Have you ever had an argument with your significant other where you found yourselves going in circles, stuck in blame and defensiveness and getting absolutely nowhere? Did it astonish you just how incapable your partner seemed to be at understanding how they hurt you, given how simple it should have been to get it? Did you feel blamed for something that seemed to be a misunderstanding, yet no amount of clarification would get them to withdraw their accusation? Have you noticed a pattern in yourself or your partner where the same hurt seems to keep happening again and again?

Intimate relationship is often said to be the ground zero where our opportunities for personal growth will show up, whatever they are, whether you like it or not. Whether you believe that we attract the perfect partner who will trigger us, or that we unconsciously polarize in response to each others’ imbalances and start triggering each other, almost everyone who has experienced long term relationship can agree that somehow, our romantic partners seem to have a way of pushing our buttons like no other relationship can.

I first heard about this tool from a relationship coach who is a dear friend of mine, Taina Ketola. It is intended to be used by both partners intentionally, who have committed to follow it as best they can whenever a conflict arises. What I love about this tool is that it combines many other skills that are often taught separately into one process that puts them all together: leading with relief, sharing impact, mindfulness, linguistic reconstruction of emotions, validation, and shadow work.

Mindful Conflict Resolution Tool

Step 1: Are you centered and able to speak from a mature place in yourself right now? If not, do whatever works to bring yourself back to that place. Meditate, go for a run, journal it out, or just let go and come back to this later. If yes, proceed to step 2.

Step 2: Make a request of your partner to use this tool. For example: “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about and I’m wondering if we can use the Mindful Conflict Resolution Tool. Is now a good time? If not, when?” Proceed to step 3 once your partner is onboard.

Step 3: Explain the situation from a centered and mature perspective, only the facts (assertions) of what happened without any interpretations. 

Step 4: Now share how it was that you interpreted the situation, starting with “The story I made up in my head about that was…” Share your interpretations (assessments) while owning that they are yours. 

Step 5: Share your emotions along the lines of “and what I felt was…” Keep it to emotions like “I felt angry” or “I felt lonely” rather than “I felt disrespected” or “I felt unseen” which blur emotion with story and avoid being vulnerable.

Step 6: Partner reflects back what they heard in steps 3-5, validating how it makes sense. 

Step 7: Partner asks “Have I understood correctly? If not, what did I miss?”. Additionally, they may have specific questions to understand more deeply. Elaborate as necessary to help your partner understand and then go back to step 6. Or if they have adequately understood, proceed to step 8.

Step 8: If appropriate, partner may share their own interpretation of the situation, owning that it is only their interpretation. The intent here is not to argue over which interpretation is the correct one but to respect both interpretations and bring curiosity to discovering together what happened. Complete this step with a respectful “I see how we interpreted the situation differently”.

Step 9:Partner inquires “When is the first time you recall experiencing these emotions?”

Step 10: Describe your earliest memory of feeling this way.

Step 11: Partner asks “What do you wish would have happened instead in that situation?”

Step 12: Describe what you wish happened differently with your earliest memory.

Step 13: Partner offers whatever empathy and compassion arises naturally. This can be verbal or non-verbal. A loving touch. Allowing tears to come. Or “I’m so sorry you had to go through that experience. Thank you for sharing it with me.”

Step 14: If you need to request a behavior change, say “I would like to make a request…” and give two or three different options for how your partner could change their behavior to address the underlying need.

Step 15: Partner chooses one of the three options or suggests other ideas. A mutual resolution is agreed to.

Tips:

• As the initiator of this tool, you are taking ownership. Your concern and your emotions are your own responsibility.
• Maintain eye contact and do this when other distractions won’t interfere with your quality of attentiveness.
• Don’t oppose or argue against anything each other says. Instead, practice accepting that we are all going to have our own unique interpretations. Can that be okay?
• If you notice the other person straying from the process, gently request coming back to it with “I want to address what you’re getting at in the most helpful way. Can we return to the process and see where that fits into the picture if we follow the steps?”
• If you catch yourself going in the direction of blame, practice seeing this as a clue that you aren’t fully owning your story as yours.
• If you catch yourself going in the direction of defensiveness, practice seeing this as a clue that you have forgotten their story and process belongs to them.
• If there are two competing concerns, then tackle one person’s concern at a time, to completion, before bringing the other person’s concern into focus and starting again at step 1.
• If the conversation turns south and you detect that you or your partner are off center and no longer able to speak from an adult place, request a pause and propose a time to resume.
• Steps 4 and 5 exercise the same skill that is practiced in traditional mindful awareness meditation, noticing your thoughts and emotions and naming them without automatically believing them and rushing to act upon them. Even if you still think and feel these things now, communicating them using past tense can help in cultivating a willingness to let them go, leaving open the possibility that thinking or feeling something different may now be possible.
• Remember that all emotions are valid even if they’re partially based on a subjective story we made up in our heads. Fully hearing out and validating another person’s emotions doesn’t require that we agree with their story or even the facts. It just requires our willingness to listen closely and try to understand how they have made meaning of the situation.
• Remember that it’s how we express our emotions that largely determines whether we get what we are really longing for, which is usually to be seen and understood. We don’t just want people to take the blame and obey our command, do we? What we really want is usually deep understanding and inclusion, or healing of the deeper wounds.
• When sharing your earliest memory and what you wish happened instead, the aim is for this to be held with great care and respect for the real experience that it was and the opportunity for healing that exists now. It both legitimizes the roots of the emotional thread and at the same time, relieves the other person of any undue responsibility for what they may have triggered.
• It may be paradoxically true that your emotion is rooted in wounds from the past which are making the situation look horrific to you, and at the same time, your partner really did cross a boundary that needs to be set. Question any either-or thinking and be willing to hold that it might be both-and. You can own how you might be over-reacting because of your own history and at the same time, you can still request a behavior change.
• You are allowed to say no to a specific behavior change that is requested, but be willing to negotiate with a counter offer.
• It should be extremely rare that ending the relationship is put on the table as one of the options. There’s a place for this, but only after everything else has been sincerely considered. Mentioning this can throw your partner off center and undermine the process. If you find yourself mentioning it, chances are you are probably off center yourself.
• Try to remember that vulnerability is your ally. Allowing yourself to be seen in your vulnerability and not-knowing is a prerequisite to receiving what you really long for.
• Give yourselves permission to be imperfect as you are learning to use this tool. It’s not always easy! If it feels difficult, that’s probably a good sign that you are meeting your growth edge.