There are moments, in marriage especially, when something goes sideways and a small war starts to break out inside you. The frustration rises, a negative picture of your partner starts to form in your view of him or her, and before long you’re either pushing to get your way or walking out the door to get away from this crazy person. Fight or flight. It’s ancient. It’s human. And in a marriage, it’s exhausting.
So what’s really going on in a moment like that? There are deep explanations: childhood wounds, PTSD triggers, attachment fractures. They matter. But there’s another level of looking at these moments, one that can eliminate the conflict completely, or at least point you toward peace. And here it is:
What you’re experiencing isn’t just a problem. It’s an agreement begging to be made.
That idea — simple as it sounds — is what Agreement 4, Part 2 is about.
Sometimes the conflict is the other half of the line: a boundary begging to be clarified. That’s when you’ve each made agreements with each other, but your spouse seems uninterested in coming through. This is where what you are willing and not willing to do are revisited.
But the big picture of this chapter is requests and agreements. Agreement 4 asks you to give love rather than grasp for it, and this chapter is what that looks like on the ground, in one of the most important dimensions of intimate relationships: working through issues.
So the objective of this chapter is to turn conflict into agreement, regain peace between you and enjoy the love and intimacy that flows from that peace. O.K., NOW you’re excited to read this! I can feel it.
You know the old wiring from Agreement 4: fight, flee, freeze (see “fainting goats” on YouTube), or give up. Marriage is where it kicks in hardest and where fears of disconnection run deeper.
Dr. Sue Johnson puts it plainly: underneath most relationship conflicts, the real question is — Are you still there for me? Are we still okay? Do I still matter to you? The argument about money, schedules, or the way someone stacks the dishwasher is almost never really about money, schedules, or the dishwasher.
And when that fear gets activated, the last thing that naturally occurs to us is: Let me think about what I’d like to request.
Which is exactly why learning to do it is so powerful.
“Agreement” is what happens when two people, instead of fighting over a difference or avoiding it, decide to hear each other. It’s the decision to treat conflict not as evidence that something is wrong with your partner — or with you — but as information about what one of you (or both of you) needs. And then to look, together, for a way to meet those needs.
There are some significant pieces to creating agreements. The first is the biggest and it’s truly the beginning of a conscious relationship:
Piece #1: Be Willing to Make Inspired, Bitesized, Affirmative Requests.
Sounds easy. It’s not.