ANDIKA CHALLENGE
Relational Kintsugi — Make Conflict Improve Your Relationship
4 tools to upgrade your conflict management and repair skills
⸻ By
and
What can you do to not argue with your partner ever again? Nothing. Buckle up!
All couples argue. The difference between struggling and thriving couples is how they repair after conflict. Happy, connected couples fight, hurt each other, say mean or critical things, and have moments that rupture their bond. They err. They miscommunicate. The difference is that they also repair these interactions effectively.
The goal is not to chase the illusion of a relationship without conflict, but to redefine your relationship with conflict. The goal is to learn how to handle your differences with a grace that treats your bond as more important than your problems.
When Princely and I realized this, we stopped dreading our disagreements. It gave us so much peace and confidence that we could build a secure relationship. We were not doing it wrong because of the times we argued. Our partner was not mean-spirited for the times they hurt us. We just had to learn to repair.
Each reconnection grew our confidence in our ability to mend any rupture and nurture our bond. Every unfeigned apology after a moment of difference — every kind touch, forgiving smile, tender word, long walk to listen to and soothe each other — every silly joke to break a tense mood — every time we reframed heated conversations by saying: “It’s not me versus you. It’s us versus the problem.” It all taught us about each other. We stopped fearing. We started feeling — knowing — that our bond would outlast our differences.
Mostly, all you can do in love is repair how you screw up.
Happier couples are simply able to make repairs to their relationship easier and faster so they can get back to the joy of being together.
~ Dr. John Gottman
Kintsugi • 金継ぎ
Can a Japanese pottery tradition help you disagree better?
One day 400 years ago, Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the samurai ruler of Japan, broke his favorite bowl. Dejected, he sent it to China for repair. They put it back together with ugly metal staples and sent it back. The shogun was horrified! A local craftsman promised to find him a better way to repair it. He arranged the broken pieces and filled the cracks with a mixture of lacquer and gold — highlighting them as part of the broken bowl’s story. A golden repair!
This art of mending broken pottery with gold came to be known as kintsugi 金継ぎ — literally golden (“kin”) and repair (“tsugi”).
Unlike most traditions of repair that attempt to hide scars, cracks, and imperfections, kintsugi illuminates them by design. It treats the broken pieces with reverence and challenges our preconditioned views of wholeness and beauty. Kintsugi bowls are not as good as new — they’re better than new. This is antifragility by design!
Happy, connected couples seem to have learned this art of golden repair. They become adept at growing stronger after conflict — learning from it, stopping it from escalating, and reconnecting with care and tenderness after it. They are not trying to maintain the naive yet pristine state of a relationship “as good as when we first met.” Instead, they commit to fixing things when they break. In the process, they build relationships that are “better than new.” Antifragile partnerships that thrive in messy, uncertain reality.
“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. ”
~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
4 Tools for Disagreeing Better
Making Moments of Conflict Serve Your Relationship
Since we can’t always agree, what if we learned to disagree in less damaging, more useful ways?
Princely and I have been co-writing this article for the past two weeks. This is us trying to piece together two years of disagreeing and learning our golden repair. Writing this was hard. Not just because the topic is tricky, but also because we are still learning these lessons.
One time we sat down to write and couldn’t get anything flowing — so we took a midday walk. Our task was to answer these two questions:
What changed to help us navigate our differences more gently these days?
What would we say have been our most useful lessons in disagreeing better?
Below are the four answers we scribbled down from that walk, expounded.
P.S. Everything we suggest comes from our experience of what has worked for us. It is also a synthesis of some of the most useful, research-backed ideas from experts like Drs. John and Julie Gottman, Julie Mennano, Dr. Sue Johnson, and Dr. Susan David who we read together a lot! Follow them.
1. Use a gentle opening — Start a challenging conversation with kindness rather than blame or criticism
How can you start a difficult conversation in a way that will lead to a discussion rather than an argument? The trick is a “gentle start.” What does a gentle or soft start look like? A soft opening can be as easy as finding the softness in your voice, holding hands, or extending a hug to inspire connection.
The tone you use to begin a conversation usually dictates how the rest of the conversation pans out. Taking the time to bring up your differences respectfully works like a charm. Have you tried using I-statements? We have found “I-statements” to be useful when starting difficult conversations.
Generally, when you feel criticized or blamed, your natural response is to be defensive. Using “I-statements” for gentle starts inspires a sense of ownership towards your feelings while expressing them.
Instead of saying — “We never spend weekends together. You always prioritize your friends.” Try — “I feel alone when we spend our weekends without each other because I think it means we are not prioritizing quality time together. Can we plan a weekend for just the two of us?”
A soft opening can sometimes be as easy as finding the softness in your voice, holding hands, or extending a hug to inspire connection. Controlling your emotions amid conflict is not the easiest thing. Instead of going the easy way of initiating a conversation with accusations and a fighting tone, try calmness and gentleness. Express vulnerability rather than blame.
Tool to try: I-Statements
Next time you have a problem with your partner, or a complaint you want to raise. Try telling them like this:
I feel ___________________ when you do _______________ because I think it means _______________. What I need from you is ______________________. Can you please try this for me?
2. Validate — Tune in to your partner’s feelings
Think of a time you were listened to and felt heard. How heavenly does that feel?
One of our foundational needs as social beings is to feel understood. When we feel heard in our relationships, it improves our feelings of love, respect, and appreciation. Nothing calms our fears, concerns, and uncertainties quite like feeling understood. Emotional validation is the secret sauce.
“When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good!”
— Carl Rogers
What is validation? You validate your partner when you help them feel heard and understood. Put simply, it is the willingness to feel with your partner. To show them that you understand their inner world. Or as we like to put it ‘to tune in to what they need. Validation often involves empathizing with your partner — an act that is most difficult during conflict.
Most arguments escalate because it is easier to defend yourself rather than validate your partner when their feelings result from something you said or did. The patterns of conflict change when partners stop defending their perspectives and instead seek to hear each other.
So how can you validate each other better? Start by expressing that your partner’s perspectives are valid, despite being different from your own.
Instead of saying — “You’re overreacting! I don’t get how using my phone during dinner makes you feel like I don’t value you” you can try — “I hear you. I can see why you would feel that way,” before expressing anything else. Doing this helps your partner open up to your point of view. It is easier for them to listen to you, or understand the good intentions you’re trying to defend.
“When you validate other people, you help them see and accept their emotions for what they are: just feelings — neither good nor bad. This makes it significantly easier for them to process them and break free.”
~ Michael S. Sorensen
We are not suggesting that validating your partner’s perspective requires letting go of your own. We are simply shedding light on the possibility that behind every expression of hurt lies a deep longing for connection. When you realize this, it becomes easier to make the active choice to validate each other.
Tool to try: These three lines
“I hear you. I get what you’re feeling, and it’s perfectly alright to feel that way.”
Read “I Hear You” by Michael S. Sorensen together.
3. Be curious — Approach your differences with curiosity
Cultivating curiosity is about meeting your partner with a sense of openness and a willingness to learn. When you approach conflicts with the assumption that you already know how another person is thinking and feeling, you close yourself off from discovering something new about your partner.
“You can spend a lifetime being curious about the inner world of your partner, and being brave enough to share your own inner world, and never be done discovering all there is to know about each other. It’s exciting.”
— John Gottman
How can we approach conflicts with curiosity? We can practice this by asking for more details. Here are a few statements that spark curiosity: “What did you mean by that?” or “Did you mean X?”
Tool to try: Curiosity Phrases
“I want to understand you and to give you the sense that I hear you. It sounds like you are telling me x. Is this what you mean?”
“What is my partner feeling? What is that emotion trying to tell us about what she needs?”
You should also be curious (and nonjudgmental) about your own emotions:
“What am I feeling? What is this emotion trying to tell me?”
4. Repair — Notice and practice repair attempts
Gottman describes a repair attempt as “any statement or action — silly or otherwise — that prevents negativity from escalating out of control.”
Repairs don’t have to be grand, well-spoken, or even complicated to be effective. Any genuine attempt to reconnect can work.
“Taking responsibility — even for a small part of the problem in communication — presents the opportunity for great repair.”
― John M. Gottman
Conflict and ruptures are opportunities to strengthen our relationships. Repair solidifies your bond and demonstrates that the relationship is solid enough to withstand difficult times. Most of all, it illuminates the opportunity to become antifragile.
So the next time you have disagreements, take a step back and punctuate these moments with kindness and reconnect through tenderness. Apologize more. Own your feelings and practice the art of golden repairs.
Tool to try: The Gottman Repair Checklist
The Final Act: how we broke stuff while writing about fixing stuff
Life has a sense of humor. As soon as we started writing about kintsugi and its lofty reminder to treat our broken pieces with reverence — both of us broke our favorite ceramics. First, Princely broke a mug he’s had and loved for years. Then, a few days later, I dropped an adorable gifted vase. You learn the lessons you teach.
All that’s left is to book a ticket to Japan to learn 金継ぎ for our broken earthenware.
We hope our attempt to piece together the tips and tools that have helped us can be useful for you. Leave us a comment with your favorite tools to manage conflict, and disagree with care and love.
To you!
