Editor’s Note: We’ve been occasionally featuring relationship coach Blair Glaser’s posts about using leadership/business skills in relationships. Here is another of Blair’s follow-up articles illustrating how that can work. — Amanda
Katherine got into the car, and immediately felt Steve’s lousy mood suck all the air out of it.
“Oh no,” she thought.
She knew Steve wasn’t thrilled about going to visit her brother’s family. It was a chilly winter Sunday. He wanted to lounge about, watch the games, and stay put. But she expressed it was important to her and he had agreed to go.
Does he always have to punish me with his mood? she wondered, agitatedly.
She was about to get snarky in reaction to his silent hostility, but then she remembered a question she’d adopted in the training we were doing:
Do we dance the same dance, or can I try a new step?
After all, this was their dance: Steve gets in a mood, Katherine reacts and they go spiraling down, down into a dark place that somehow lands them in a fight about what happened three Christmases ago.
By asking the question internally, Katherine was bringing a form of leadership to her relationship.
Katherine wanted to have a decent day with Steve and her family. How was Katherine going to change the steps?
She contemplated what role she wanted to play. Usually, she felt victimized by Steve’s moods, and this would cause her to slip into “The Bitch.”
Who do I want to be instead? she mused. The answer: I want to be powerful, content woman, in this relationship and with my family today.
In that moment, Katherine thought about powerful, seemingly content women she knew. The first woman that came up, which surprised her, was Oprah. She went with it. And she realized, Oprah would not spend any time in the car with a sulking man if she didn’t have to. And she certainly wouldn’t babysit him.
This thought — given the fact that Oprah seemed in many ways the opposite of who she felt to be — kind of tickled her. It leavened her mood, and put a twinkle in her eye. By trying on this new role, she felt emboldened to take action.
“Pull over,” she to Steve, in a calm, authoritative voice.
“Why?” he balked.
“Pull over.” She said again, remaining calm, the corners of her mouth slightly edging their way towards her cheekbones.
Steve pulls over, reluctantly. And then he turns to look at Katherine with a What the fuck??? expression.
“There’s no air in this car Steve. I can’t breathe. I don’t feel like suffocating all the way to my brothers . . . What do you think we should do?”
Steve squirms, but doesn’t say anything.
She waits.
“I don’t know!”
Katherine wants to react explosively; but remembers Oprah. She can’t find a thing to say. More silence.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said, like he wasn’t at all.
“Oh that’s convincing. Listen, I can drive myself to my brother’s, you know. But there is no way I’m going to sit in the car for the next hour in this tension. It’s your call.”
There is a long pause. Steve weighs the options. The couch is calling him . . . but then. . . it would be cold without her around. There might be a price to pay, he would be going against his word . . . he steadies himself, looks her in the eye.
“No. I want to go with you. I’m totally being an asshole. It’s been such a stressful week. I’m sorry, babe.” This time, like he meant it.
She softens.
“Anything I can do?” she asks, gently.
“No . . . Yes! You can find that app with our all our favorite podcasts and pick something to listen to on the ride.”
“Okay.” Katherine smiles to herself, retrieves her phone from her bag and breathes a sigh of relief. Crisis averted. What a shift. She had taken a risk and come out strong in her leadership. She liked her new “Oprah” side.
You can’t always choose how life is going to go, but if you pay attention to the roles that simply take over and lead you nowhere, you can begin, as Katherine modeled, to select what roles you want to play. And that enables you to steer the relationSHIP to safety in rough waters. (It can also help you steer in non-tense moments, but that’s another post).
Do you want to learn about the roles you play and how to negotiate them within yourself and within your relationships? There are a few spots left for the Lovers and Leaders Course for singles and couples, starting Sept. 16, that will show you how to lead yourself into love in your relationships. Don’t miss out!
You can find out more information about Blair Glaser and her work at her website, www.blairglaser.com
This is a great concept – on paper. In the real world, with a real asshole who wants to start a fight with you and get his way no matter the damage, this won’t work. I tried for years to prevent fights and issues doing this exact dance with this type of tantrum-thrower, and there is only so much accommodating and compromising and boundary drawing you can do before they escalate into hostile behavior or abuse (even threats, name calling, or rage episodes are abusive, even if they never touch you). Sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade and if you have a man in your life who is consistently behaving in ways that are hostile, uncooperative, selfish, and childish, you may just have to kick him to the curb and “go to your brother’s house” (and live your life) without him. Lead yourself to sanity and freedom from immature bullies, ladies.
Expectations in life … of those we are blessed to love.
Perhaps if there was less attachment to the outcome.
Release and let go of expectations.
Release, at the same time, the dance of blame and justify.
Two separate energy flows do not naturally ebb and flow in synchronicity.
Allow the one you are blessed to share your path with
to flow naturally, authentically, without projecting expectations.
Really interesting stuff on relationships. However, Steve seems a bit henpecked to me! It’s all that stuff I find so stifling about realtionships, the woman ‘needs’ her husband to go with her on a visit to her family (why?), while he doesn’t want to go but doesn’t want to spend a lonely Sunday, either.
Wonderful post. First step for me is always to become aware of choices where I had not seen them before. Now I get a ‘preview’ in a shift in my own sense of well-being where I realize I am picking up another persons emotional state in my own person. If I’m in public I have become increasingly able to be aware of it not being ‘my stuff’ and ‘step away’ emotionally or even physically if need be.
Hanging with relations /beloved is more challenging, and I wonder if we don’t first teach ourselves that we don’t have a choice as children if and when we are effectively told as much by parents, sibs. etc.
Gaining a realization that there are *always* choices has taken me most of my 70 years, which is OK. I love the fact that I am still learning.
Your story is great for your non-judgmental discernment of Steve’s emotional state and your subsequent clarity about your own, and how to tidily resolve it by offering him choices. Fabulous example for many if not all of us, Steve included!
I think it also illustrates how right action from each of us helps grow each other as well as ourselves.
I love that we do this when we speak our individual truth.
Many thanks!