- Perpetual Conflict: 69% of relationship conflicts are perpetual and require management rather than solutions. Couples often revisit the same issues repeatedly.
- Temporary Compromise: A healthy approach to unsolvable conflicts involves temporary compromises. Understanding each other's underlying themes, dreams, and history leads to compassion and compromise.
Individual Differences: Personality and lifestyle differences are inevitable sources of conflict. Open communication is key. - Desire Discrepancies: Differences in sexual desire are normal and not necessarily dealbreakers. "No" to sex shouldn't end connection; offer alternatives like cuddling or watching a movie.
Fighting to Understand: Successful couples "fight to understand" rather than "fight to win."
Past vs. Present: 90% of relationship problems are rooted in the past. - Deeper Understanding Questions: Asking specific questions can move couples out of gridlock 87% of the time. Examples include:
* Ethics, beliefs, or values related to the issue.
* Childhood or background history.
* Feelings about the issue.
* Importance of the issue.
* Ideal dream scenario.
* Underlying life purpose. - Essential Conversations: Engaged couples should have essential conversations to understand each other's perspectives.
- Compatibility Myth: Compatibility isn't about agreeing on everything, but about how you discuss disagreements.
- Boundaries: Boundaries shouldn't stop discussion. Interdependence, understanding each other's needs, and allowing partners to choose are crucial.
- Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: These are negative communication patterns that predict divorce:
* Criticism: Stating the problem as a defect in the partner's personality.
* Defensiveness: Counterattacking.
* Contempt: Escalating criticism with superiority and sarcasm.
* Stonewalling: Emotional withdrawal. - Recovery is Possible: Couples can recover from the "Four Horsemen" by learning and practicing alternatives.
- Continuous Effort: Relationships require continuous effort, practice, and growth.
- Gratitude: Appreciating your partner and not taking life for granted is essential.
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One finding that really shocked us in our research was this: 69% of all relationship conflict problems are perpetual, which means that they never go away. They never get fully solved. And so we learn that conflict really mostly needs to be managed rather than solved.
In our lab, the couples who came back year after year kept bringing up exactly the same issue even 20 years later.
So, you mentioned in your TED talk that a large percentage of conflict is actually never resolved, right? 69%. What's a healthy end to a conflict that can't have a solution?
A temporary compromise. That's what works best. So a problem like messiness versus neatness is going to come up over and over and over again.
What do you know? We have that one. Or introversion versus extroversion.
Right. Right. Right. The way to do it right is you go to a deeper understanding place by asking each other questions that really draw out underlying themes, underlying dreams, underlying background history, maybe that are part of each person's position on the issue. So there's deeper understanding, hopefully a little more compassion, and then you arrive at a temporary compromise.
And John, between the two of you, who is the messy one and who's the neater one?
Messy. Well, messy in the sense that I'm constantly reading books. The pile grows and grows wherever I happen to read. And the pile grows right next to the side of the bed. So eventually, our temporary compromise is after four weeks or so, I will say to John, "Sweetie, I'm going to break my neck if I try and make the bed. Will you please move your books?" And then he does. And then it starts over again.
John, I would love for you to just move this pillow right here next to you. And that is, you have stashed a book back there.
Well, it was in the bathroom and you know, it's called How to Find Love.
That's important.
Very appropriate. I think that for a lot of people in long-term relationships, when you hit something that is like this, where you have a pattern of being and it keeps happening over and over, a lot of times people make this narrative in their head that this is like a huge problem. How do you address that with people?
Look, you are in a different body than me. You have a different brain than me. So, there are inevitably going to be personality differences and lifestyle differences that erupt into conflict every now and then. It's okay as long as you learn how to talk about it. You know, Chris, a lot of people want to marry their clone. However, if they did, they would be bored out of their minds.
On paper, this makes sense to me. How we fight matters more than what we fight about. But what does that mean in reality? We asked folks to send in their relationship questions to get advice on how to put principles into practice.
Hi there. My partner wants more sex and I want less. Do you have any advice on how to navigate that? Thanks.
This is absolutely normal. It's almost impossible to find somebody who has exactly your desire in terms of sexual frequency. You know, unless it's your partner wanting sex four times a day and you want it once a year, it's probably not a dealbreaker.
Yeah. Another thing that I would add is that no to sex does not have to end connection. So if one of you wants to have sex and the answer is no, then the next question should be, "Okay, you know, thanks for telling me you're not in the mood for sex. What are you in the mood for? Should we make popcorn and watch a movie? You want to take a walk? Should we just cuddle?" No does not have to end connection. Remember that.
What is the biggest mistake that the disasters of relationships make? The answer is that they fight to win, which means somebody has to lose. What do the masters do instead? They fight to understand.
I also wonder how often in your experience it's a problem in the relationship, but it actually is coming from way before you two have even met. How often are the problems rooted in the past versus the present relationship?
90%.
Part of that exercise that we ask couples to do in order to really understand each other more deeply is a series of questions, as I mentioned, that they ask each other. But listen to these questions.
So the first question is: Do you have any ethics, beliefs, or values that are part of your position on this issue? Mhm.
Second question is: Is there any childhood or background history that is a part of your position on this issue?
The third question is: What are all your feelings about this issue?
Another one is: Why is this so important to you?
Next: What is your ideal dream here? If you could have the world the way you want it any way on this position, what would it look like?
And the last one is: Is there some underlying life purpose or sense of meaning that is related to your position on this issue?
And so conflict becomes an entirely different thing. It's like problem solving together, working out a puzzle together rather than working against each other. And those questions, those six questions, are really powerful—87% of the time—at moving people out of gridlock.
Hey, I'm Olivia from Los Angeles. I recently got engaged and I'm wondering what conversations you think people should have while they're engaged about their relationship, their marriage.
Well, we wrote a book about this, and it's called The Eight Dates. And the eight dates really are about those essential conversations, not to get people in opposition about these issues, but really to understand where your partner is coming from. Every marriage is a cross-cultural experience. Even if people come from the same ethnic group, the same racial group, the same part of the country, even they have different ways of creating meaning.
You know, the other thing too that I would suggest is talking, each of you, about your own individual dreams and life purpose. You know, why are you alive today? Why are you giving energy into the world or into yourself or into the relationship? You know, talking about questions that are so deep and so profound. And by the way, congratulations.
My wife and I dated for a long time. We got married almost on our ten-year anniversary. And so having been together for a decade, I thought like surely we have talked about everything. There's not like some sort of new revelation. But these questions that you put together, these are the most common sources of conflict and disagreement in marriage. Do you want to send your kids to public or private school? What would happen if one of you was incapacitated medically? And what I found is that when Molly and I actually sat down and talked through them, there were so many that we had never had an explicit conversation about.
Right.
Like these are really tough questions, right? But they're also not things that you just chat about over pizza normally.
Right. Yeah.
Right. And I think the big revelation for me in going through those questions that you two put together was that it wasn't that we always got to a definitive answer. But it was that we got a lot of practice at how to talk about the issues.
That's the point.
Yeah.
That's exactly the point. You know, so many people believe in the myth that you have to be compatible in order to have a good relationship. And it's not really about the content of those discussions. It's more about how do you talk about them?
Hello Dr. John, Dr. Julie. People say that a healthy relationship requires setting boundaries, which makes sense. So how do you set these boundaries with your spouse? And what happens when these boundaries are crossed, especially when you have kids that you can't break away from?
A lot of times when people talk about boundaries, it's a way of stopping discussion on an issue. It's like saying, "Okay, this is who I am and there's no debating this." And the problem with that is that sort of all-or-none approach to conflict doesn't allow for any flexibility. All of our research shows that relationships succeed by being interdependent, not separate and independent. If you have different preferences, talking that through and really understanding where the other person is coming from is crucial to connection. If your partner loves to drive 100 miles an hour like yours truly and your partner doesn't like that, you have a choice to either respect what your partner's needs are or put your needs above theirs. So, we would hope that you would probably choose to give your partner the benefit of the doubt. What really matters is that each of you feels comfortable saying what you need and then you're giving your partner the choice.
One of the concepts that you both became really well known for was this idea of the four horsemen of the apocalypse conversations. For people who aren't familiar, can you just walk us through what those are?
Yeah. You know, what we found initially was that there were four negative things that people did, particularly people who got divorced on average 6.2 years after the wedding. And these four things were the way they started talking about a conflict. The first was criticism, which is stating the problem as a defect in the partner's personality. You know, our problem is that you're, you know, thoughtless and unkind.
Defensiveness: the second one, a normal reaction to criticism, say, you know, counterattacking—"You're not so perfect. Here's what's wrong with you."
Contempt, which is an escalation of criticism with a tone of superiority—like sarcasm does that, really an insulting, superior air to the criticism.
And finally, stonewalling, which is really emotional withdrawal from the interaction and just tuning out.
And Julie, can a couple come back from experiencing those?
Sure, we can come back when we know the alternatives. Most people haven't had the perfect relationship in front of them to role model after. When people have the alternatives, they grab hold of them like a sponge, soak them up, and then try to practice them.
I have an invention, and it's this notebook I keep in my back pocket. And when Julie says the four dreaded words, "We need to talk," I whip out my notebook and I get my pen out and I say, "Okay, I'm listening. Talk to me." And I write down what she says. And if I'm feeling defensive, I just keep writing. I slow it down so I can write every word. And as I'm writing, I kind of go, "Huh, that's a good point. Interesting." So, I stay calm and less defensive.
You know how many of these he has? He has like 50 of them. And guess where they are?
I was going to say if there's one thing I've learned about John, it's that from any possible place around you or on your body, you might pull out a book of some kind.
Yeah. You got to reach the resources because, you know, just my honest reaction to you naming the four horsemen of the apocalypse is I've done that and I've done that and I can remember a time when I did that one and that one.
We all have. Welcome to the human race. It's like learning to play an instrument. You have to practice. You have to rehearse. You have to make mistakes and recover from them and so on. It really takes study, you know, to really fight right.
Something that I've been thinking about a lot since I've been talking to John and Julie is how the idea that you can get to a place where your relationship is done—now we have the perfect relationship—that's a totally false idea. Instead, it's a muscle that you have to exercise and grow and keep healthy.
What is one thing that you are working on in yourself right now to be a better human?
Oh, what a wonderful question. You know, I think it's this. My dad died at 58 and he was allegedly a very healthy person. He exercised a lot and ate well and this and that. Then he got cancer and was gone in six weeks.
Well, that taught me a huge lesson in how every single day is precious. Every single day, I'm really focused on this, this, and this. And feeling so grateful, so grateful that I have this amazing partner.
Yeah, me too. So every night, you know, before I go to sleep, I think about, isn't it incredible that I've got this person next to me? How cool is that? Me, too.
It's so precious waking up next to him. And so never, never, never taking life for granted.