When it comes to relationships, some people give way to their partners in order to keep the peace and maintain the bonds of their partnership. They say, “I need to do whatever my partner decides, so we can maintain our relationship.” They may believe that they don’t have the right to disagree, or they are unworthy.  They may assume that being open about their feelings would leave them vulnerable. They may become convinced that they lack the skills or power to successfully resolve the problem. They hope that the problem with dissolve if they just wait it out.

Many people attempt to make the needed changes as the new year emerges.  But the only person who likes change is a baby in a wet diaper (Mark Twain).  The world is filled with good intentions without follow through. Only eight percent report that they keep their New Year’s resolutions!  That is not a very good track record. If you fall into the group that doesn’t keep them, I suspect that your good intentions are undermined by inadequate assessment of interferences that will impede your follow through. You know you need to change, but you don’t really examine what will keep you from achieving the new life you desire.

Today we witnessed a lose/lose situation as the US congress committee failed to agree to a deficit reduction plan in time to be passed by Wednesday.  What happened?  While I have no inside knowledge of the proceedings, based on newspaper accounts, it appears that both sides adopted a “competitive” style of conflict resolution. They were concerned about meeting their own goals no matter what.  Winning was everything.  As a result they lost big time.  In my book Don’t Carve the Turkey with a Chainsaw: Resolving Family Conflict, I state that competitive people typically ask for more than they expect to get, exaggerate the value of an concessions they make, while minimizing the value of concession conceded by their opponent.  Most competitive people do not experience their behavior as aggressive, coercive, or offensive.  Rather, they believe they are upholding their standards or protecting others.  Does this sound familiar?

I am starting to get feedback on my book Don’t Carve the Turkey with a Chainsaw: Resolving Family Conflict and the results are quite gratifying.  One unexpected development is that some people are having discussion groups centered on the book.  One couple has set aside a time each day to discuss their reading, and a supervisor is giving copies to her staff and intends to have discussions at work based on the book.  Wow, that’s fantastic!

How can your reunions be happy like this?

How are your holiday reunions?  Do you bring glad tidings of joy to your family relationships, or do you make Scrooge look like a joyrider?   What about those other people.  You know the ones.  Those relatives who always disrupt the event.  What can you do about them?  When you attend family reunions do you fall right back into the behavior patterns of your childhood?  Do ongoing parent and child relationships cause feuds and hostility in your family?  I have a friend who wasn’t invited to the family reunion because her brother’s spouse was angry at her.  If she came they would not attend.  Others groan and describe their reunion as something to be endured. Does that sound familiar?

Holiday reunions are like dogs at the dog park … Have you ever observed dogs at the dog park? Whenever a new dog arrives everyone gathers around to greet them, checks them out, sniff their butts, and then goes off to play with those they think will be the most fun. But there is one difference… Have you ever seen dogs get into a fight at the dog park? I haven’t. There might be an occasional snarl but then it’s over, settled, done. They move on. But humans hold grudges. Past grievances occur again and again. People get obnoxious. Sometimes people fall into childhood patterns that they hate. Of course, my family isn’t like that but…

Are you calm on the surface, and paddling for your life underneath?

In a recent blog article, Bob Tipton shows a picture of a swan.  The swan is calm on the surface, but TONS of paddling and busy-ness is happening below.   Sometimes our relationships appear the same way.  We appear calm and collected on the outside, but underneath we are churning!

Sometimes this happens in a love relationship when something is really bothering us, but we don’t want to confront the partner causing our grief?  We avoid the topic, or even worse, we avoid the person.  We are calm on the outside, but inside we are seething.  Furthermore, we don’t seem to be getting anywhere.  Nothing changes.

As you will recall, from part 1, I just returned from a wonderful vacation in Italy. However, my wife and I disagreed on the use of the GPS system. If you were in that situation, what questions would you need to ask to develop a win/win solution?

I just returned from a great vacation in Italy (or as they pronounced it, Eataly. We certainly lived up to the latter pronunciation as we ate ourselves silly.) We saw the ancient buildings of Rome, and were the first into the Sistine Chapel. We saw the walled city/state 14th century towns perched on the hill tops in Tuscany, and the seaside villages of Cinque Terre. We visited with my wife’s relatives, visited the gorgeous Dolomite Mountains, and Venice.

Once we left Rome we mostly traveled by car, and that led to a source of vacation conflict. I suspect some of you have also experienced conflict while traveling.

Wow, what a ride the stock market has taken lately.  The Wall Street Journal reports that we just experienced one of the more volatile weeks in history.  Why?  While I was not invited to participate in any of the discussions, it appears clear that the politicians were unable to resolve their conflict over the budget deficits in the US and Europe.  Looking in from outside the beltway, part of the problem appears to be that some people became focused on their position and became inflexible.  It was my way or the highway.  They probably became even more demanding because of pledges they had made to their constituent groups.  As we saw, this created problems.