Secret Rule #1 for a Happy Relationship

James and I stand across from each other in the kitchen. We’re arguing, though at this point it’s safe to say we’re fighting. My blood is boiling. I’m on the offense. He, on the other hand, is withdrawn, defending, arms crossed in front of his chest. I sharpen my words, trying to pierce through his walls. I’m on the brink of yelling, tears are coming up, furiously fight to hold them back. He watches me, growing quieter and quieter, then eventually turns his back to me and starts chopping one of the zucchini. We’ve reached an impasse. I take a deep breath trying to calm down. Then another one. And another one. Open my mouth to voice yet another argument. Then shut it. And take another breath.

I feel like I lost this fight, but judging by his tensed shoulders I have the nagging suspicion the feeling is mutual. As I take more breaths and the red haze in my mind starts to lift I try to remember all the self-help books I’ve read. Then, I try to put myself in his shoes. It’s not working well. I don’t understand why such a small request on my part is met with such resistance, but there it is: he’s not willing to give in. Surely that must mean he doesn’t care about me? Surely that’s the only reason why he’s so methodically chopping vegetables for the stew, rather than trying to sort this out?

And then I remember: he loves me.

Sure, the little scared girl inside of me has her doubts, but if I can let go of her for just a few seconds I know: he really does love me.

I slowly open the conversation again, but this time it’s from a different place. Not from the need I crave him to fill. From the love that’s been keeping us together for years. I ask about his needs and try to show understanding of his perspective. Almost instantly, he reciprocates. We’re no longer fighting. Instead, we’re working as a team toward a solution. And with our mutual determination, the problem doesn’t stand a chance: within minutes the issue is resolved, all knives are put down and we’re cuddling again.

“I love you.”

“And I love you, too.”

At the start of our relationship, or rather just post-start, once the pink glasses came off, these fights became part of our daily routine. In our oh-so-classic avoidant-anxious dynamic we’d take turns triggering each other where it hurts deepest until exhaustion would kick in and we’d slowly find our way towards a compromise. It’s taken a lot of hard work, including therapy for both of us, but these days we’ve worked through a ton of triggers. Our fights are rare. But when they’re there I still feel like I small abandoned girl. Not the best feeling if you’re trying to act as an adult (emphasis on ‘act as’ ;-)) and find a solution. Still, we’re working. And we’re growing, as individuals and as a couple.

I’ve been through quite a few relationships so far but this is my first one that got to the point where fights make our relationship stronger, not weaker. And while there’s been a ton of resources — not just books, but workshops, friends, practices, substances, therapy — that have contributed to it, I’d say the very first, absolutely critical, rule in overcoming relationship obstacles is this:

Assume Positive Intent.

Assume positive intent, even when your partner grows moody or disengages. Assume positive intent when your partner doesn’t pull their share of the chores and even when there’s cheating. Keep assuming positive intent (and also, definitely read the disclaimer on the bottom of this post).

These days, friends come to me for advice on tackling relationship issues (I’m still baffled by that one) which is why I’m putting my advice into a blog. If this sounds like something that might benefit your relationship, here’s what’s up next:

1. Why assuming positive intent is critical for a happy relationship
2. Different approaches to assuming positive intent
3. When to stay and when to leave

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Why bother?

You are your own person. You have your needs and desires. So does your partner. Some of them will overlap, others won’t. As you will grow and develop yourself, they will also change. Where one day there might have been an overlap there now might be a gap that can’t be bridged. The other day, I saw a quote: “You should remember that I’m not you. A lot more will start making sense after that.” It’s true. No matter how alike you are, your partner is not you. Your needs might align. Or they might not.

If you don’t assume positive intent, every disagreement between you might feel like your partner is trying to sabotage you. Like they want to hurt you. Like they don’t care. Interactions turn into an ongoing war of having your needs met and every refusal only contributes to a growing resentment. You start treating each other as a tool to get what you want. And when that doesn’t work, you start to treat the person you once fell in love with as your enemy.

But they are called your partner for a reason. You are together to make both your lives easier and more fun. Now imagine that as your mutual goal. If you assume positive intent on both your sides to work towards this goal, suddenly you work together as a team. Instead of pouring all your energy into fighting each other, you can use this energy to fight whatever obstacles stand in the way of your mutual happiness.

This works brilliantly for all sorts of issues. If your partner is cheating or breaking agreements, they almost certainly don’t do it to hurt your feelings. What’s their need or fear behind their behavior? Figuring that one out is the first step to fixing the problem.

One of my favorite spiritual teachers, Byron Katie, says: “You can either be right or be at peace.” If you focus on being right in your relationship, there is no peace to find. You may win battles, but you will lose the war.

How to assume positive intent

Let’s imagine you want to get your needs met. To do that, you need something from your partner (ranging from a hug to them doing the dishes or planning a family holiday). They refuse.

Take a second here to pause and ask yourself: why do they refuse?

Here, there’s several possible answers. Each of them comes with its own manual.

Answer a: your partner doesn’t love you, they consciously and intentionally try to sabotage you. They are a psychopath and like to see you suffer. If this is the case, I kindly direct you to the section “when to leave”.

Answer b: your partner does love you. However, they are triggered by their own insecurities, often originating from past relationships and their childhood. Most of us experience this in one way or another, and this is doubly the case for people with an axious or avoidant attachment style. Maybe your request makes them feel like they’re losing power. Maybe they don’t know how to do what you want and are scared of disappointing you. Maybe they’re just so overwhelmed with other things that one more request triggers them into a fight-or-flight.

There’s two possible approaches here. One is to tiptoe around each other’s unresolved issues. This seems to work for a lot of couples, but I think it’s deeply unhealthy.

The other approach is to start working through your individual issues, either through self-help or therapy. If you choose to do this, please remember you love and want to help each other. Your goal is NOT to trigger your partner and then tell them to work on their issues. Compare it to weightlifting: you want to help your partner build up strength, not just throw a heavy bar onto them and then blame them for not being able to lift it.

Take a long and hard look at yourself and don’t be afraid to open up to your partner about what triggers you, how you feel. In my experience, starting from a place of self-assessment is by far the easiest way to have the other person lower their defenses as well. Ideally, address the issue when you’re both relaxed and enjoying each other’s company. “When you cancel our date and aren’t willing to talk about it, it makes me feel like my needs don’t matter to you. I know you love me, so this can’t be true, but I’m not sure how else to explain it.” This type of vulnerable admission really opened up our relationship and it can do the same for you. The key here is to not this as a way to manipulate your partner into changing their behavior. Remember, it’s not a battle, it’s a collaboration. These days, James and I got to the point that even in the middle of a fight one of us sometimes stops and says: “what is *really* going on here?”, and suddenly a conversation about planning becomes a conversation about abandonment fears, unresolved stress and other things we’d successfully bury if we would just focus on the symptoms of our argument.

Answer c: your partner does love you. However, your needs don’t align with their needs and they choose their own needs over your needs. If you feel like they shouldn’t do that, remember this can only can trigger you if you want them to put your needs first, which means both of you are essentially doing the same thing. This one is tricky. It requires you to take a breath and tell yourself their needs matter just as much as yours. Which may be hard if they want to go out drinking with friends and you want to clean the house. In order to do this, you have to realize there’s no objective ‘right needs’ and ‘wrong needs’. Once more: it’s not about being right here, it’s about creating a mutually nourishing relationship.

Once you realize your needs are equally important you can then look at ways to meet them all. Sometimes, this will mean you’ll have to think outside of the box to come up with new solutions that work for both of you. Sometimes, either or both of you will come to the realization that a certain need is more of a ‘nice to have’ and you can let go of it to put your relationship first. And sometimes… sometimes there is this hard decision where you have to take a look at all needs and conclude they can’t co-exist. Which brings me to the next part…

When to leave?

Whether you assume positive intent or not, sometimes it’s time to leave. Relationships reach their expiration date, no matter how much it hurts. It took me some time to gather my thoughts on when to leave, it’s never an easy decision to make. Eventually, I came up with this simple (but not easy) approach on deciding whether to leave or to stay:

Picture yourself living the best version of you, not some society ideal but the version you want to be. The partner you want to be. The parent you want to be. The friend you want to be. Having the career and hobbies you want to have. Living a happy and fulfilled life.

Now, ask yourself: overall, would you say your relationship is contributing towards this best life or holding you from it?

If it’s contributing, stay. If it’s holding you back, leave. Here’s a couple of things to look out for:

1. If your health is at risk from your partner, leave. You can try to resolve your differences once you’re apart (if both of you choose to), but only from a safe place. Making a relationship works take energy and if your partner threatens your health that’s not a safe place to work on issues.
2. If your partner isn’t willing to work towards solutions and you can’t be happy with the way things are (or change things by yourself), leave. It doesn’t matter whether you and your partner love each other and truly show remorse after every fight — some issues that hold you back from your ideal life you just can’t resolve by yourself. If they’re not willing to pull their share — it’s time to continue your path by yourself.
3. If you’ve tried different approaches to solve your issues, but there’s no notable improvement and you’re running out of options, leave. I’ve seen couples fight and make up for a thousand times, every time expecting this time things to be different, better. Things don’t become better by themselves and if you keep doing the things you’re always doing, the result will be the result you’ve always had. Love is a terrible reason to stick with unhappiness.
4. If your needs don’t align. This is the hardest one, because there may still be a lot of love involved and in a way things might actually be working. This happened in my last monogamous relationship. We loved each other, but really wanted different things. Our living arrangements are a beautiful illustration of our differences: once we broke up, we had to sell the house in a gentrified neighbourhood we bought as a compromise for his need to settle down and mine to be surrounded by creative people. My ex bought a new house in the suburbs. I put most of my stuff into a storage and moved into my van. Our break up hurt, but we’re so much happier now: we no longer need to compromise on who we want to be just to make the relationship work.

Disclaimer: assume positive intent out of love, not fear.

Assuming positive intent is not the same as making excuses for your partner to stay in a relationship that simply isn’t working. Don’t forget that your needs matter, no matter what reasons your partner has to act they way they do. And personal growth matters too. If you feel like you can’t be yourself in your relationship anymore…you’re no longer choosing love, you’re choosing fear. I’m all for working on issues, but if you choose to do so, do it from a place of knowledge your relationship can address your mutual needs, not from a place of fear to be alone.

This post is part of my NaNoWriMo challenge: 15 fully edited blog posts. From the prompts people gave me, one theme was “How to have a great relationship?”. This post is part of this series.