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Motivation
Conflict Resolution in Couples: Irrational Goals
Some marital goals are intrinsically unachievable.
Posted May 14, 2020
I blogged about TRIP goals and principled negotiation here. TRIP stands for various goals operating in a conflict: Topic Goals are the real-world outcomes in play; Relational Goals apply to the kind of relationship those in conflict want to have with each other; Identity Goals have to do with saving and losing face; Process Goals involved preferred methods of addressing the conflict.
Couples also have conflicts around goals they can’t advocate for because the goals are intrinsically unachievable or just exorbitant. For these types of irrational goals, a different approach to conflict resolution is needed. In TRIP terms, the conflicts often feel as if they center on topic goals, but the primary emphasis must be on relational, identity, and process goals.
One kind of irrational goal that can erode a romantic partnership and ought to be addressed, if at all possible, is the kind that is impossible to achieve because it conflicts with another goal held by the same person (as opposed to the usual conflict situation, where our goals conflict with our partners’ goals).
There may be incompatible goals about one’s partner. It is not uncommon to wish that your partner were reliable and spontaneous. While a certain degree of both can be desired, it’s not possible for someone to possess both traits in extreme proportions. Your partner cannot be both a perfect shield against infection and, at the same time, a relaxed roommate. You can’t marry Monica and Phoebe, Chandler and Joey. But you may want to have done so.
Similarly, you might want your partner to have the mind of someone your age and the body of someone much younger. It can’t happen, no matter how much they work out and no matter how much one proclaims that the other has an “old soul.”
Few people are perfectly satisfied with their partner’s level of assertiveness. Nearly everyone wants their partner to be assertive at work and compliant at home—that is, firm with respect to others and yielding with respect to oneself. Acknowledging one’s own goal of controlling your partner makes you sound like a martinet, which then makes the goal impossible to achieve because you presumably also have a goal of being a reasonable person.
Some goals conflict with identity goals (the ways you want to be seen). One partner’s perfectionism may require a sense of superiority toward the other partner. For example, you may get in a huff when the dryer is filled with bits of tissue because your partner didn’t check her pockets before putting her pants in the hamper. You could have checked them yourself, but you didn’t. Either you are perfect at your chore and your partner is a disappointment, or you are not perfect at your chore.
This conflict over who the screw-up usually dwindles down to the partner. (When it looks otherwise, it’s usually because the self-identified screw-up has defined a different, sacrificial sort of perfectibility.) You may want your partner to be avidly engaged with hobbies, vocations, and friends while treating you as if you are the center of the universe. Acknowledging this kind of goal-conflict demotes you from “really good person” to “pretty good person,” but it can elevate the relationship from a struggle to a pretty good one.
Acknowledging these incompatible goals gives your partner valuable information, which, if they are not also acknowledging their own incompatible goals, can turn into ammunition. Most couples have to embrace each other’s humanity bit by bit, and many stop when the bits they’re revealing get to be embarrassing.
Irrational topic goals around what will happen in the relationship cannot be successfully resolved until relational goals and identity goals are established. Put simply, the identity goal must be an acknowledgment of one’s humanity instead of a claim of perfection, and the relational goal must be to have a relationship between two humans, not angels. Much marital conflict disperses when the spouses both remind themselves that they fell in love with a human, and not with an entity, such as a smartphone that is obedient, patient, and programmable.
Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina, describes the process goal of putting the relationship ahead of its members when Levin and Kitty (the happy couple) start fighting just after they are married. He sums up their situation by noting, “These quarrels frequently arose from the fact that they did not yet know what was of importance to each other.”
The desire to find out what is of importance to the other person is at the heart of marital conflict resolution. When what is important is a rational interest, then trying to meet that interest in some form, whether direct or diluted, is a good, collaborative strategy. When the interest is irrational, then the best approach is often to establish a process goal of making space for it, as an impossible but pleasant wish. This requires a commitment to a mutual and reflective space for dreams that want to be heard rather than achieved. Both parties must make an effort to accept the other person’s irrational goals without trying to fix the partner and without trying to attain the goals.
This may sound like the aspect of psychotherapy that involves understanding rather than fixing problems, a reflective space that avoids cognitive dissonance (the trashing of one discordant idea) by entertaining opposing ideas. But that’s because all play spaces and artistic spaces welcome discordant ideas and greet them appreciatively rather than as bugs to be eliminated.
Marriage can be such a space, although, like all play spaces and artistic spaces, it would need a solid framework to become that. One key ingredient is to punctuate a time for reflection and fantasy to distinguish it from the workaday business of marriage, which involves solving problems, doing chores, catching up on each other’s days, puttering around, and hanging out. Verbal signals like “Penny for your thoughts” or certain physical spaces (like the marital bed) can distinguish fantasy conversation from problem-solving conversation.
Each partner can ask whether the spouse is actually expecting to achieve a goal or whether they are just spinning a fantasy. A wish that your partner should be something they can’t be can demolish them if taken seriously. Why can’t you look like that, make that much money, be that clever? But if it’s understood as a fantasy, the general response, “Wouldn’t that be nice?” accepts the goal and, even though it can’t be attained a topic goal, maintains the relationship goals of the couple.
All too often, one partner is expressing a wish in exactly this sort of fantasy manner, but the other partner takes it seriously and tries to attain the goal. One partner tries to be an expert chef after the other partner remarks how nice it would be to live with a great cook. Or one partner reads a travel magazine, pleasantly fantasizing, and the other feels humiliated because they can’t afford the actual vacation. By distinguishing goals that can be attained from those that can’t, the couple abandons perfectionism in exchange for ordinary happiness.
