Nothing…

Paul Ekman (Father of the face) coined a phrase for relational conflicts – he calls them “regrettable incidents.” So, it would be scientifically significant to identify the root causes of regrettable incidents, wouldn’t it? The Gottman’s have done precisely that over the past 40 years studying couples in their Seattle Love Lab.

Their findings?

The root of regrettable incidents are not conflicts about money. The root of regrettable incidents aren’t conflicts about family – yours, mine, or even ours. The root isn’t around sex – too much, too little, too short, too long, or too anything for that matter. Whew! The root it turns out from 40 years of research is kinda shocking really. The root for most relational conflict between couples is well, nothing.

Shit happens, I guess…

Women don’t get mad more often than men either. We’re fairly equal in terms of how we often we get angry and very different in how we handle it. Men are more likely to use physical aggression, passive aggression (my research confirms professional men live here – passivity palace), and revenge. Women, on the other hand stay angry longer (maybe forever and a day it seems), are less likely to directly express (not my world, thank God), and become more resentful than men. Women tend to remember a slight from twenty years back and us men can’t remember what pissed us off on yesterday’s ride.

Conflict just happens. Our reactions are, well, as varied as we are. The tendencies of the sexes are just that tendencies. Your job is to study your partner (and all loved ones for that matter) and stop being such a baby and running the first time conflict happens. Men get emotionally overwhelmed way before women and when overwhelmed – we run for cover. Fact.

Now might be a good time for a reminder. Most conflict, at it’s root, is about nothing. Nothing. So, it only makes sense there’s no solution. This is good news for all us fix it types. All we gotta do is hang in there and stay connected and attend to our partner and their emotions. As we master the turn toward instead of the wimpy turn away, we learn how to “be there for her.” That friend would be something.

Something about nothing.

So, there you have it fellow fix her freaks, you’ve got something positive to habituate when, you know, nothing happened but you know she aint happy. You now know something about dealing with nothing.

Practice the turn toward. Be with. Good.

God, help me habituate doing something about nothing. God, help me turn toward you, accept your Grace, and give more than I take from your creation. God, help me.

Live hard. Love harder…