When Oli and I met each other six years ago, we started working together on a year-long music project. Once we started dating, we opened a yoga studio together in Chicago. Then we moved across the country to become landowners in San Diego county. We’ve remodeled bathrooms, built outdoor living spaces, and managed crews of workers. We’ve helped each other with career goals, acquire new certifications and develop new skills. We’re there together in the kitchen, with the chores and on the land. And when it comes to our current business, we work together on our strategy, execution and planning. Basically, we are two peas in a pod and work together on almost everything.
Working together as a couple can be deeply fulfilling, but it can also bring its fair share of problems. In fact, we’ve encountered pretty much every complaint in the book when it comes to working closely with a loved one, complaints such as the other person:
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Not doing their fair share
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Not listening to ideas from others (and making hasty decisions)
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Not asking for help when needed
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Bossing the other person around
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Misunderstanding and getting upset
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Not looping the other person into important details
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Not communicating competing priorities (I need some food, I want to do something else right now, etc.)
We’ve come to expect the normal hums and hahs, the glitches in our personalities that makes it sometimes difficult to work with one or both of us. It can be challenging to divide up who does what, who’s taking the lead, how we present and listen to new ideas, how we make decisions and execute on them, and how we respond to each other when the other person is clearly under stress.
At the same time, there’s something absolutely wonderful about working on projects together. No matter what project it is, there is sure to be stringent circumstances--unknown unknowns that require solutions, skills and perspective to solve. Learning how to support each other under pressure is hard work, but it actually helps us become more resilient, smarter and more intimate because it requires us to change how we participate in our share.
And because I love Oli dearly and want to continue doing projects with him for as long as I can, it’s in my best interest to resolve the complicated nature of working together to the best of my abilities. In every moment I can. And the kicker is, whatever my plans are for making our working relationship actually, well, work, mustn’t require him to change. (Likewise, whatever his plans are for making our working relationship work mustn’t require me to change.)
If I want a better working relationship with my loved one, it’s incumbent upon me to look at how I’m communicating, which is no small task. Communication is tricky by nature. It requires us to translate our experience from a cluster of thoughts, sensations and perceptions, into language and behavior. We are bound to get it wrong sometimes. And the people listening to us are bound to get it wrong too, since they are hearing us through the filter of their own experience, and don’t always understand us in the ways in which we intend. All of this goes vice versa, inside out and upside down.
After working on multiple projects together, I have a vested interest in learning how to work together as a couple. We’ve made great improvements over the years, and all of it has to do with how we speak and listen to each other during our crucial conversations.
Speaking
There is sometimes a moment on a project where the atmosphere takes a sharp turn from having casual fun to having a high-stakes crucial conversation. This shift in atmosphere is an immediate red flag to me to stop what I’m doing and notice how I’m communicating. Instead of pointing my finger at someone or something else, it’s time to consider my contribution to what’s happening. Not to examine my contribution to the past (even the recent past, like two minutes ago when I said something ridiculous), but to consider how I’m communicating right now. When this happens, I often use a short list of questions to filter through my thoughts, sensations and perceptions and learn what’s actually important to me in that moment:
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What do I want Oli to understand?
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Is he understanding me the way I intend?
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What’s the big takeaway from my point of view?
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Am I talking about the right problem? (Or am I talking about a tangential problem, an undefined problem, or offering a premature solution before determining what the problem actually is?)
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Am I operating under false assumptions of how things work?
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What needs of mine are not being met by this situation?
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Knowing what I know about his triggers, how do I want to present my point of view to improve the likelihood that he will understand me the way I intend?
Before speaking to my loved one, I want to consider what I actually want him to understand. And I definitely don’t want to speak until I’ve listened to him as well.
Listening
In order to listen effectively to someone, we need to become interested in understanding what they’re going through rather than what they’re saying. After all, communication is tricky--especially when we’re upset--and what we say often does not match our experience entirely.
Most of the time, Oli and I find that what we’re actually really looking for in our discontent is understanding from the other person, as opposed to solutions or other plans of action. In fact, it is the mechanism of mutual understanding that unites us in the end and helps us learn differently for next time.
Listening is one of our most powerful tools, but it’s often not very easy to do. Becoming a better listener is like becoming a better warrior. It requires us to remain open to attack and not run away in the opposite direction. It puts us in a position to hear things that we maybe don’t like hearing, and keeps us from retaliating at the level of throwing accusations. It enables us to stand our ground for the greater good of the project and relationship, and to be always working towards camaraderie, even when the other player is throwing proverbial daggers. Listening is what enables us to accurately identify the problem, so that we aren’t wasting our valuable time arguing over something irrelevant. It forces us to recognize that perhaps our current interpretation of the situation is not an accurate representation of what’s going on. Learning how to listen is like the phoenix learning to rise up from its ashes.
And because we’re human, we won’t be great listeners all of the time. The moment I notice a conversation going south, I’m alerted to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I’ve contributed to the mess by failing to listen for what he’s going through. My next step is to listen in a new way to what he’s saying:
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What is he experiencing, and could it be different than what he’s communicating?
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What does he want me to understand or take away from his message?
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What problem is he pointing to, and is it well defined?
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What does he want right now and how can I respect that?
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What needs of his are not being met, and do we have the right strategies in place to meet those needs?
When I’m able to digest his language through the prism of these questions, a fuller picture of his experience starts to form for me. Although there may still be confusion and I may need to ask follow up questions He becomes more 3-dimensional to me, and I no longer feel separate from him. We’re back on the same team, even if we’re still hurting.
Principles at Work
Let’s put this to work in an example.
Let’s say we are working on our bathroom remodel and I’ve just noticed that conversation turn unproductive--the atmosphere is careful, I’m experiencing anxiety and I’m hearing a tone shift in his voice. It clicks with me that we have now entered crucial conversation zone and I must tread carefully if I want to rejoin the team. The first thought that goes through my mind is, “This always happens, I can’t believe I just walked in here and asked a simple question and now he’s fuming. How does he expect me to enjoy working with him if he’s this easily triggered?” Instead of letting that thought come out of my mouth verbatim (which, trust me, has happened on more than one occasion), I am likely to reunite the team more quickly if I take a different approach.
Before I speak, I need to listen, because I want whatever comes out of my mouth next to more accurately reflect what’s going on in the situation. I don’t want to force my interpretation of the situation on him as if I have the full picture of what’s going on.
What is he experiencing, and could it be different than what he’s communicating? When I’m only interested in what he’s communicating, I may be satisfied with calling him a jerk and moving onto something else until we both cool down. But when I look at what he’s experiencing, I may see a totally different story. Maybe he’s in the middle of thinking through a challenge, doing four things at once, and my question put him over the edge of what he’s able to pay attention to. If I can’t easily discern what he’s going through, I can ask follow up questions in order to better understand. (Truth be told, sometimes this also blows up in my face, but when my focus is on listening, it’s surprising how resilient I can be!)
Having a more accurate picture of what he’s going through may be all that’s needed to reunite the fearless twosome, but if it isn’t and I’m still feeling unresolved, it’s my turn to try sharing what I’m going through.
What do I want him to understand? Is he understanding me the way I intend? Are we talking about the right problem? How can I express my point of view to improve the likelihood that he will understand me the way I intend?
Before I speak, I want to give myself a moment to rethink and rephrase my experience into something that is useful for him. I don’t want to create more pain by throwing a poorly developed thought in his face. Is it his tone of voice that’s the most upsetting to me? Is it that I want my participation in the project appreciated and acknowledged? Or maybe, I just want a mechanism for not taking his tone of voice personally in these kinds of situations so we can skate through them next time without a hiccup.
If I go to speak and realize that he’s not ready to listen, it tells me that he still needs to be listened to. It can be tough to work up the empathy required to back off my own words and offer him more listening support, but if my purpose is really to unite us as a team, then that’s what needs to happen.
When things go south when we’re working together on projects, the most important priority is to get back on the same team. As long as my head is screwed on in that direction, we are bound to find a resolution that brings us closer together. I hope these tips work for you and help improve your working relationship with your loved one.
Now, back to work!
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