Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

by Terrence Real

You and your partner are not, in fact, going to see all things the same way.

“Us” is the seat of closeness. “You and me” is the seat of adversarial contest. “You and me” is great when you are confronting a tiger, but less so when you are confronting your spouse, your boss, or your child.

You can choose…to pollute your biosphere with a fit of temper over here. But you’ll breathe in your partner’s withdrawal or resentment over there. You and they are a linked ecosystem. There is no escape.

There is no redeeming value whatsoever in harshness. Harshness does nothing that loving firmness doesn’t do better.

Once one learns to think relationally and ecologically, the answer to the question “Who’s right and who’s wrong?” becomes “Who cares?” The real question is “How are you and I going to navigate the issue at hand in a way that works for both of us?”

“Before you open your mouth, I want you to stop and think. Ask yourself: ‘What is the thing I’m about to say going to feel like to the person I’m speaking to?’ ”

What might have been a fight that lasted forty years is resolved in moments because it was lifted out of our usual frame of right/wrong, win/lose into the new world of relational thinking.

—Excerpts from Us