Couples counselling has some special challenges. Two individuals rarely see the same experiences the same. Their different realities are not a fault but rather should be expected. Individuals with different backgrounds and life experiences have natural impediments to mutual agreement.

What else complicates these oppositional views? Probably it is ego. We know that ego involves our feelings of self-importance. Identity issues involving one’s ego may become problematic when searching for commonality. Your sense of self-importance may intrude on my sense of self-importance. This is why I often see the main issue between people in couples counselling not to be about financials, family, political affiliation, or sex but something totally removed from these issues. I believe incompatibility in couples and in most relationships is more about: “You’re not enough like me.”

Self-Importance

When individuals clash over their self-importance, several negative qualities leach into the relationship. A person may be construed as being arrogant or a know-it-all. When you know-it-all what is left for me to know? Closely aligned with arrogance is immodesty, which reinforces a lack of humility and says: “my way or the highway.” Eventually this attitude evolves into a person who is viewed as overbearing. The distance between partners may start to increase due to the experienced need of one’s self-importance.

Strangely, the more self-importance is challenged the more this distance is likely to escalate. Many a difference of opinion can suddenly change into a heated defence of one’s sense of identity. And just as bizarre, this emotional and cognitive turmoil occurs simultaneously in both the sender and the receiver. The need to maintain one’s self-importance turns into an unstated expression of:  “You’re not enough like me.” The longer the aggression lasts the more your relationship closeness will be affected.

Low Self-Esteem

Low self-esteem increases the probability that you will feel a greater need to protect your identity even more often. Individuals may resort to avoidance strategies as an option to escape the challenges of new thinking. Being filled with self-doubt one may be triggered by their partners who insist they are right and you are wrong.  One person may leave the conflict while the other chases them down.

Low self-esteem can also feed into low self-confidence and feelings of depression, unhappiness, and anxiety, which may become additional by-products of low-self-esteem. Anxiety plants the seed for a negative view of self, which can sometimes create a perceived need for a pseudo-self.

The pseudo-self is an attempt to over-compensate for negative feelings of self by appearing to be arrogant and overbearing. This is a compensatory response in an attempt to inflate one’s self-esteem. Through this approach the person is seeking to have more control. Seeking to be more in control may include controlling others, especially in close relationships. Ultimately, the desire is to change the other person into someone more like me, because: “You’re not enough like me.”

High Self-Esteem

High self-esteem is not inflated. Some of the benefits of high self-esteem include being able to be yourself without the fear of being judged and a readiness to accept new challenges. You will not be searching for approval from other people because you have a desire to learn new things. Also, you accept that you do not know everything and can tolerate criticism.

People who have high self-esteem have enhanced initiatives and pleasant feelings and they are more pleasant to be around. Having high self-esteem equates to having high levels of self-respect, which precludes respect for others, even when you are not in total agreement. Agreement becomes a bonus not a requirement. “It is okay that you are not like me.”

Alternative Reactions

One alternative to becoming adversarial is to go parallel. Edward de Bono ⁽¹⁾ suggested that the gang of three, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, started the idea of parallel thinking in their search for truth.

Parallel thinking explores the subject, rather than the person, through an alternating approach of giving options and then listening to other options. The subject rather than the person becomes the object of this exploration. Participants offer as many statements as possible in several (preferably more than two) parallel tracks. This leads to exploration of a subject where all participants can contribute, in parallel, with knowledge, facts, feelings, etc. This parallel approach eliminates most of the personalization that accompanies disagreement. Emotionally, we are already in a better place through this parallel approach.

Another tact with the adversarial person is to try very hard to find something about your adversary’s view that you can agree on. Finding any point of congruency can diffuse the situation to some degree. Even the bare minimum of agreement may entice the adversary you are dealing with to find something they can agree on about your view.

This acceptance of each other’s viewpoint can lead the way to some mutual rather than exclusive styles of thinking. We can both have something of value to offer on this subject. We have put aside ‘being right’ for the idea of ‘getting it right’.  In addition, “I will try not to offend but also try not to be offended.”

Eventually, you may even arrive at “white hat thinking”, which allows for even more progress with adversarial thinkers. The white hat represents information gathering. Think about the knowledge and insights that you've collected already – but also the information you're missing, and where you can go to get it. It is about seeking the truth together and not just ideas. Now you are working in collaboration with one another rather than as competitors.

The opportunities for growth and development of your relationship with the adversary have now improved to a level whereby you are both benefiting from your differences. Each of your viewpoints have been improved through exercising your diversity in a more productive way than it would have been through conflict.

Diversity Not Adversity

Sometimes, mistakenly, we confuse independence with being adversarial.  Our identity is mistakenly linked to our perceived independence. Independence does not have to be adversarial.  Our diversity as humans elevates our potential to contribute to each other in unique ways. What you offer me, I may not possess and vice versa.

Our mutual contributions to one another, which are negotiated through our diversity, are much more valuable and irreplaceable than our perceived differences. Paradoxically, implementing our individual diversity through collaboration may ultimately enhance our unrealized potential and nullify our adversarial tendencies.

^References

^{1-De Bono, E. (1998). Reading On Lateral Thinking. Published by Advanced Practical Thinking Training,(r) Inc. Des Moines, Iowa 50322
The McQuaig Group Inc., U.S.A.}