The Need to Be Right in Relationships

Part of the series Romance & Relationships: Boundaries, Vulnerability, Conflict, Repair, Cherishing.
Vulnerability in Romance · Establishing Boundaries · Ending the Endless Fighting · Repair in Relationships · Cherishing: More Than Roses
→ Also see the Repair Workshop · Cherishing Workshop

Relationships can be challenging, especially when disagreements arise. Some couples find it very hard to escape the loop of fighting and bickering. A common scenario many of us have experienced is the heated debate with a partner about who is right and who is wrong. This struggle, however, as Terry Real, the founder of Relational Life Therapy (RLT), points out, is often a “losing strategy.”

In the realm of RLT, relationships are not about winning or losing, not about who’s right or wrong. They’re about understanding, respect, and connection. When we’re so focused on being right, we often forget to listen. And that’s where the relationship tends to suffer.

Bickering: The Battle About Right and Wrong

Arguments about “wrong” and “right” are a losing strategy because set us up against each other; a conversation becomes a battleground over who has ‘the best facts’, and why the arguments of the other are inferior to one’s own arguments. Winning the battle becomes more important than seeking connection, so often arguments lose their purity. Stories get twisted, circumstances forgotten, voices get raised, and hearts start pumping more intensely. The entire body responds as if our lives and/or our perceptions of ourselves are under an existential threat. We feel attacked, so we fight back.

It’s comparable to that famous front line during the First World War at the Somme: opposing sides lobbing grenades at each other for months and months, with neither side winning an inch of terrain, and at a very high cost. Lobbing grenades into the trench of the other of the other can – at best – lead to a Pyrrhus victory. Your partner is exhausted, ground to dust, gives up or gives in and you might, for a second or a day or even longer, feel victorious. Yet, trust me, there will be a price to pay.

No one likes feeling cowed into submission, no one likes feeling a loser, no one feels closer to anyone after they feel beaten down or run down, ignored and misunderstood. Unseen, unheard, invalidated.

The Murky Waters of Relationship

One of the most difficult concepts for me to introduce to couples who often bicker is the possibility that “there is no objective truth in romantic relationships”; there are only perspectives, experiences, assumptions, interpretations and echos of old wounding. All of those muddy the waters when we’re discussing topics of importance. This is the kind of stuck loop I often see in couples counselling in Switzerland — two people locked in battle over who is right, when the deeper work is learning how to see and hear each other.

And while we’re arguing and debating who’s the sole keeper of truth, we feel stuck in the Matrix, running on code most often written decades ago.

Sure, there are many domains in life where “wrong” and “right” are of the utmost importance: a court of law, for example, or the entire domain of science. When working your way down a shopping list, or when doing your taxes. Having knowledge and understanding of facts is necessary to navigate life and to make decisions all the way from the international political level down to setting household budgets

Like many others, I, too, am very suspicious of the trend of late among many to question established facts. ‘Fake news’ has done a great deal of damage to the cohesion of societies and has led to a nasty polarisation in many countries. Denial of scientific facts is putting the welfare of future generations at risk, in unacceptable manners.

And, indeed, there are hard truths out there: the world is a globe and not flat, corona is and was a virus that killed tens of thousands of people.

Escape the Couples Fights: Seeing the Other

Yet, when we seek to navigate the intricacies of romance and the differences between two intimate individuals, there are extra layers on top of naked facts and statistics. None of us go into romance a tabula rasa; we have numerous sensitivities and biases. Because those are such an integral part of who we all individual are, they are like the water and the fish – they don’t realise they’re swimming in water.

Consider a disagreement with your partner, where you’re convinced that you’re right. You have facts, logic, everything on your side. But in your pursuit of being right, you might end up invalidating your partner’s experience, their perspective, their understanding of a situation. You might dismiss their perspective. This is where wanting to be right becomes a problem.

Other than the truth of your arguments, there is also the truth of theirs. There is the truth of their experience, their perspective. There is the logic of their reasoning. There are the stories they tell themselves about themselves, and the relationships they experience with you.

Staying stuck on “wrong” and “right” distracts from all those other truths – as real as the facts and the arguments you are using to bury the other.

The deepest purpose of relationship is to be seen, to be heard, to be witnessed, to be understood, to ‘get’ the other and for the other to ‘get’ you – beyond the bickering about details.

Doing ‘right’ right

Being right in a relationship doesn’t mean having all the answers. It means being open to the possibility that you might be wrong. It means valuing your partner’s feelings and perspectives as much as your own. It means fostering a relationship where both of you feel heard and respected.

Brené Brown has an approach to truth and empathy and relationship that I continue to integrate into my own professional and personal life.

We need to dispel the myth that empathy is ‘walking in someone else’s shoes.’ Rather than walking in your shoes, I need to learn how to listen to the story you tell about what it’s like in your shoes and believe you even when it doesn’t match my experiences.
Brené Brown

If you want to do relationship right, you might have to learn to understand that two opposing truths can and must coexist together. In romance, there is no competition of truths like there might be in science or politics. Both of you are different people, you can from different backgrounds, you have experienced life differently, your biases and sensitivities are different.

Terry Real encapsulates this idea when he says, “The goal of a fight is not to win. It is to hold the relationship together.” So, the next time you find yourself in a disagreement, ask yourself – is being right more important than being kind? Is being right worth damaging your relationship?

Part of the series Romance & Relationships: Boundaries, Vulnerability, Conflict, Repair, Cherishing.
Vulnerability in Romance · Establishing Boundaries · Ending the Endless Fighting · Repair in Relationships · Cherishing: More Than Roses
→ Also see the Repair Workshop · Cherishing Workshop