Five Winning Strategies for a Healthier, Happier Partnership

1. Go After What You Want – Express Your Needs 

Express what you want and need and be assertive about getting it. Terry Real calls it “daring to rock the boat”. This can be scary especially if one of your early childhood behaviours was to be a people pleaser, or accommodator, thinking that I will be loved if I go along with everything. Therefore it can be terrifying to rock the boat and go for what you want. However, there are two things to consider. Firstly, it is your birthright to be in an equal cherishing relationship in which both partner’s needs are met. The second thing to realize is that if you do not find your voice and speak up for your needs and wants, resentment begins to grow, and resentment is a poison that slowly erodes the love between you and your partner.

Sometimes we have this idea that we should not have to ask for what we want and need and that our partner should just know what our needs are if he/she really loved us. Our partner is not a mind reader. We set them and ourselves up for failure with this mindset and attitude!

Furthermore, help your partner to succeed by telling him or her up front what you want instead of waiting for them to fail. Be encouraging and affirm your partner’s efforts by giving positive feedback. Terry Real calls this “celebrating the glass being 15% full”. If the glass was 5% full beforehand, this is a reason to celebrate and thus encourage your partner to keep going. With our children, we naturally do this. If your son or daughter made an improvement in school from a D to a C, you give them positive reinforcement to keep going and to eventually get to a B.

2. Speak to Make Things Better 

Speak to your partner with love. Before you speak, drop down into your heart and speak from there. If you are too triggered to do that, take a time out until you are able to interact from a more centred place. Remind yourself that you want to speak to make things better, not worse. Learn how to be assertive and loving at the same time. Make sure your partner knows that you love them and that you also want them to have respect for your needs and feelings.

Make very clear requests using I-statements. There is nothing you need to say that cannot be phrased as a subjective I statement. This helps us to stay away from judgments and accusing the other person. 

Speak respectfully and be prepared that not all your requests will be met. You could say “I would like to talk to you about… Is this a good time?” We need to be able to also tolerate small disappointments. Your partner might reply, “I am too tired right now. Can we talk about this tomorrow?” Terry Real even takes it so far as to say we need to “celebrate the no”. Celebrating the no means to be proud of your partner when they say “no”. This means they are taking care of themselves. Thus you are adaptable and grown up, noting that you don’t get everything you want when you want it. 

3. Listen to understand 

Before we can respond, we need to really listen. Getting defensive or responding with a rebuttal, whether that is outloud or inward is not true listening. We need to put our own self and feelings aside while we are listening. Listening is also not about arguing about the facts and wanting to be right. Wanting to be right is one of the Five Losing Strategies.  Listening means entering into your partner’s subjective experience.  Ie What they feel and how they perceive things? Be a friendly interviewer who really wants to understand the perspective of the other.

Remember that as a couple, you are in each other’s care. In other words, Terry Real’s analogy is that you are at the customer service or support desk. When a customer complains that their toaster does not work, they don’t want to hear from you that your kettle isn’t working.  Your only concern is to listen and tend to their issue in that moment in time, until it is your turn.  When your partner comes to you in a state of upset or disharmony, you are at their service.

Remember that everyone is rational to themselves. Their feelings and interpretations of reality make sense to them. It is your duty to be curious about what makes sense to them. You can help your distressed partner to get back into harmony and closeness with you because it is good for your relationship and is also good for you. Terry Real calls this “enlightened self-interest”.

4. Respond with Generosity 

Our first impulse might be to deny that we have done something or to explain why we have done something, or look how many times I did this other thing. That way of responding is termed “leading with an argument”. Instead, acknowledge your partner’s experience or feelings and take responsibility for your part in the issue. You might need to respond with an apology or at least an honest acknowledgement of their subjective reality. 

This disarms your partner, deescalates the conflict, and allows you to make a repair. Terry Real calls this skill “relational jujitsu”. You don’t oppose the force. You yield to the energy coming at you and turn it into a more harmonic energy. Admittedly, this is not an easy feat to accomplish, because we have been taught to respond to power with equal or greater aggression. When we meet aggression and respond with generosity, gentleness and kindness, the aggression falls away. 

On the side of the partner who receives an apology or an attempt to improve, “responding with generosity” means to gracefully accept their bid or repair. This is not the moment to be picky. Take it in. You might not get all you wanted, but if you get 70% of what you have been asking for, that is a sign that your partner wants to cooperate and return to peace. Accept their offering.  Respond with a “thank you” for listening to you and meeting your requests. Remember to celebrate them 15% more than before. 

The next step is to ask what you can give your partner? Find out what they need from you to make the changes you have asked for. You are on the same team, so you want to help them come through for you. This is relational empowerment rather than personal empowerment. Our society tends to encourage personal empowerment at the expense of our relationships. I am of course not saying that our personal growth and empowerment is not important, but we need a balance in order to live well and have functioning relationships.

5. Cherish what you have 

Cherishing is a powerful change agent. Terry Real believes “this one winning strategy is equal in potential to all of the other strategies combined”. The best way to get more of what you want in a relationship is by appreciating what you are already getting. What we give energy to, or pay attention to grows and becomes more. We have the choice to focus on the steps forward and on the progress.

Why is this sometimes so hard?

Real intimacy, closeness and vulnerability can be scary for many of us. Fights can serve as a way to remain distant from one another. Complaining about what we are not getting helps to keep the distance between us and our partner, instead of truly opening up our heart and acknowledging everything we are getting. Fights keep us tied into each other but at a certain distance. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Fights are an opportunity to experience that the other one cares enough to be triggered by us and to feel close but not so close and enmeshed that it creates fear or panic. Those inner child can feel too vulnerable, so instead of fighting, try expressing these vulnerable feelings to your partner. Intimacy requires vulnerability. Fighting keeps us from being intimate. Take the emotional risks that so you can have the closeness you want. 

Terry Real calls the lack of gratitude towards our partner “having ADD, Appreciation Deficiency Disorder”. Our world is plagued with this. We tend to notice more of what is not going well instead of appreciating what is going well. The ratio of negative feedback to positive appreciation is often out of balance in relationships. We need to engage in active appreciation several times each day and express it. 

Once our partner starts to give us more of what we have asked for, the challenge is to receive it gracefully and to cherish what we are getting. So if you hear yourself disqualifying what they are giving, e.g. “you are not doing it right”, or “you are only doing it because I asked for it”, or “you are doing it now but you didn’t do it then or you won’t do it in the future”, be curious about what is actually going on. Do you have a wall around not letting in the progress? 

Sometimes we also have an attachment or belief system that keeps us from having happy and healthy relationships. We do something that Terry Real calls “keeping a parent spiritual company” by living in the same world they live in, e.g. being mistrustful like your father, or being passive aggressive or resentful like your mother. Perhaps you are over identified with independence like your father, or overemotional like your mother, or too easygoing and disconnected from our own needs like your father and so on. When we try to move beyond that it might feel disloyal to the respective parent.

At other times, we might be invested in not wanting to be like one (or both) of our parents at all costs. For example, not wanting to take advantage of your spouse like you experienced your mother doing, or not wanting to abuse power like your father did and so on. When we identify with the opposite of an energy we are equally not whole and not able to create a balanced relationship. Moving into happiness in all those cases is synonymous with separating from our family. 

If you dare to move beyond your parents and you dare to be happier, more vulnerable and more intimate than they were able to be, you are forging into new territory for your whole ancestral line. You are also changing the future for your children and grandchildren and sparing them from their misery. Thus you are giving them a different legacy and showing them how to have real and intimate connections. 

Take the next step and try out a few of the winning strategies. You alone, can make a difference for you and your relationships. It is worth it!