This Is What Prevents Couples From Successfully Resolving Arguments

Tonight when Meg and Danny sit down for their next conversation about travel plans, everything will depend on how well they work together to help each other stay open. Everything means not only what plans they come up with but, more importantly, how they end up feeling about themselves, each other, and the relationship. This is their next chance to build or diminish trust, connection, and love.

Openness is the secret to everything you want in your relationships. Being heard, understood, cared about—even great erotic encounters—all depend on your and your partner's openness. Your emotional aperture, or what I call Aperture Awareness™, is your relationship superpower. It's your ability to pay close attention in every moment to the ever-changing openness that happens as two people reach toward each other. Aperture Awareness is like a delicate dance, and it's the key to unlocking a loving connection.

Seems like we should try to figure things out, right? Wrong!

Our very powerful cortexes, the most recently developed part of our brains, are exceedingly good at problem-solving. We tend to favor this approach without even knowing that there are, in fact, other ways to use our minds to navigate difficulties, including, and especially, the difficulties of the most complex puzzle of all—relationships.

One of our other navigational skills is mindfulness—the ability to notice what's happening in the moment. This in-the-moment mindfulness is what we need to become aware of openness, our own and the other person's, and to respond as openness changes during difficult moments.

Another problem with "trying to figure things out" is that we are overly influenced by the past and use it to predict the future. If you start a conversation thinking, "Well, this never goes well, but here we go again," you're basing a future outcome on a past event—rather than using awareness of what's actually happening in the present and responding accordingly.

The other thing besides problem-solving that we are very good at, and have had many successes with, is gaining control. From birth we have been involved in the project of working to gain control—first over our own bodies, then increasingly over the world. Many of us have gotten better and better at control and more and more enamored with its usefulness in solving our problems. But what happens when the problem involves connecting with another human being?

When we fall in love, connection seems to be magically supplied as our turbocharged hormones and neurotransmitters propel us toward connection. And then comes the "end of the honeymoon," which means the end of this automatic delicious, nurturing, exciting, connection. Baffled, we cast about for what to do, and we reach for control. We try to get the other person to say yes to our requests, to agree with our ideas, to do the things that we feel we need and want. If only we can get this other person, who we thought cared about us, to give us what we want, all will be well again.

Leonard Cohen in his song "The Sisters of Mercy" says, "Oh, you who must leave everything that you cannot control. It begins with your family and soon it comes round to your soul."

The problem with all of these ways of dealing with conflict is that they lack an awareness of what's actually happening for you and your partner in the present. That's where Aperture Awareness comes in.

During conflict, begin to pay attention in each moment as you interact with your partner. Notice your sense of openness, or closedness, also known as your emotional aperture.

Aperture Awareness is a felt sensation. Just as we do not "see" by consciously thinking about the information our eyes absorb, we do not become aware of our emotional openness through thought and analysis. Rather, we learn to feel it, to become aware of it, and then to pay close and careful attention. Simply asking yourself, "Do I feel open or closed right now?" directs your attention to this felt experience. With practice, the experience of Aperture Awareness becomes more accessible.

An open aperture feels like safety, relaxation, trust, optimism. A closed aperture feels like danger, wariness, pessimism, anxiousness, unease. Some people register these physically. Looseness, softness, and warmth often signal apertures opening. Tightness, hardness, or coldness, especially in your chest, belly, or face often coincide with a closed aperture—your own or your partner's.

In each moment with your partner, and especially in moments that feel difficult, check in about openness. Are you open in this moment? Is your partner open? Compare your perceptions. This is how you get better at noticing and using this all-important information.

Once you have this ability, you can begin to use it to shape your interactions toward more trust and satisfaction. When you are both open, it's like a green light for moving forward to talk, to listen, to play, and to connect. When one or both of you closes down, respond by slowing down. Inquire about what changes you can make in your conversation that will make it easier for each of you to reopen.

Tonight when Meg and Danny talk about their travel plans, Danny will say that he wants to consider going to Europe. Meg will feel a bit nervous. She's nervous about leaving the country, and she's uneasy about their finances. At this point, Danny might try harder to convince her. As she starts to close down and go quiet, his voice might get louder and faster. That conversation likely won't be productive.

But what if, instead, he notices her closing and slows down, even stops and asks what she's feeling and how he can help her be open to this conversation? What if he doesn't run the red light of aperture closure but instead lets her know that he cares about her? Sensing this, Meg may start to reopen. She agrees that they should keep talking. She trusts him a bit more. They continue like this and may leave this conversation feeling happy to be together, a bit more trusting and confident of their ability to have difficult talks.

Using in-the-moment awareness, we can move toward connection and away from injury. Two people can learn to participate in gaining access and contact with each other rather than trying to control each other, pushing through with problem-solving, or abandoning the situation.