Crossroads Conversations

Joe is driving home from work. Something important happened today, and he really wants to tell his wife about it. When he walks in the door, Sue is on the phone with her girlfriend. She is laughing, sharing deeply, and obviously enjoying their conversation. 20 minutes pass before she gets off the phone, and all the while, Joe's anxiety and frustration is hard to manage.

At any conflict/stress moment if your relationship with your spouse, you can take on of these three paths:

1. Attack or defend: You express some element of what you are experiencing, but in the form of a complaint that has the effect of coercing, criticizing, or retaliating.

"How come you always have so much to say to your friends, and so little to say to me?"

This turns your partner into the enemy, and triggers an "adversarial cycle." Each partner stings in response to being stung. Each feels too unheard to listen, too misunderstood to being misunderstanding. There is always another rebuttal.

2. Avoid, ignore, or downplay: You keep what you are experiencing to yourself and talk about something else.

"Anything good on TV tonight?"

This turns your partner into a stronger, and triggers a withdrawn cycle. Each partner's carefulness, politeness, or walking on eggshells stimulates the same in the other. Whispering stimulates whispering.

3. Confide and listen: You bring your partner in on what you are experiencing; you take in what your partner is trying to tell you.

"I'm jealous of how much fun you were having talking to Gail over the phone just now."

(You're not saying this to make them feel guilty, or spur them to action. You are being honest about what is true in your heart.)

This turns your partner into an ally, and triggers an empathetic or collaborative cycle. Each partner's confiding, admitting, reaching out, and considering the others viewpoint makes the other automatically do the same.

Being intimate is bringing your spouse IN on what you are feeling and struggling with in the moment. It does not require a certain feeling. Intimacy is just a sentence away, but it is hard to come up with that sentence. It is hard because we are not very aware of our own internal states--and mostly we am fighting off our shame.

Based on the work of Daniel Wile