Because you can usually see dictatorship for what it is when your spouse uses it but can’t see it when you use it, the dueling dictator strategy becomes very common in marriages, especially after children arrive. Both Jodi and Tony were trying to force their will on the other when they fought over Emily’s care, which made them both dictators. And it didn’t work very well.
Can any spouse get away with a demand these days? Do you ever do what your spouse tells you to do? Even if you only occasionally oblige, I’ll bet that you resent it. Yet I’ll also bet that you make demands of your spouse—at least occasionally. You already know that it’s a tactic that doesn’t work very well with you, but you keep trying to make it work because you don’t know what else to do.
The next time you make a demand of your spouse, imagine for a moment that he or she is using the same words and inflection to demand something of you. How would you react? You’d be more likely to fight than submit. That’s what most spouses are doing when they try to resolve a conflict. They try to force their solutions on each other, and that usually leads to a duel.
The Anarchy Strategy
A few years ago, as I was thumbing through an issue of Reader’s Digest, I came upon an article entitled “The Science of a Happy Marriage,” by Michael Gurian.* The subtitle of the article was particularly intriguing: “By nature, men and women aren’t made for each other. How to outsmart our DNA and live happily ever after.”
The thesis of this article was that couples experience five stages in marriage: (1) romance, (2) disillusionment, (3) power struggle, (4) awakening, and finally, (5) long-term marriage. We can all understand the romance, disillusionment, and power struggle stages, but what does he mean by awakening and long-term marriage? Awakening, Gurian explains, is coming to the awareness that romance is possible only in the beginning of a relationship and if a couple wants a long-term marriage they must give up hope for a romantic marriage. When that happens, the couple is able to settle into a long-term relationship.
In other words, in the best marriage each spouse goes his and her own way. Gurian claims that they should have different sets of friends, create separate hobbies, go on separate vacations, and in general, create independent lifestyles. They experience a realization that they can remain married only if they have as little to do with each other as possible. After going through an irrational struggle to blend the lives of a man and a woman, something that’s required in a romantic relationship, they finally realize that living independent lives is the only way for their marriage to survive.
Gurian, like many other spouses, likely experienced the results of the dueling dictators strategy for marital problem solving. That strategy does create a power struggle that seems endless and fruitless. What begins as a romantic relationship morphs into the worst nightmare a couple could have ever imagined. The caring lovers have become assassins.
So by his estimation, to remain married, a couple must give up on the illusion of ever maintaining a romantic relationship and rise to the realization that men and women are simply not meant to blend with each other for any length of time. They’re just too different. Independent decision-making becomes the ultimate solution to marital conflicts.
Really? Is that what every couple must look forward to in life? Is that what you want your marriage to become?
You may have found, like Tony and Jodi, that the dueling dictators strategy doesn’t resolve your marital conflicts, and in fact only makes matters worse. Maybe a man and a woman are so different that they can’t be expected to blend their lives. So you may have started making at least some of your decisions independently of each other. If your spouse doesn’t want to cooperate with you, then your only other hope for survival is to go it alone. I call this the anarchy strategy for resolving marital conflicts. And it’s yet another win-lose strategy that doesn’t work.
The good news is that, contrary to what Mr. Gurian and others may want you to believe, it’s not your only option. Unfortunately most couples don’t realize this before having to learn the hard way how win-lose strategies fail to solve their problems.
The Anatomy of a Conflict
Let’s return to my opening illustration of Tony and Jodi’s marital conflict: Who should get up with little Emily at night?
When their first child, Robbie, had arrived, Tony had suggested that Jodi should get up to care for him at night because his job required greater mental alertness than her job. At first, she willingly sacrificed her own sleep so that Tony could be well rested. But as time went on, she felt that it was unfair to her.
By the time little Emily arrived, Jodi was no longer in agreement with the arrangement. She suggested that Tony take turns with her. But he refused and demanded that she take sole responsibility for Emily’s care at night. He had become a dictator.
Jody tried to submit to his demands for a few days, but eventually decided to take matters into her own hands. So when Emily was crying, she pushed him out of bed to make her point. She had become a dueling dictator.
Of course, the dueling dictatorship strategy didn’t solve the problem for them. Instead, it triggered a fight. Each had their own perspective of how the conflict should be resolved and tried to force it on the other. When his demand was not met, Tony told Jodi that she was not being a good wife and mother by refusing to get up each time Emily cried at night. Jodi in turn told Tony that he was being selfish in assuming that she should be the only parent caring for their children.
The name-calling escalated to such a point that they were both screaming obscenities at each other, which woke up Robbie. Now both of their children were crying and the parents couldn’t even hear it over their own voices.
That fight became a turning point in their marriage, at least for Jodi. She came to the conclusion that arguing was pointless because it didn’t solve anything. So she did what she thought would be the wisest alternative: make some decisions as if Tony didn’t exist.
Regarding the conflict at hand, Jodi decided that she would take care of the children when they cried at night, not because Tony told her to do it but because he wouldn’t do it and she wanted them to be comforted. However, the next time he wanted something from her, he would discover that he’d be on his own.
Jodi began using the anarchy strategy for resolving conflicts: she did whatever she pleased.
At first, Tony was happy that Jodi let him sleep at night. He knew that she was upset with him and had become emotionally distant, but he had important business to transact and didn’t have time to think about Jodi’s issues.
But as the days and weeks followed, Jodi’s independence became increasingly upsetting to Tony. She lived her life without letting him know what she was doing or where she was going. Some evenings, after he arrived home, she would get in the car and drive off, returning after midnight. When he wanted to know where she was, she said it was none of his business.
Tony tried to fight with Jodi when she would just take off, but she wouldn’t fight back. She had her own car, her own checking account, and her own cell phone. She wouldn’t discuss any issue with him, including why she refused to make love. He eventually decided that, to avoid a divorce, he should adopt the same approach: he would do whatever he pleased. Now they were both using the anarchy strategy to solve their problems and were headed down a dangerous path.
So what should they have done instead? That’s what we’re about to find out.
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*Michael Gurian, “The Science of a Happy Marriage,” Reader’s Digest, August 2004, 151–55.
4
Keeping Romantic Love in Mind
So far, I’ve focused attention on one of the reasons that win-lose outcomes in marital negotiation are terribly flawed: in today’s marriages they simply don’t get the job done. They usually don’t resolve the conflict. Whoever is on the losing end doesn’t usually accept the result. They either fight to gain the upper hand at a later time or they go it alone, taking matters into their own hands. In either cas
e, the problem persists.
While it’s true that Jodi did get up with Emily after their fight, and continued to do so during the following weeks, the issue was not settled. The “solution” and the way it was decided caused her to feel deep resentment toward Tony every time she thought about it.
The bitter feeling that she harbored led to another reason that win-lose outcomes are terribly flawed: they destroy romantic love in marriage. I’ll explain why that happens by introducing you to a metaphor that I’ve created to help couples understand why everything they do and every decision they make affects their love for each other. I call it the Love Bank.
The Love Bank Never Closes
There is a Love Bank inside each one of us. Our emotions use it to keep track of the way people treat us. Every person we’ve ever known has an account in our Love Bank and their balances are determined by how we feel when we are with them. If someone makes us feel good, “love units” are deposited into their account. But if we feel bad around this person, love units are withdrawn. The better we feel the more love units are deposited. The worse we feel the more are withdrawn.
Our emotions use the balance in each person’s Love Bank account to advise us as to whether or not that person should be a part of our life. And they do so by making that person attractive or repulsive to us. When someone has a positive Love Bank balance—more deposits than withdrawals—our emotions encourage us to spend time with that person by making us “like” him or her. But when someone has a negative balance—more withdrawals than deposits—our emotions encourage us to run for cover by causing us to “dislike” that person.
The larger the positive balance in someone’s Love Bank account, the more attracted we are to that person. For example, if two hundred love units accumulate, we feel pretty good about someone; if five hundred love units accumulate, we may consider that person to be one of our best friends.
But something special happens when the Love Bank balance of someone of the opposite sex reaches a critical threshold of, say, one thousand love units. Our emotions give us an extra incentive to spend as much time as possible with that person—even for the rest of our lives. It’s the feeling of incredible attraction that we call romantic love.
Of course, negative balances have the opposite effect. Just like a checking account, a Love Bank account can be in the red when love units continue to be withdrawn after none are left. If someone at work has a Love Bank balance of negative two hundred because of his annoying habits, our emotions will make us feel uncomfortable whenever he’s around, even when he’s not doing anything that’s annoying. And someone with a Love Bank balance of negative five hundred will seem downright repulsive. Our emotions want us to avoid those who make us feel badly, and they do it by making that person seem unattractive to us.
But when someone has a very large negative balance, say, negative one thousand love units, our emotions go to very great lengths to encourage us to avoid all contact. That’s when we end up “hating” that person. It happens automatically if someone’s balance in our Love Bank dips to that critical low point.
We don’t end up reaching that hate threshold with most people because we stop having contact with them long before their Love Bank balance falls that far. If you work with a very rude and inconsiderate person, you can request another office and simply avoid contact as much as possible. Even if it’s your next-door neighbor, you can try to ignore that person, or even move if necessary. It’s possible to escape from just about everyone who upsets you, thus putting an end to Love Bank withdrawals.
But in marriage, escape isn’t so easy. Day after day, week after week, month after month, if you’re forced to be with a spouse who keeps making Love Bank withdrawals, you eventually feel so repulsed that divorce seems to be the only way out. What once was the feeling of romantic love when Love Bank balances were overflowing has become the feeling of deep and persistent revulsion. And it’s all due to an extremely important reality in marriage: just about everything that you and your spouse do affects the way you feel about each other. What you do either builds your love for each other or it destroys that love.
One bad experience won’t ruin a couple’s love for each other, of course. But the way couples make decisions, and the decisions themselves, can certainly do the job if win-lose outcomes are the norm.
The argument about who should get up to quiet Emily down made massive Love Bank withdrawals from both Tony’s and Jodi’s accounts, and the decision itself made more withdrawals from Tony’s account in Jodi’s Love Bank every time it was implemented. But that conflict was not an isolated incident. The same thing happened when other conflicts were confronted. Just two days earlier, Tony had come home from work ahead of Jodi and started playing a video game. When she arrived after picking up the children from daycare, he continued playing the game, which upset Jodi.
“Why are you playing a video game when you know that the children are hungry? Why didn’t you start dinner?” she shouted. “What kind of a father are you?”
Tony lashed back. “At least I came home on time. What were you doing that was so important?”
It’s not that the issue of who-should-do-what after coming home from work hadn’t been discussed before. Tony and Jodi had fought over that issue almost every week. But they had not come to an agreement. Tony wanted Jodi to be fully responsible for the children’s meals, and Jodi wanted Tony to help her. But they had not reached an agreement. So Tony did what he thought was right: play video games to help him relax after a hard day’s work.
Most women reading this illustration can understand Jodi’s frustration with Tony. They may have experienced something very similar when their children were young. And they would agree with the main point I’m making in this chapter: failure to resolve conflicts to the satisfaction of both spouses can destroy the love spouses have for each other.
The decisions Tony made benefitted him at Jodi’s expense. By associating him with the resentment those decisions caused, massive withdrawals were made from his account in her Love Bank. What once had been a feeling of incredible attraction turned into repulsion because they failed to find win-win outcomes to this and other common conflicts.
Win-Lose Outcomes Had Been the Norm
During the time that they dated and even in the first few years of marriage, conflicts between Tony and Jodi had been very rare because their lives had been relatively simple. But when a conflict did arise, they tended to respond sacrificially. They did whatever it took to make each other happy, even when it wasn’t in their own interest to do so. They had been eager to help each other without having to be asked because they were in love. They both tried to do what the other seemed to expect of them, and they avoided anything that might be disappointing. They went out of their way to demonstrate the care that they felt toward each other.
But after their first child arrived and their responsibilities grew exponentially, life had become more stressful for both of them. They depended more on each other to pick up the slack, but they had not learned how to ask each other for help. At some point between their first and second child, they both felt that their care was a one-way street. They both felt that they were giving far more than they were getting. So instead of giving sacrificially to each other, they started to take selfishly from each other.
We’ve already discussed some of the problems inherent in sacrificial giving: a lack of openness, an unsustainable precedent, an expectation of sacrifice in return, and an ever-increasing resentment when expectations are not fulfilled. But there’s yet another problem. It can destroy romantic love.
You’d think that giving sacrificially in marriage would actually build romantic love. And it can seem that way if a couple’s conflicts are few and simple, like they were when Tony and Jodi were dating. But when life gets complicated, especially after children arrive, it’s more obvious that sacrifice is a failed strategy because it doesn’t lead to win-win outcomes. And win-lose outcomes do not resolve a conflict.
As pr
oblems came crashing down on Tony and Jodi like ocean waves, unrelenting and daunting, they needed to know how to deal with them quickly and correctly. But because they had failed to learn those lessons, they were unprepared for the inevitable.
Those who feel that romantic love is fleeting in marriage and can be expected to survive only during the earliest years of the relationship should spend some time with couples who have experienced a lifetime of romantic love. What are these couples doing that makes their marriages so romantic? Is it their personalities? Have they found their perfect match and are unusually compatible? Do they have a high level of commitment to each other?
Or is it that they have learned how to resolve conflicts in a way that maintains their love with each other?
I call what Joyce and I have had for fifty years of marriage extraordinary care. We don’t use the most common conflict-resolution strategies in marriage—those that pit one spouse against the other, leading to disillusionment and a power struggle. Instead, we find solutions that build partnership and trust. We search for win-win outcomes whenever we have a conflict.
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This metaphor of the Love Bank can help you understand what it will take for you to be in love with each other throughout life: make as many deposits as possible and avoid making withdrawals. Keep your Love Bank balance well above one thousand. I wrote His Needs, Her Needs to help couples learn how to make very large Love Bank deposits by meeting each other’s most basic emotional needs. And then I wrote Love Busters to help couples avoid common habits that lead to Love Bank withdrawals. I’ve also created two questionnaires—the Emotional Needs Questionnaire (appendix B) and the Love Busters Questionnaire (appendix C)—that will help you identify your most important emotional needs and the most damaging habits that may be eroding your love for each other. You may copy them in an enlarged format so you will have plenty of space to write your answers. They may also be downloaded free of charge from the questionnaires section of the Marriage Builders website (www.MarriageBuilders.com).
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