Here are 4 great questions that when used well solve EVERY marriage or relationship issue. 

 

1. Do you love me?

2. Are you an adult?

3. Are you treating me like the prize?

4. Who is the one with the problem?

Here is how this works.

Question 1. Do you love me?

 

Obviously conflict happens because two people want different things. Often these differences seem irreconcilable because they are simple that – different. When conflict happens, it appears that you are on the opposite team and must either defeat them or be defeated. It’s a time of war. 

Yet war never solves conflict, it just suppresses it for a season. War is incapable of producing peace. Even if you win this time, now you have to defend your territory so that you are not defeated in the future.  Peace comes through understanding and discovering commonality.

Take the Palestine - Israeli conflict. Both sides are trying to win through aggression and defiance. "We will never be defeated. We will never forget what you have done to us and our forefathers..." Yet the war never goes away. One side gets the upper hand for a season and then the other side retaliates.

Imagine if instead of operating on the lowest level of disagreement, they related to each other on the highest level of agreement.

Both sides are made up of ordinary people trying to live a happy life and raise their kids in a safe environment. Both sides are good people trying to make life work for them and their family. Both sides want exactly the same thing.

Back to spouses at war….The conflict is due to the fact that they are relating to each other on the level of their difference from each other. What if they were to discover the why behind the what and realise that they both want the same thing. They both love each other and want to make the other person happy while being happy themselves.

It turns out they are on the same team and they want exactly the same thing. Imagine that!

Do you love me?  

Yeah of course. Do you love me?

I do. You know I do. 

Well then what the heck are we doing to each other. 

If you love someone, you don’t want to fight with them or hurt them. 

This highest common agreement now means you can negotiate as team mates rather than oppose each other as enemies. 

 

When the 'Do you love me?' question is answered honestly and the answer is no, that is still very useful in solving relationship problems.  - Then what are we still doing together? 

This then requires an even higher common agreement. 

Ok then, well we are both just trying the best we know how to be happy and healthy. We just want to be loved for who we are. We just want to live a peaceful existence without strife and chaos. 

As such we want exactly the same thing. We are on the same side. Just because we realise we are not the one to fulfill this dream with you doesn’t mean we have to be enemies. We could still help each other get what we want in the long term. 

 

Question 2. Are you an adult?

 

Now that you have discovered commonality. You are the same and you want the same, you can treat each other like equals and negotiate.

The next priority is to make sure both parties bring their best adult skills to the negotiation and remain as adults for the duration

Children don’t have the emotional intelligence or maturity to negotiate. If they don’t get their way, they have no capacity for plan B. Yet as a fully functioning adult of at least low to normal intelligence, you have the capacity to understand, listen, grow, change, take responsibility, create, collaborate and most importantly you can negotiate. You can find a way for both people to get what they want.

This question is also a great corrective if and when the conversation begins to descend into chaos and become highly emotional or irrational. Are we still being adults here? Are you an adult? Am I an adult? Ok, can we keep speaking to each other like adults then? 

If you can keep the conflict in the adult territory and blow the whistle on any childish fouls, then you give yourselves the best chance possible of negotiating not compromising. 

 

Question 3.   Are you treating me like the prize?

 

Would this behaviour have been OK before we were married when you treated me like the greatest treasure on earth? Would I have decided to spend the rest of my life with you? If it wouldn’t have worked then, why in the world would that behavior be OK now?

If I am the prize, then I deserve to be treated beautifully. It is never ok not to treat me well. 

And, as the prize, if you don't want to love me and treat me well - there are loads of other people who would be all too keen to take your place should it become vacant. 

This completely rules out trying to negotiate from a place of neediness and insecurity. 

 

Question 4. Who has the problem?

For most people, the only way to deal with these issues is to complain, feel like nothing is ever going to change and that you must make the best of the painful situation and console yourself with pity and the moral high ground. The result is a rapid disintegration of the relationship. The real issues go unresolved and pain is suppressed till the point you can’t even look at each other any more.

The problem question makes sure you avoid the blame trap and apply the appropriate leverage to create lasting change. 

Say a husband has had a number of affairs and his wife hates it but keeps taking him back. Who has the problem? 

What about a husband that wants his wife to initiate sex more and despite his requests, his wife has not changed her behaviour. Who is the one with the problem?

In the first instance, the wife is the one with the problem. She is the one who is suffering and being treated poorly. The husband keeps doing what he is doing and his life keeps working out just fine.

In the second situation, the wife thinks their sex life is just fine. She is not after more sex at all. It is the husband who feels rejected and dissatisfied.

In both cases, it is only when you make the other person’s problem that they have any reason to change. If there are no consequences for their behaviour, then they have no problem. You are the one with the problem instead. 

If it remains your problem, then nothing changes

As soon as you make it their problem, now things have to change. 

 

 

Here’s how these questions worked for us a few years back when we discovered the mechanics of this. 

 

When Kat went back to full time work for the first time since pre kids, it was a new season for us both. In order for her to fully focus on her career, I took over the majority of the domestic duties and ran my business from home. It was working well, and I thought I was doing a stellar job taking care of kids, cooking and cleaning until Kat confronted me about the fact that I was significantly underperforming with the vacuum cleaner. She scored me a 3/10 

I was deeply hurt. I was sure I’d earned at least a 5. 

I felt as though I was fully across the housework and was secretly celebrating the fact that it took me less than a quarter of the time it took Kat to keep the place clean. It must be because I’m so fit.

I was enjoying my lifestyle and thought the division of labour is working really well. 

Kat was far less happy. While she was grateful that I was playing support role so she could work full time, she was far less impressed with how well  I was playing that role. In her eyes, the house was a mess and not anywhere near her standards of cleanliness. 

While she’d already asked me to do more vacuuming a number of times, she didn’t want to have to nag me about it. She thought I should just want to make her happy and intuitively know when the vacuuming needs to be done and to what standard. 

However, even though each time I agreed to do more vacuuming and do genuinely want to make her happy, nothing really changed. It went on like this for some time. She’d get upset and nag. I’d overpromise and underdeliver. 

More vacuuming never made its way to the top of my priority list. Why? Because I wasn’t the one with the problem. 

 

Meanwhile a similar scenario was brewing with our communication skills. This time the shoe was on the other foot. 

As I mentioned in the section on relationship rules, for years, our most frequent topic of conflict had been the way in which we do conflict. A little ironic I know, but never-the-less, it caused me in particular an extraordinary amount of grief.  

For the 15 years prior to this point, Kat’s conflict techniques were a bit like a bus crash before they decided busses should have seatbelts. 

Apologizing for the bus crash without seatbelts was even worse. Picture the crashed bus then catching on fire and then see me emerging from the flames bloody and brusied with third degree burns. 

 

All these years she can’t see why I’m being so dramatic. She just thinks I’m being picky, and that I have a very specific formula in mind about what exact words I need to hear from her before I’ll accept her apology.

See Kat wants me to just do the vacuuming and I just want her to argue with more skill and clarity. Yet nothing has changed in 15 years of marriage in either of these issues, not because we are trying to be difficult or deliberately hurt the one we love, it is because we are not the one with the problem. I think I do enough housework and kat thinks she argues just fine.

Things change when we make it the other person’s problem. If one of us was to say – It is not OK for this to continue like this, and hold our ground by enforcing a clear consequence then it becomes the other persons problem and they have to find a new way to behave.

Listen, here’s the only way this will work. If you are sure that you want me to do more vacuuming, you have to make it my problem. Otherwise nothing changes. 

Make my life hell if I don’t do it. That is the only solution. Use some leverage to demand that I find time to become friends with the Dyson!

Similarly, nagging Kat to stop the fiery bus crashes buss’s is madness. If I don’t make it her problem, the current stalemate continues.  

You only need to use leverage where there is resistance to change, otherwise clear consequences and the power of negotiation work just fine if both parties agree on a fair exchange. I’ll do more vacuuming because I know it is important to you as long as you approach our conflict the way I would like you to. If one of us complains, that it is unfair, i.e well I don’t want to do more vacuuming… or why should I have to do conflict the way you like, then the other person can call their end of the deal off too. It has to be fair. Both people are the prize

Here’s how we resolved both issues. 

Kat explained with precision the standard of vacuuming wizardry she was after and what the dire consequences would be if I should fail again. 

Interestingly, when I get to this point in telling the story with clients, the only consequence most people can think of is divorce. 

‘That’s it you bastard. I can’t deal with this dust anymore. You’re out. Your stuff is on the lawn. I’m replacing you with a Roomba.’

I promise you Kat has at least 100 levels of leverage she could use against me before I’m subbed out by a robot. 

In fact, all she had to do was shoot an ice cold glance in my direction when she got home from work and I crumbled

Whenever we’ve been apart for any length of time, it has always been of paramount importance to me, that when we see each other again, there is love on our eyes. Don’t look at me like I’m some bloke you share the rent with – give me some tenderness girlfriend. 

Therefore, the moment Kat looks at me with lasers rather than lovehearts, I know instantly that something is wrong. 

Bugger…That’s right. I was going to vacuum the house prop-er-ly. My bad, MY BAD. 

 

Clearly I’m not in love with cleaning, but that is now irrelevant. I’m a smart guy. Surely I can work out how to improve my performance here. Especially if every time Kat walks in the door that’s how she’s going to look at me. I can’t deal with that. Quickly. I gotta get those loving eyes back. Hand me the Hoover. Problem solved. 

 

Then it was my turn to make poor apologies and messy conflict a problem for Kat. I decided to use our new friend the barefoot investor against her. We’d only just finished reading Scott Pape’s book and were excited to be getting an individual weekly allowance paid directly into our splurge account. 

I knew this would sting, but I informed Kat that if I had to coach her through her next apology or call a time out on our next round of conflict, that her allowance for that week would find its way to my account instead of hers. 

Three weeks of double pay for me, and the 15 year problem was finally sorted.