Dialoguing and Tussling With Feminine Criticism

In this short video from the August 2018 Art of Fearless Intimacy weekend intensive in Boulder CO, John and Kendra explore two different approaches to resolving conflict in your relationship.

In one approach, the couple must resolve any habits around ‘making each other wrong’ for how they think or feel.

The ‘perpetual wrongness’ we create in the eyes of our partner often corresponds with the wrongness we were taught as children, so we make one another wrong in the way that is often the most painful. If you can acknowledge the way your partner thinks and feels as right, making sense, and valid, you create the capacity for deep healing and safety in the relationship. The Intentional Dialogue created by Harville Hendrix is a great tool for this.

The other approach works off the premise that the feminine wants to ‘tussle’ with conflict (to use John’s teacher David Deida’s term).

When this happens, the masculine can artfully ‘tussle’ with the feminine while staying connected to the infinite source of consciousness that he is. This creates the opportunity for play and to create a new neural-pathway sourced in love and play, rather than reactivity to a perceived criticism.