By the time a couple is having their first appointment with me, they’ve been in distress for a while. Often, they’ll report repetitive conflicts present for years with little to no progress, and worsening severity.
“We can’t even talk about money anymore, it always leads to a fight.”
“I’ve been asking for this very small change for YEARS, why can’t you just meet me in the middle?”
I approach couples therapy with a basic assumption: Every behavior in a relationship is an earnest attempt to meet a legitimate need. Distress and conflict, more often than not, result from picking poor strategies rather than a fundamental incompatibility.
So what makes picking more successful strategies so hard? Why do we persist with the same strategy over and over again, sometimes for years, when the evidence is overwhelming that it doesn’t work?
It turns out, there’s a mathematical answer
Game Theory and The Zero-Sum Proposition
Game Theory is a subset of mathematics describing decision making and strategy efficacy. It’s provided useful analysis of individual behaviors, societal norms, economic trends, and even the role of altruism in evolutionary biology.
So how does this predict conflict in romantic relationships?
For some couples, the impasse is a mistaken belief that they are stuck in a Zero-Sum Game. Game Theory defines this as a competitive situation where one person’s gains equal the other’s losses, or where one’s gains necessitate the other’s loss. In games like Chess, player A wins when player B loses. For player B to win, player A has to lose. While there is the possibility of a stalemate where neither player wins, there is not an option for players to collaborate, or for both to win.
Needs in Competition
I call this a mistaken belief, because while it may feel like your needs are in competition, they rarely actually are. Almost all couple conflict contains the possibility of collaboration or a compromise where both partner’s needs are sufficiently met. To date, I’ve only found two topics where compromise isn’t possible:
- Whether or not we’ll have biological children (you can’t get a little bit pregnant).
- Where in the country, or the world, we’ll live (if one person wants New York, and the other wants L.A., Kansas is a poor choice for everyone).
The Source of Paralysis
Every other couple argument I’ve run across has had a compromise position, or an approach to timing or equity (versus equality) that resulted in a workable strategy. Note also that even when compromise isn’t possible, collaboration still is. Resolving the feeling that needs are in competition requires changing how we communicate, and making room for our partner’s position to be equally valid.
When we dissect the conflict to find the reasonable core, it can still be difficult for the couple to change their behaviors. This often comes down to a damaged sense of trust.
The Science of Trust and The Prisoner’s Dilemma
In the Gottman model, trust is one the walls of the Sound Relationship House. Trust is a central support in the Pillars of Connection model. For either metaphor, remove trust and the whole thing collapses. People tend to think of trust being lost because of deceptions, or egregious acts like infidelity. It is more likely to be lost over a series of smaller interactions such as unkept promises or “out-of-scale” conflict. These small injuries result in the feeling that your partner doesn’t have your back. Intractable conflict is a problem of trust as much as it is one of communication.
What happens without trust?
When you question if your partner has your back, or that they will carry their weight in the relationship, it changes your decision making. Consider the thought experiment known as the prisoner’s dilemma.
Imagine two prisoners questioned separately about their role in a bank robbery. The police offer a deal: confess and testify in exchange for a reduced sentence. If both prisoners hold out, they will both serve 6 months for a lesser charge of loitering. If one prisoner defects he goes free while his partner gets 10 years. If both prisoners confess, they each serve 5 years.
The Secret to Successful Collaboration
The best solution requires two things, trust and a willingness to sacrifice. Without one or both of those, the most reasonable decision is the self-serving one, where one prisoner goes free while the other carries the whole weight. Unfortunately, in that scenario both prisoners will likely make the same decision, resulting in a bad outcome for everyone. Damaged trust reduces their willingness to give (or delay their own need), trapping them in a loop of negative decisions or withholding until their partner “proves themselves” by making all of the sacrifice first.
Meet My Needs, and I’ll Meet Yours
On the surface, this may sound reasonable. To a partner lacking trust, it feels impossible. Their brain tells them the altruistic move is a “sucker’s bet,” and that they’ll be the prisoner facing 10 years. So they wait. They wait for their partner to make the first move. Their partner, unfortunately, has adopted the same strategy and so they’re both stuck. You would think people could easily identify the trap and that they wouldn’t be willing to stay in that position for long. In reality, they can do it for decades.
Trust is Earned in Ounces and Lost in Pounds
Typically used to describe how easy it is to damage trust, this saying also holds the path out of the Zero-Sum trap. Small actions can demonstrate your trustworthiness. Low-stakes sacrifices for the good of the relationship increase your partner’s willingness to be vulnerable. For some, signing up for couples therapy can be an important demonstration of intent to rebuild the relationship. If you find yourself trapped in a zero-sum game, consider that while you have no power to compel your partner to act better, you are fully in charge of your own actions. The “sucker’s bet” is not worse than the purgatory of waiting for things to improve.
There is such a thing as too much damage, and too much time in distress. In some cases, ending the relationship is the best outcome. A short course of Discernment Counseling can help you explore ambivalence and find clarity on the question: Do I want to keep trying, or am I done?