Building healthy relationships (with Jayson Gaddis)

1. Listen Until Understood (LUFU)

Commit to listening to your partner until they explicitly state they feel understood, not just until you think you’ve grasped their point. This requires hanging in through tough conversations to ensure the other person feels seen and cared about.

2. Embrace Conflict for Growth

View conflict as a necessary component for building security and strength in relationships, rather than avoiding it. Avoiding outer conflict often leads to inner conflict, creating tension and unhappiness.

3. Own Your Part in Conflicts

Quickly de-escalate disagreements by taking responsibility for your actions using phrases like “My part is…” or “My part was….” This simple act does a lot to settle the other person’s nervous system.

4. Adopt a Curious Mindset

During disagreements, assume positive intent and approach your partner’s perspective with curiosity, believing they likely have good reasons for their feelings or actions. This helps shift out of an ‘I’m right, they’re unreasonable’ perspective.

5. Return to Zero Baseline

When triggered or activated (scoring 3-10 on a 0-10 scale), use tools to return to a baseline of feeling resourced, connected, safe, and secure, both alone and together. This ‘zero’ state is where you feel good and capable of tackling life’s challenges.

6. Practice Empathy

Enhance communication by imagining and verbalizing the impact of your actions on your partner’s feelings. For example, say, “I can imagine the impact on you was that you felt dismissed, belittled, and hurt.”

7. Increase Self-Worth

To break cycles of attracting unhealthy partners, increase your self-worth by getting specific about insecurities and contrasting them with areas where you feel competent and confident. Stop telling yourself global, negative stories about your worth.

8. Foster Emotional Safety

Create an environment in relationships where expressing true vulnerability (tears, anger, hurt) is accepted and not punished (e.g., yelled at, ignored). A lack of emotional safety leads people to stuff their feelings and disconnect from themselves.

9. Dispelling Relationship Fantasies

Abandon the fantasy that finding ’the right person’ eliminates relationship problems; instead, recognize that relationships are hard and triggering, providing opportunities for learning and growth. Challenges wake us up to what’s real and authentic.

10. Aim for a Caring Relationship

Strive for a ‘caring’ relationship style that involves mutual challenge and support for growth and development. In this type of relationship, security is earned through continuous work, rather than expected as a given.

11. Validate Your Partner’s Feelings

Genuinely validate your partner’s feelings by saying “That makes sense” to help them feel understood, accepted, and that their experience is legitimate. This addresses the core human need to feel loved and accepted for who we are.

12. Address Inner Conflict Directly

Prevent inner conflict, which arises from stuffing your truth and withholding feelings, by directly addressing outer conflicts. Expressing what needs to be said, even if difficult, prevents internal tension, depression, and anxiety.

13. Speak Truth Skillfully

When expressing difficult truths, do so compassionately, without blame or judgment, and in a way that considers your partner’s nervous system. The goal is to avoid shutting them down, even if they still react.

14. Plan for Reactions

Don’t expect your partner not to react when you communicate difficult truths; instead, plan on them reacting. Proactively consider how you will handle both their reaction and your own response to it.

15. Stand for Three

In conflicts, adopt a holistic perspective by taking a stand for yourself, for your partner, and for the relationship as a whole. Understand that if something isn’t good for one, it’s likely not good for the relationship.

16. Diagnose Fight Types

Identify the root cause of conflicts by diagnosing whether they are surface, resentment, value difference, projection, or security fights. This helps in addressing the underlying issue rather than just the symptoms.

17. Navigating Value Difference Conflicts

In deeply entrenched value difference conflicts, prioritize deeply understanding your partner’s viewpoint with curiosity and compassion, even if you don’t agree. This understanding can foster healing and open pathways for negotiation.

18. Cultivate Deeper Friendships

First, define the desired depth for your friendships (e.g., transparency, honesty), then initiate conversations with friends about getting more honest, and express intimate appreciation for them. This helps build connections where you can be your true self.

19. Lead with Wants, Not Needs

When expressing personal requirements in adult relationships, frame them as ‘wants’ or ‘desires’ rather than ’needs’ to avoid appearing demanding or off-putting. If fundamental needs like emotional safety are consistently unmet, consider moving on.

20. Recognize Subjectivity of Requests

Understand that what constitutes a ‘reasonable request’ is subjective and varies between individuals and couples. Deeply explore your partner’s perspective, especially if it’s rooted in past experiences or trauma, to find common ground.

21. Understand Relationship Polarities

Recognize that attracting opposites (e.g., selfish/selfless, messy/clean) is common in relationships and these polarities can be navigated with good communication and a growth mindset. These differences offer opportunities for learning about oneself and the other.

22. Leave Abusive Relationships Strategically

If in an abusive or gaslighting relationship where a partner refuses to take responsibility, leave for your safety. However, ensure you learn valuable lessons and gain empowerment about yourself to avoid repeating similar patterns in future relationships.