My husband and I used to have big fights over my intentions. He would get offended or hurt by something I did or said, and then I would explain my intentions behind it. He would feel misunderstood, and would double down on how hurt he was, and then I would feel misunderstood, and double down on explaining my intentions more. I thought that if I could explain my intentions clearly enough, that would take away my husband’s hurt.
When I realized I had a misunderstanding about intentions, navigating conflict got a lot easier. The point of good intentions is not to explain them to reduce the other person’s hurt feelings. The point is to have understanding and compassion towards myself, which helps me have more understanding and compassion towards others.
Now I understand that the feeling in the relationship is more important than my intentions being understood. Knowing this creates a shortcut out of conflict for us. I can apologize even while feeling misunderstood, if that will create more goodwill in the relationship.
I was not able to relax into this until I saw the innate health in all people. When I learned about my innate health, it blew my mind. I was very demanding of myself and others. While I could be nonjudgmental in a distant way, I had a lot of requirements someone would need to meet before I could experience closeness.
Some of these came from my fundamentalist upbringing, others came from things like psychology or relationship books. While the intention was to be helpful, they created a lot of misunderstandings for me around relationships. I got really in my head and thought I could figure out the “right” way to navigate relationships.
Because I was so in my head, I thought I needed to rely on my judgment to navigate conflict, know how to make friends, or get along with my husband. My husband has a big personality, and there were ways I got insecure in reaction to him. I did not grow up with a good example of marriage, and I was determined not to be miserable in marriage. I’d rather get divorced!
When it looked like I needed to rely on my judgment of my husband’s behavior, I was constantly analyzing it and his intentions. When I understood how the mind works, I relaxed.
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All human beings have innate health and well-being. Just like a body knows how to scab and heal itself, the mind knows how to recover and bounce back. We are naturally resilient.
I misunderstood what feelings and moods were for. I thought if I was in a bad mood, it meant something was wrong. But now I see that when I’m in a bad mood, I’m just in a low level of consciousness. Wisdom reminds me that when I’m in a low level of consciousness, I create a low level of thinking, and that thinking doesn’t mean anything about reality.
I stopped trying to fix my moods, and started to ride them out with a little more grace. Even if I felt terrible, and knew I was in my head prolonging it, I gave myself a big break. Eventually I’d come back up.
But I didn’t see my husband’s innate health at first. We would get into big fights, I would get really hurt, and then I would spend a lot of time thinking about the fight afterwards. I’d try to see where we went wrong, I might stew in hurt feelings and resentment, I might make him jump through hoops before I could trust him again, and even if I could put on a fake smile, the day/date/weekend was definitely ruined for me. Sometimes I’d even try to diagnose his childhood wounds. Lol.
One weekend we both partied too hard and got drunk. We got into another fight that ended with me sobbing with hurt feelings. He kept saying “You’re just drunk,” but I felt too misunderstood to give either of us a break. I felt strongly that I could not be happy in our relationship unless he changed, and I decided we needed couples counseling. So that week I scheduled a call with Angus Ross (of The Rewilders) to talk about couples counseling.
At some point between when I scheduled the zoom call and when I talked to Angus, I realized my husband has innate health. I realized his moods do not mean anything about him or our relationship. And that while I wished he would get on board with this new understanding that was helping me, his innate health and wisdom were all he needed for us to have a happy marriage.
When I got on zoom I sheepishly explained to Angus that maybe we didn’t have any problems. He laughed and said that was the whole point anyways, and we had a wonderful chat.
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When there is goodwill and trust in a relationship, there is naturally a lot of grace for low moods. (That’s why the honeymoon period in a relationship feels so magical–there’s a lot of love and grace.) It helped me so much to understand that all I ever experience is my own thinking, and when my husband is in a low mood or says hurtful things, all he is experiencing is his own thinking too. When I saw we naturally rise back to a good feeling without effort, I began to trust good feelings to be enough to carry us through.
I know this is controversial in a day and age of going to therapy to talk about your problems. I understand that impulse. What I understand now is that if an issue needs to be talked about, we both have much better access to our wisdom if we wait until we’re both in a feeling of goodwill towards each other. Creating and living in feelings of goodwill with each other becomes the primary objective. Problems sort themselves out as needed when we make this our focus, instead of trying to fix the problems before moving in the direction of goodwill.
I’m not saying anything goes. Luke and I still have boundaries we established because they made sense. For example, even if we’re both in a really bad mood, and the fight is getting ugly, we don’t call each other names. And we are committed to keeping that rule.
I just see moods, fights, and problems in a much different light. Transcending problems is much easier and leads to a healthier relationship than burning energy trying to figure them out.
Good intentions look really different now. When I see that I had the best of intentions, and STILL acted like an ass, that creates humility. That humility is like engine oil in my relationship. Next time my husband hurts me, I’m less likely to judge his intentions because I know I can act in unthinking ways with the best intentions. He might just be moving too fast to notice he hurt my feelings.
What makes our marriage resilient is how quickly we are able to return to a feeling of goodwill. When I see that, I have more access to wisdom and love, instead of spending all my energy on being understood. The truth is, once both of us are in a better mood, the whole fight ends up looking stupid or funny anyways. We get to the fun stuff a lot faster when we’re committed to the goodwill over our egos.
We all have innate health and are doing the best we can with the understanding we have at the moment. In that sense, we have good intentions. But what really matters for a healthy relationship is a feeling of goodwill. Goodwill comes not from understanding intentions, but from deep feelings that goes beyond the personal mind and ego. It’s a deep feeling that is inside of every person (love, connection, peace, kindness, compassion).
The bottom line: when we stay focused on creating goodwill, instead of trying to resolve insecurities and misunderstandings, relationships naturally and effortlessly improve.
Big love,
Gabi
Practical Wisdom 