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?