Okay, so
there are the issues of pizza choice, movie choice, remote controls,
visiting people's parents for dinner, time spent on the computer,
sexual technique, vacation destinations, guest towels for the bathroom,
how dishes should go into the dishwasher, barbecue tongs, money, underwear
storage locations, and god knows what other amazing variety of issues
you and your girlfriend have the ability to disagree on.
So first we remember
that when there is a practical issue to be resolved, we turn to the
Reasonable Problem-Solving technique. Okay, so let's say she turns
the heat on to Fiery Inferno at night, whereas you prefer the Polar
Ice Caps mode for the duration of the evening hours. You have a disagreement.
You are going to say things like 'You turned the heat on again, didn't
you?' and she is going to say things like 'God, it's fucking freezing
in here.' And the two of you are going to go around behind each other's
backs and adjust the thermostat controls. Fine. Some people get married
and do this for approximately fifty years until they both reach the
Alzheimer's stage and have far more serious problems.
But if the two
of you are actually having arguments about something like this: 'It's
a waste of money to have the heater set on 76 degrees. Why
can't you realize that?!!' and 'What is wrong with you? I can't sleep
when it's 62 degrees and icicles form on my toes if I have to get
up and use the bathroom. God, you are so inconsiderate!'
'You are wasteful!' 'You don't care about anyone but yourself! Why
can't I be comfortable for once!' 'Because you're trying to roast
us a to crispy flame-broiled state!' 'You don't understand anything,
do you?' 'I understand that you're insane!' 'Oh all right, FINE. FINE.
Have it your way and freeze us both to death. I don't care. I don't
care anymore.' Which means, 'see if I ever have sex with you ever
again ever. Because I won't. Not ever.' And so you have won the thermostat
battle and lost the war.
So let's understand
this kind of stupid bickering the 2 of you are prone to engage in
until you are thoroughly convinced you hate each other. Which you
will. I once knew a couple that divorced over shower curtains.
That's stupid. It is hard enough to find someone you love without
divorcing them over shower curtains.
What is happening
here is that you have a preference. She also has a preference. The
two preferences are not the same. This happens all the time. It's
a preference. It's a fucking preference. Remember this in the discussion
that follows. It's not an issue - it's a preference.
When people
have a disagreement over preferences, there are a certain number of
potential outcomes. You get your way. She gets her way. You decide
on a compromise way. You each go your own way. You decide on an ideal
solution. Or you get really sick of arguing and break up.
Those are the
basic possibilities you are working with. You simply have to decide
which one is the best deal in this particular circumstance. You do
this by engaging in the step you are most tempted to skip - Information
Exchange.
Your first instinct
is usually for 'let's do it my way.' Particularly if you think you
are right about something. There is nothing like someone in a relationship
thinking they are right to make an argument drag on for fucking ever.
Forget rightness. Preferences don't come with rightness or
wrongness. They come with 'this is the way I like it-ness'. Your preferences
are never right. They're just preferences. Her preferences are never
wrong. They're just preferences. Your preferences aren't wrong either.
They may be disgusting and illegal in which case you have a different
problem, but for general purposes, your preferences are not wrong.
And hers are not right.
Maybe you want
to watch the playoffs and she wants to go out to an anniversary dinner.
You are convinced you are right because hell it's the playoffs.
With your team in them! She is convinced she is right because it's
your anniversary. Or she wants you to spend less time on the
computer and more time with her. And you want to spend lots of time
on the computer and maybe squeeze in a little time with her after
midnight, in bed. Or she wants to talk and you never have anything
to say. Or what have you.
Now much as you
might like to skip directly to getting your way, that frequently doesn't
work out all that well in the long run. Particularly not as a ongoing
stance. (See 'I won't sleep with you ever again' above.) Or some of
you like to skip directly to her getting her way because you fucking
hate to argue and you always end up losing anyway. So you spend a
lot of time shoe shopping and almost none watching the Lakers. That's
a drag too and you shouldn't make a habit of that either, although
god knows many of you do.
No, unfortunately,
when certain disagreements over preferences arise repeatedly, you
are going to have to bite the bullet and engage in some Information
Exchange.
Here
is a tip that will make this go much more smoothly. Your goal
is to get her to cough up information on her preferences first.
Your goal is to have more information. Like this:
Her: For Chrissakes,
can you pick up your dirty underwear off the floor every once in a
while? it's disgusting. I'm always having to pick up after you. You're
a slob and I get stuck cleaning everything all the time. You never
even rinse the damn dishes.' And so on.
Now naturally,
you're not going to want to discuss this at all. You're going to think
to yourself, well right, but that's the ideal situation, isn't it?
I throw my stuff around and you pick it up for me. Where's the problem
there? So you are in a little bit of quandary because amazingly,
apparently this is not her preference for an ideal lifestyle!
So your instinct,
naturally, is going to be to be dismissive of her preferences. You
almost always want to do this with something that's ripe for an argument.
You'll want to say 'I do plenty around here. What about blah blah
blah?' Or 'don't be so uptight, you're a neat freak.' Or 'yeah, whatever,
sure...' Or, 'what's your problem here lately? Are you on the rag?'
Or something equally charming. Because you will think to yourself,
my beautiful preferences have just been dissed. I must insult hers
in return. This kind of mutual dissing can be entertaining at times.
And you may want to engage in it occasionally, just to stir up some
chemicals that will lead to Make-Up Sex, but frequently it's just
a goddamn waste of time.
So here's what
you do, because you are so manipulatively clever. You say mildly,
'how do you mean? Do you really think I'm a slob?'
She will say
'Of course you're a slob. Look at this! Look at this and this and
this!' Or whatever. Notice that she will be tremendously upset
by this point, but that's her problem, because you won't be. If you
don't get defensive and start arguing - there is no reason for you
to be upset.
So you look at her
examples, play innocent and you say 'Okay. So what are you saying?'
And she will scream 'I'm saying I want to you to pick up your goddamn
underwear!' or 'I want to you clean up after yourself!' Or 'I want you
to help me once in a while.' Or 'I don't want to live in a pigsty!'
Or whatever. Your goal is to get her to spit out what she wants.
Because half the time when you get into these bickering arguments, you
get all the way through and you still have no idea what the other person
wanted, you were so busy arguing. The one who turns the heater up -
what does she want? Possibly she wants to be warm. Possibly she doesn't
want to throw money away. Possibly she doesn't want to devote her life
to driving you insane. Possibly she just wants to be warm. It's really
not the height of insanity to want to be warm. Maybe there is even a
way for her to be warm without sweat pouring from all parts of your
body including your eyeballs. Maybe she keeps turning up the heat, because
she's pissed that you don't give a damn whether she freezes. And you
keep turning it down because you're pissed she doesn't care if you get
heatrstroke. See how it works? But you forgot about all that because
you were busy thinking of your only own preferences.
So instead you
just keep innocently asking questions until the other person is forced,
from sheer frustration, to reveal what they really want. 'So you're
saying that if my clothes weren't on the floor, you'd be happy?' And
frequently, amazingly, people will pop out with shit that isn't exactly
what they said in the first place. "yes, pick up your clothes,
that'd be a start." 'so it'd make you feel better if I picked
up my clothes each day, that's what it is?' (You might want to try
to looking earnest, or sincere, or puzzled. Looking like you are kind
of a dumb ox frequently lowers both their anger and resistance. Because
their brains say to themselves 'oh god, how could i have gotten mad?
I forgot, he is a just a man, and they are always clueless.' And they'll
calm down a little bit because originally they thought you were dropping
your clothes on the floor because you had an acute awareness of how
much that would bother them and were devilishly employing advanced
sophisticated torture techniques precisely to see if you could get
them to crack. So the point is not that you are always clueless because
you're a man, although that may be the case, it's not necessarily
true, and it's irrelevant. The point is that you are giving the impression
that you weren't doing it on purpose to be mean. This goes completely
counter to your natural instinct to appear smart and superior
and as if you were doing it to be mean because you're better than
them and can get away with it. Much of the key to life is going
against your natural instincts.)
So anyway, if
you cleverly and persistently probe for information as to what's bothering
the person they will frequently give up and just fucking explain it.
Which goes against their natural instincts, but when backed into a
corner, people will often do this. So the argument about the proper
storage place for clothes between washings will often suddenly morph.
This is good. This is often what you want. And she will end
up saying 'yes, pick up your clothes that would help. No, god that's
not it. It's that just...I mean, christ, I am working full time, going
to school to get a better job, trying to build a future for us and
it's like...oh i don't know, I come home and I'm tired. And there's
all this shit on the floor and I just want to relax and...it's like
I never get a chance to have fun anymore. You know? I'm just tired.
I'm just tired of....'
And all the fight
has gone out of them because, disconcertingly, it is now becoming
obvious that blaming you is not really going to help although god
knows it seemed like such an attractive option at the start of the
conversation. Now you are in like Flynn. You can leap in with
soothing things that entirely divert attention away from the underlying
reality that you are a slob. You can say 'I know, you are always working
so hard.' You can say 'I want us to have fun together too.' You can
say 'Of course you're tired. Let's go out for dinner instead of trying
to cook something.' And all of a fucking sudden, you look like Mr.
Understanding. The reason you look like Mr. Understanding is that
you waited, with consummate strategy, until she said something
you could understand. You always forget to do this. Instead, you
go off reacting half-cocked, to shit that you don't understand at
all.
Oh maybe you think
you understand, you think you understand that she wants you to pick
up your clothes and put them in the laundry hamper or something and
you absolutely positively hate to pick up your clothes and do that.
You think - I can't let her have her way. That would be terrible.
I hate putting my clothes in the laundry hamper after I take them
off because the laundry hamper is full of dirty clothes. Whereas
my clothes are not all that dirty when I first take them off. So I
throw them on the floor where they can gradually get dirtier from
being on the floor and then when it is time to do laundry I can put
them with the other dirty clothes and it won't be such a shock to
them and they won't get all contaminated by spending all that time
in the laundry hamper with the really dirty clothes. It is just disgusting
to put clothes that are not really that dirty in the hamper with the
dirty stuff, that's just yucky. So my system is much better and keeps
my favorite clothes from being contaminated with bad laundry hamper
stuff. And then you think, even though your reasoning is perfectly
sound (we are just talking about a preference here) well I can't explain
that to her, it will sound really stupid. So I just have to attack
and make sure she doesn't get her way and mess up all my good clothes.
So you spout bullshit and she spouts bullshit and neither of you end
up knowing that she is tired and stressed from her strenuous schedule
and you have a thing about laundry hampers.
Notice how,
by refraining from attacking in the above example, you never even
had to explain that you have this strange thing about hampers.
No, we went right to her issue, which you can do something about.
And what you can do about it, wonderfully, is often nothing at all.
You seem sympathetic and understanding and talk about how you guys
never have time for fun anymore and bammo! no one is mad at you. All
you had to do was be nice for about 30 seconds and suddenly she loves
you again. Memorize this technique even if you don't understand
it. It is easy to understand, you simply find out what is actually
bothering the other person. But if even that is too esoteric a concept
to grasp immediately, practice the technique and it will make you
seem heroic in her eyes. You will be positively bewildered by how
much she loves you, particularly when you never even have to do anything.
Or maybe more
discussion really is needed about how to deal with her schedule. Let
her explain what is stressing her out about it. Let the other person
finish all their issues first. If they don't absolutely force
you to cough up yours, always let them go first. Until they finish.
This is like playing poker where you know what the other players have
in their hands. It is massively to your advantage. No one really feels
like arguing once they are done explaining their feelings, thoughts,
and considerations. It may seem boring to listen to someone explain
all their issues, but it is not boring to know what cards the other
players are holding. It only seems boring to you if you don't understand
the nature of the game. It seems boring to you if you think the point
of the game is to throw down all your cards as soon as possible and
say Ah Hah! I lose again! once you see what they are holding.
When the other
person is finished explaining all their issues, by virtue of you continuing
to probe, you have absolutely wide open space to put any or all of
yours on the table. Like this: I absolutely agree our anniversary
is important. And I honestly want to do something really special with
you. And I've also been waiting all year for this game and have bet
our entire life savings on it. Hah hah! Just kidding. But it is the
most important game of the entire year, until next week's anyway,
and I really really really really want to see it. If you leave out
the part about the life savings and try to look cute while saying
the really really really part, you will be much harder to resist.
So she'll say 'well can't you tape it then?' And you say 'I could.
It would not be the same though. Can we have our anniversary dinner
tomorrow? And she'll say 'but it's our anniversary tonight!'
And you'll say 'good point. Well can we do something after or before?'
And so on. Notice the clever use of phrases like 'good point.' You
are subtly suggesting, that her preferences are valid because they're
her preferences. That's all you have to do really. To avoid the whole
'you don't really care about me enough, now do you?' discussion that
you were otherwise veering dangerously close to.
Acknowledge
the validity of the other person's fucking preferences and suddenly
you don't have an argument anymore. It's as easy as rolling over
in bed. That's all it is. So she doesn't go for an anniversary breakfast
at 9 am or an anniversary midnight snack at midnight. But you just
keep negotiating. 'Can I make it up to you then? How about we go away
together for the whole weekend next weekend?' Blah, blah, blah. She
sighs, this football thing is always an issue. You go on and on, relentlessly
pushing for how you can honor her preferences without invalidating
your own and finally she says 'oh christ, if it's that important to
you...but you damn well better be buying me jewelry.' So hell, you
do. You say, 'you are the greatest, I swear to god.' You go off with
your friends and watch a stupid football game, get drunk, come home,
tell her she's the greatest again, buy the jewelry and get your way.
And you really will think she's the greatest because the thing about
having your preferences honored is that it makes you realize that
underneath it all, it was always just a preference.
If you get
in the habit of honoring each other's preferences you will eventually
come to the surprising conclusion that you are crazy about each other,
and that damn! you really do care enough about each other, now don't
you?
Who would ever
have figured that would happen? Certainly not you when you were in
the middle of Argument Hell. It's just a matter of soliciting that
information until both your preferences can be honored by you guessed
it - getting your own way when it is really important to you. Letting
her have her way when it it's really important to her. Doing it a
compromise way when that will take care of the most relevant aspects
of both your preferences. Each going your own way when that will allow
both to have their preferences honored. Coming up with a more creative
ideal solution that makes everybody happy. Or breaking the hell up
when you realize your preferences are permanently incompatible. It's
easy! It's called getting along with people and most of you already
know how to do it. You just forget when you get in a relationship
because you get this crazy idea that you need to have the same
preferences or that your true preferences must never be revealed
because they will make you look bad.
If you don't remember
anything else on this page, and honestly why should you?, just remember
the part about finding out what the other person's preferences really
are and the part about honoring both people's preferences as
if everybody was right. It will save your relationship,
and your peace of mind, and you will actually get your own way every
once in a goddamn while. Which is a hell of a lot better than many
of you are doing right now.
No, you don't
have to thank me profusely. But yes, you can send jewelry.
Just another happy
ending, courtesy of prettyfedup.com.
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