If you have a burglar alarm, the first thing you do when you get home is turn it off. So the first thing you have to do to make constructive use of conflict is disregard your alliance alarm. Yes, you have one. It goes off when there is a perceived break in an alliance.
You see, you and your partner, as human beings, are social creatures. You’re really not that good on your own and you know it, so you form alliances that enable you to accomplish things together that you couldn’t accomplish alone. Each alliance is so crucial that you constantly monitor its health. You keep vigilant because you know that if your ally turns against you, you’re screwed. When you think you see something that indicates a break in the alliance, you grow alarmed. The things you do then to try to correct it or protect yourself create all kinds of trouble.
Basically, both you and your partner are constantly asking a single, basic, paramount, provocative question: Are you there for me?
Then you act fast on whatever you think the answer is.
It’s a question that lies at the heart of every relationship. Why would you want to be in a relationship with someone who wasn’t there for you? It’s often the only reason you’re in a relationship — to know that someone has your back; someone is at your side; someone has got you covered; you can stand on someone’s promises; you are protected by someone.
This need is primitive and primal. It is baked in your bones. It’s instinctual, seen in the youngest babies, who would not survive more than a day without someone taking care of them. It’s a need you don’t outgrow just because you put on your big-boy pants.
You may think you’re independent and self-reliant, but maybe the only reason you feel this way is because you are secure in your attachments. You know that people are there for you, so you can afford to be independent.
It’s so second nature that you monitor alliances without ever thinking about it. You do it constantly, with everyone, but particularly with the people you are the most connected to, with whom you have the most important unions. You know to the split second when there’s a broken connection, but you don’t know why there’s a break, or how much of a break it is, or what part you played in creating it. You’re not a mind reader after all.
You also don’t know how to talk about it. No one can explain what they do unconsciously or automatically. Try to explain the process of walking.
It’s also really hard to call someone out on a perceived alliance break without sounding hypercritical, clingy, or paranoid. If you come across in one of these ways, you create your own break. If you’re like most people, in an effort to avoid that scenario, you choose to withdraw emotionally, pretending that you don’t need anyone. There’s a break that your partner is bound to perceive, making the whole thing go around, and causing a shit storm of perceived abandonment.
Chances are, every fight you’ve ever had with your partner was really a protest about emotional disconnection.
Your alliance alarm is going off when you complain that she doesn’t put the toilet seat up. It’s not the toilet seat itself that bothers you; it’s the fact that she doesn’t listen. Your alliance alarm is going off when he says, no, he doesn’t want to have sex. It’s not the lack of sex, itself, that alarms you, it’s the fact that he won’t engage. The alarm is going off when he works too much, when she won’t tell you where she’s been, when she pays more attention to her phone than you, and when he cranes his neck to watch football when you’ve stepped into the TV room to tell him something important. It’s also going off in your partner’s head when you complain of those violations. Don’t you understand his commitments, trust her, want her to have other interests, admire his passions?
Your alliance alarm will go off when you try to address your conflicts. Disregard it. Notice I didn’t say to turn off the alarm. You can’t turn off the alliance alarm. But think of it this way: when you’re cooking and the smoke alarm goes off, you don’t run out of the house in your underwear; you just turn down the stove.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
—
Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com