May 19

May 19 Negotiation in relationships

I was inspired to share these musings on the subject of negotiation in relationships by a typically thought-provoking blog from Eleanor Mills, former Editor of the Sunday Times Magazine, now founder and Editor in Chief of the website Noon, which celebrates and inspires midlife women (if you haven’t discovered it yet, do go and have a look).

In her blog, Eleanor talks about being at a debate about marriage and the ways it has changed over the centuries, and how one part of the discussion focused on the need for all relationships, marriage included, to be renegotiated regularly. The suggestion was that this consultation between couples should happen annually.

Eleanor quotes one of the panel members, a couples therapist, who challenged the audience with this: “How is it that we kick off in our relationships with that jittery feeling of love and rainbows, our significant other rocks our worlds, we’ll do anything for them. And then we get married to them and a decade or so later they are the person for whom we make the least effort? They’re the one who gets the knackered, grumpy, in your tracksuit and passing out version of you…never the shiny excited one?”

I don’t know about you, but that rang an awful lot of less-than-comfortable bells.

Two very different relationships

I met my husband when I was a teenager, and we were together for 35 years (we married four years in and had two children, five and seven years after that) before we separated. And I’ve been with my current partner for nearly 10 years, during which time we have never lived together. So I’ve had two quite different relationship experiences in my life.

But they both share an uncomfortable, though I’m pretty confident, especially bearing in mind the therapist’s question, far from unique, similarity. That slow shift from presenting the best version of yourself - physically, intellectually and emotionally - to your partner (oh the hours of preparation and preening that went into getting ready for every thrilling rendezvous in those early days) to the collapsed on the sofa, whose-turn-is-it-to-make-dinner, slightly (and sometimes slightly more than slightly) grouchy one.

Lord knows, it would be far too exhausting to keep up the fully shiny, early stage, version. And an unhelpfully unrealistic representation of your fully real self. Both of which would be pretty rickety foundations for a relationship. What is it they say? That you never really know someone until they get comfortable with you. And by comfortable I take that to mean, completely at ease to be their/your true and honest self. Plentiful warts and all.

There isn’t, though, any doubt that I paid more attention to my husband and the maintenance of our relationship in its early months and years. Or that, as time went on, that focus became distracted by, well…life, with all its busyness and challenges. And that was unquestionably a contributing factor to our eventual separation.

Making the same mistake again

And yet, in spite of vowing not to make the same mistake second time around, I can see I have slipped into a regrettably similar pattern. Too often I put my partner at the bottom of my to do list and/or take out on him the frustrations of my day (I should say - and not by way of defence - this works both ways).

The difference is that this time, not only do I recognise better that that’s what’s happening, but that I’m trying, not always successfully I admit, to be better at doing something about it. And that something, I realise after reading Eleanor’s blog, is my clumsy version of negotiation.

The therapist Eleanor quoted talked about the importance of valuing your partner (easy to forget to do. Again both ways), being aware of what the deal breakers are in your relationship and how those can get ground down over the years and gradually grow into damaging resentments.

Negotiation is one of the key things that can help stop that resentment taking root.

First and foremost, a negotiation is a conversation. So being willing, and able, to articulate and discuss, in a reasoned and reasonable way, the things that are gnawing away at you, is an important step. It’s one that I’ve historically struggled with. A wise person once said to me about my relationship with my husband - “you’re brilliant at talking about everything except what matters.” Sadly she was absolutely right.

So as difficult as I sometimes find it (especially when it comes to maintaining an emotional even-keel) I do attempt to head off any potentially corrosive irritations and disappointments, by talking about how I’m feeling, listening to his reaction and responses, and trying to figure out a way we can navigate through them together.

And in the spirit of the negotiation working both ways, I’m trying to encourage him to do the same. I’d say that’s still a work in progress…..

The languages of love

In his best-seller The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman writes about the five different ways people express and display their love. (Should you be interested, they’re Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving/Giving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch) . Reading the book was something of a lightbulb moment for me and I try to stay mindful of the fact that my partner’s love languages are rooted in gift giving and acts of service, whereas mine are firmly pinned to words of affirmation and physical touch.

Understanding that how he shows his affection and how much he values me is quite different from the way I do, has gong a long way to helping me fully appreciate all the wonderful, generous, thoughtful things he does for me, without pining for the love expressions that simply aren’t in his emotional vocabulary.

And that helps with the negotiation and the frequency I feel the need to enter into it.