Let's talk about relational responsibilities as a couple, more specifically, owning your perception.
But first I want to take you to the courtroom. When a couple is stuck in an argumentative loop, often what they're doing is they're lining up their own arguments, It's like being in a courtroom with no judge and no jury. Just two people with their own box full of evidence.
That evidence can include assumptions and past grievances. They have their yellow legal pads outlining some of the arguments. They'll sit until one prompts the trial to commence.
That one will begin submitting their evidence, referring to their points. The other, meanwhile, is looking down into their own box, pawing through what they have as their own proof. Then the second offers their own evidence. Crosstalk commences, there can be times of disgusted, brief retorts.
Two people giving simultaneous stories without hearing each other. All in the effort to prove rightness.
The result? Maybe one of them acquiescing silently and harboring regret while the other is feeling victorious. Or the two going their separate ways with nothing done. The opportunity to come together on a way forward is gone.
Getting out of the courtroom means not aiming to prove your version of the truth. Instead you are owning it as your own truth. It's your perception.
Therapist Terry Real, a founder of Relational Life Therapy, is more blunt. He says: "It's what you made up" about what you saw.
This notion of owning your own perception puts things in a different context. And it keeps you on task to communicate what you perceived... again, what you perceived.
What happens then is that you allow for some room to connect. It puts you on firmer ground in the discussion. Equanimity and equality emerge, call it a partnership.
There are other steps that can be taken for building a relational approach that I would like to get to in later posts.
But owning your perception as yours. This allows for discussion to happen rather than litigation.
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