The story I shared about getting stuck in the muck and having conflict last week left both parties in the ruble. By the time it was done all parties felt slimed.

Now you may think how could the person feel slimed who left his tires in your car and ruined both the outside of your car and the inside of your car feel slimed?

Because we refused to pay him. He felt entitled to our money for work he had done. In other words, he didn’t see the damage he only saw things from his perspective.

So we had choices to make. My partner and I could fight amongst ourselves, staying in the triangle. I could blame my partner, saying I told you so. I saw this turkey (calling him, the person we hired names, or even my partner names). This would shift things to blaming my partner and not focusing on the issue of what do we do with what is going on or even blaming the person for what they did.

I could get into a pissing war with the person we hired to do the work when they sent a text in regards to the money they felt was owed to them, arguing and justifying.

But that isn’t what we did. Instead, we decided to look at the situation and analyze how we got to this place. We looked at our decisions. We brought in our Needs Languages and talked it out. We focused on our Value Needs and why we saw a benefit in the choice we both made. Then we looked at Gretchen Rubin’s model of tendencies and asked some questions.

Why did I not hold firm to me saying this isn’t a good choice and going with my partner’s obliging tendency?

My partner looked at their obliging in decision-making with the person we hired.

After our awareness and our analysis, we then put an action plan in place as to how to handle the person skillfully and what to do about the car. We still didn’t feel happy about what had happened, but we felt prepared to deal with the situation.

Along with that, we ended up removing ourselves from the triangle and grew to become more aware and heathier within ourselves and our relationship.