defend your needs and interests, and now you and your family group are paying the price.

It's healthy for every relationship, every marriage to include some level of disagreement and adjustment. Each person has different stories, homes and ways of thinking, and they must negotiate an agreement on how to do things together. Some couples fight more, some couples fight less, but what is really important is the way they fight. According to recent studies that compare relationships that survive, grow and deepen into a shared love, and the ones that become progressively more aggressive and ugly, the most important factor is the way they deal with the differences. Their secret is that they learn how go from "My View, your Problem" to "We share this problem".

When winning is more important than understanding, couples self-destruct by fighting in ways that damage the trust and respect that are necessary for the relationship. They get desperate when they don't understand each other's needs and then resort to attacks and put downs, escalating the disputes. Couples with too many dirty tricks lose respect for each other, and come to expect only more attacks and nastiness. Their fights are random, unpredictable and, because they lack structure can easily end in more vicious attacks to self-respect. Two people who loved each other can end up destroying the same person they loved, because of the negative feelings produced by constant fighting.

Fair Fighting is a set of ground rules for handling differences and conflict in a respectful way. Since few people have learned how to handle fights well, very clear rules give couples a road map for getting through discussions in a safe way, restoring safety and trust, and blocking negative explosions.

Are you fighting dirty without realizing it?

I don't know about you, but I grew up in a household where the main tool to keep children obedient and down was making fun of them, mocking their ideas and "putting them into their place" by constant ridicule and humiliation. Sometimes this was also done as "good fun," without anybody noticing how harmful it was for me, the person target of scorn. All believed that someone needed to be in the upper position, criticizing and the other needed to be down, ridiculed. One was the better one; the other was made to feel inferior and stupid.

If these practices took hold, now you could find yourself doing "naturally" a set of behaviors patterned upon a "relationship model," that is as damaging as toxic waste to any marriage. When daily put downs or misunderstandings occur, they often leave a residue of disappointment, anger or resentment. This residue accumulates over time to create an environment progressively more and more set against personal intimacy. Now, the only messages going back and forth are attacks and self-defense…how sad is this for a relationship chosen because it had the promise of love and acceptance?

Whether we keep fighting to maintain our precarious "superior position," or to protest our "humble position" we lose track of the basic fact of life: conflict is a natural part of the relationship and needs social skills that have to be learned. The hope for a good relationship is lost. We get stuck in an oppositional relationship, try to maintain this level using whatever tricks we learned before with others, and even call this "love."

The results are now devastating:

Your partner doesn't trust that you will treat her with respect, because you have demonstrated that you can do dirty tricks at any time!

We tend to think that sudden angry outbursts are just forgotten when we say "sorry." At that moment, we got carried away by our anger and reacted with behaviors considered normal when we believe we are defending ourselves from external enemies. But your spouse is not your enemy! It looks bad enough to let anger shape our "spontaneous" reactions to the person we love most, but there are more insidious long term effects of using dirty tricks when we fight.
Let's have a look at them:

When Dirty Tricks are used, this is what happens:

KITCHEN SINK WAY : it allows you to remember and say to your partner all the negative things that you can gather, even if they are not relevant and belong to the past. You show yourself as mean spirited and vengeful, and let the other person think that you are not trustable with personal information that can be used against them.
PERSONAL ATTACKS & INSULTS: you show that you have a "street fighter" mindset, not at the same level of what is needed for a personal relationship. The difference is day or night, as it hinges on destroying the other person's image as a friend, or correcting the difference and rescuing the other as a trusted partner.
SCAPEGOATING: when blaming another for what you did instead of taking full responsibility for your actions, either well intentioned or not, you show that you are not mature enough to be the owner of your own actions and their consequences.
GENERALIZING:, your way of not taking responsibility is diluting the act on a general frame where nobody has to be grown up enough to accept individual causation. The "mistakes were made" frame absolves everybody but never heals the other person's pain.
YELLING AND SCREAMING: now you are a child throwing a temper tantrum and getting to win your demand by overwhelming the other person. This is fatal to any relationship: you've scared the other person away and showed yourself incapable of self-restraint.
THREATENING: shows that you are ignorant of the skills necessary to negotiate as an adult, and prefer to scare the other person with your violence threats. You are going nowhere fast, and don't expect the other person, even if momentarily cowing in submission, to respect or appreciate you the least.
NAME CALLING: you are telling that, in the bottom of your heart, you don't accept your partner as an equal. It demonstrates that you think that the other person is somehow inferior and deserving your calling derogatory names to him/her. This attitude destroys a sense of shared companionship and trust.
PHYSICAL OR ANY PAIN INFLICTING: you have seriously crossed a delicate line, trespassing into the other person's individual space. This is usually a very serious event, which leaves the other person afraid of you and not trusting your ability to respect basic interpersonal boundaries.
Dirty tricks really can destroy a good relationship…here is a story that will move you, as it did move me:

I just wanted to share with you my story. I lost the love of my life due to his anger reactions, brought about mainly through drinking and sickness, which sometimes he would not control.

After many years together deeply in love, my partner lost his temper without provocation, except that I got in his way, and tried to kill me. He strangled me until I was unconscious and then rang the police to say he had killed me. Luckily I recovered, but our relationship did not.

I tried to forgive him but couldn't come to terms with the fact that I might be in an early grave because of his actions and I could never trust him again.

It put the power of the relationship in his hands, even when every time he raised his voice later, I would remember his capability for murder, forget about having a respectful conversation with him, and I would then stay in a motel for the night until he calmed down.

After about a year of this I decided to end the relationship permanently but was and still am extremely sad over it because I felt a very strong bond of love with this man. It has been four years now and I still suffer the loss.

"Anne Sutherland, Sydney, Australia"

Labels: "If Disputes have turned your relationship into a sour experience, this page may be the turning point to restore security and trust.

posted by Robert Heard at 11:13 AM