The Healthy Way to Handle Irreconcilable Differences |
Why Relationships Matter
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Irreconcilable differences can’t be solved, only managed, and empathy is more useful than problem-solving.
Couples don’t fight about certain things, but for certain things. Find out what they are.
Balancing differences enriches relationships, fostering mutual growth and resilience.
According to decades of research by psychologist John Gottman, a whopping 69% of relationship conflicts are “unresolvable.”
What this means is that over two-thirds of the problems in relationships are due to irreconcilable differences in personality, parenting styles, political beliefs, core values, and patterns of behaviors that are likely to change around the same time the cows come home. Introverts and extroverts, morning people and night people, impulsives and planners, spenders and savers, adventure-seekers and security-seekers, dog people and cat people, bad boys and good girls. These are differences that can’t be solved, only managed, and trying to solve them only leads to frustration and gridlock.
Relationships don’t start out this way, of course. Opposites famously attract, drawing you toward people who challenge or complement your dominant habits, thereby injecting balance, chemistry, novelty, and a kind of psychological adventure into your life.
Under the influence of infatuation, even profound differences are of little concern, and for a period of time before the spell dissolves, you know you’re going to be adored, all your shortcomings magically recast as charming eccentricities. As a character in the movie Closer says, “We’re in the first flush. It’s paradise. All my nasty habits amuse her.”
But dopamine levels inevitably drop back to baseline, hidden agendas come out of hiding, power struggles begin, and you start to admit that your partner’s charming eccentricities are actually kind of annoying now that you think about........