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Hi, thank you for joining the Empowered Relationship Podcast, your relationship guide. I’m your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, licensed psychologist and relationship coach. Today’s episode is 248, “How to negotiate skillfully to reach a win/win in relationship”, an interview with Juliet Grayson.

Before we get started, I always like to take a moment to just center in with the intention as we tune into these conversations, and what is it that we’re really looking for, what is it that we’re really wanting. Now, wherever you are in your particular moment in time, in your relationship, in your journey, it might be different week to week, if you’re a consistent listener… And overall, I like to bring attention to the larger goal, and that is for these conversations to support you along the journey of cultivating with your significant other long-lasting intimacy, knowing that at times that might feel difficult, or it might be asking of us to look at things  perhaps we haven’t really put a lot of attention on, whether or not it’s previous pain, injury, or the desire to protect ourselves, or even reactivity… And really, as we say yes to turning towards some of that, there’s a growing, a healing and a development at play, not only for ourselves individually, but for our relationship. My hope for you with these conversations is that you feel better prepared, more well-equipped in negotiating relationship.

In today’s interview we are looking at actually how to deal with negotiating with your significant other when there is a conflict. Now, there’s a level of work that is required to even getting to that place of awareness of experiencing a conflict, and how to get some balance with that, so that you can negotiate skillfully, and we’re gonna talk more about that with our guest today.

If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and there you’ll find today’s episode; again, today’s episode is 248. Also, I wanna bring your attention to a really special opportunity, and that is to engage in a group coaching experience. I mentioned this two episodes ago; the group is starting in January, and it’s a very small group, limited to six. If you’re interested in getting some support, direct coaching with me, as well as working on how to deal with fears, or insecurities, regulating emotions and learning how to express yourself more transparently, authentically and openly, so that you can send really clear cues to your significant other. Now, this is for individuals who are looking to up-level their skillfulness in relationship. If you want more information about that, you can check out the Work With Me page at DrJessicaHiggins.com, and there, partway down the screen you’ll see Strategy Session, and then you’ll see Group Coaching. And if you click on that, more will expand and you’ll get the link around how to get access.

I would encourage you to set up a short call with me to see if this is a good fit. I’m really trying to screen and make sure the group feels like a good fit for everyone. So again, I encourage you to check that out if you’re interested. There’s only a couple weeks to sign up. Let’s get started in today’s interview.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Juliet Grayson is a UKCP Reg psychosexual therapist working in the UK.  She & her team run a six modular course, now online,  on “How to Work With Couples for Therapists Who Usually Work One to One”.  She also runs online personal development groups using the Pesso Boyden System of Psychotherapy.  Her book, “Landscapes of the Heart: The working world of a sex and relationship therapist” gives a ‘fly on the wall’ perspective on couples therapy.

Juliet, thank you for joining us today.

Juliet Grayson: I’m very excited to be here with you.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, me too, and I reached out to you just with your expertise in NLP, but I know you do so much in the way of couples and helping assist people navigate intimacy. What got you into working with NLP and couples? I know you’ve expanded your work; if you’re open to sharing a little bit about how you got connected with this, so people learn a little bit about you if they don’t already know you.

Juliet Grayson: Well, I think it started with  my own dysfunctional childhood. I went for therapy, and I happened to find a therapist who was the chair of the UK NLP Therapy Association… So he talked to me quite a bit about NLP, and I just got intrigued and decided to sign up for a course. Then I signed up for another course, and then I did six master practitioners. So the main course, which is a 27-day course, I did it six times over, just because it was so rich, and it expanded my  mind so much that I wanted to really get it in the muscle, to really embody it. And it did, it really changed my way of thinking, so I was very grateful to it.

And then I got into the couple work later, having had couple therapy with my husband, good couple therapy with my husband… Actually, that relationship ended up splitting up, but that was the right thing for that. We were together for 12 years.

So I trained as a therapist, and had a couple who came to me for therapy, and I realized that this was actually not the same as doing one-to-one therapy. So having trained as a conventional one-to-one therapist and then done the NLP alongside that. I then went off and did a two-year training at the Maudsley Hospital, which was a year on sex and a year on relationships.

What was fascinating about that was that they used to have a one-way screen with our trainers and supervisors behind the screen. So they’d be watching us working with clients. So that was a very rigorous training, and it has really set me up well. So nowadays, most of my therapy work is with couples or around sexual problems.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: So for people that are new to NLP, can you give us some context to that before we go into our topic?

Juliet Grayson: NLP is the study of subjective experience. NLP is the study of excellence. Basically, what happened is that the founders of NLP got curious about what makes the difference between someone who’s okay at what they’re doing and someone who’s excellent at what they’re doing, and they started to model out people who were excellent. That could be anything, from how to shoot a hole-in-one as a golfer, through to how to communicate well and build really good rapport. So they studied all these different areas, and basically then put that into courses and kind of taught that.

Part of what they did was to look at the topic of negotiation and what makes good negotiators. And it’s really interesting how many couples are poor at negotiation, and really struck by how much help couples need to learn about negotiation. So I think it’s very exciting to be talking about this, because actually, I haven’t delivered a training on this before. I used to teach negotiation to the corporate world; in fact, originally I used to teach assertiveness to the corporate world. But what happened is that people got assertive and learned to ask for what they wanted, but then when you have two people in a couple asking for what they want, you need to learn something new, because you need to learn how to negotiate. That’s the next step.

I’ve taught negotiation in the commercial world, in the corporate world, but I haven’t actually really done  a course or a podcast where I’ve talked about negotiation in relation to couples. And I actually think it’s such an important topic, so I’m delighted that we’ve decided that that’s what we’re gonna talk about tonight.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, agreed… Because I know that there’s even so much to even get to the landing place of being able to negotiate… So what do you see that is part of the prerequisite before negotiating. Like, there’s a process of just recognizing what each person wants… Like you said, being able to ask for it, kind of find your emotional balance… But what do you see that needs to happen before we even get to the place of negotiation?

Juliet Grayson: Well, I think every communication is a negotiation. You’ve just negotiated to get me to think about what we might need to think about before we get to a negotiation. I hadn’t got that in my mind until you raised that. So we’re already negotiating about the specifics of what we’re gonna talk about tonight… So that’s happening all the time, whether you’re a child, or an adult, you’re all the way through your practicing and learning negotiation skills, but you may not think of it like that.

Certainly, being able to have a clear sense of yourself, and know who you are and know what you want… And again, a lot of people don’t know that, an awful lot of people. I in my 30s really didn’t know what I wanted, and had to learn that… And people would ask me what I wanted… I remember my ex-husband saying to me “Where would you like to go for dinner?” and I’d say “Oh, I don’t mind.” And he’d say “Well, should we go for an Indian?” and I’d go, “Oh no, I don’t want an Indian.” Or he’d say “Do you want a Chinese?” “Oh no, I don’t want a Chinese.” I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn’t want.

So I think there’s a percentage of the population who are like that, and learning to know what you want is really important when you’re negotiating. It’s a bit like getting into a taxi and saying to the taxi driver “Don’t take me to–” I’m gonna do this in the U.K, because I’m in England… “Don’t take me to Edinburgh and don’t take me to Redding”, but the taxi driver has no idea where you want to go to. So in a negotiation we have to be able to ask for what we want, and know what we want. So that’s the first step.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, because half the time when people are reacting, like you’re saying, they don’t know what they want, or they’re really hyper-aware of what the other person is doing that they’re taking issue with.

So we’re imagining there’s a level of work that’s already happened, where people are clear what they do want, and there’s a conflict, where perhaps they want different things, or they’re looking for different aspects… Is that right?

Juliet Grayson: Well, that quite often happens in negotiation, doesn’t it? I mean, isn’t it lovely when it goes well, and everybody can get what they want? But I think there’s an interesting thing, because you get hard negotiators who love to be competitive and love to win, and love the confrontation… And then you get soft negotiators, who tend to concede and be too compliant. I used to be a soft negotiator, and then what I’ve found is I would get resentful afterwards, because I hadn’t got what I wanted. I’d have the ability to flip between the two, to be too compliant in intimate relationships; that would be my old pattern. Locking in boundaries and not being able to ask for what I needed. And then I loved being hard with people who I didn’t know. So if I went to a market, I’d love haggling in a market.

I remember being in Gambia in West Africa and walking away from a shirt that I really wanted, and I realized I was walking away from — the difference in what we were haggling over was 20 pence, which is about 25 cents. And as I was walking away, I realized that would probably feed her family for a few days… But I was walking away over 25 cents… So in fact, I turned around and went back and paid the 25 cents and bought the shirt.

So I conflict between being too soft in a negotiation and being too hard. But actually, what you need to think about is the goal is cooperation; to move from being an individual in a negotiation, to particularly when you’re in a relationship with someone, having the negotiation in a relational way, in a principled way, so that the goal of the negotiation isn’t victory, nor is it agreement; the goal of the negotiation is a [unintelligible 00:13:48.14] outcome that’s sufficiently reached in an amicable way. So the purpose is to find out “Can you have what you want, and can they have what they want?”

Dr. Jessica Higgins: That’s beautiful. Can you give us an example?

Juliet Grayson: Yeah. Well, there’s an interesting kind of technique that you can use. So let’s imagine just a silly example of two sisters who are in a kitchen, or two people who are in a kitchen, and they both want the last orange in the fruit ball. And there’s one orange. One option is that what you do is you half the orange. But there’s another way of going about it. And the other way of going about it is to pause and each person to ask themselves or the other person “What do you want the orange for? What will having the orange do for you?”

One sister might say “Well, it’s Halloween, and I want the orange peel to make those false teeth that you make out of the orange peel, so that I can go out in my Halloween outfit.” And the other one might say “Well, I want the orange juice to be able to use for the cake that I’m making.” So having what we call [unintelligible 00:14:58.03] in other words, having gone up to a higher level of “What’s the need behind the stated need?”, you can then often find that there’s another solution that will satisfy both people.

In fact, on this instance, one could have the [unintelligible 00:15:15.03] one could have the juice, and that serves them both and they can both get exactly what they need, rather than both of them having half an orange, which wouldn’t have given them what they needed.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: And do you find in couplehood that it’s helpful to be explicit about this, around what we’re doing, or what the goal is, and just to remind ourselves?

Juliet Grayson: Absolutely, because so often we expect our partner to know what we want. We expect our partner to want to give us what we want. And sometimes they want to, and sometimes they don’t. But asking our partners to mind-read is actually not — it’s not a good tactic, it’s not a good way forward. Usually, we don’t mind-read well. So it’s much better that we start to question our partner and say “So what do you want that for? What will having that give you?” and then “Well, what I want it for is this”, and then you can begin to — it’s a brilliant way of making people expand their range of possibilities, that you can begin to create new solutions that will actually… If you like, we call it “expand the pie of the negotiation.” So it’s more than just an orange, but you get new solutions that mean that everybody gets what they want.

I had a friend recently who was selling their house, and it was a very grand house that he was selling… And he’d had it on the market for almost a year. Eventually, he got a buyer who was giving him a very good price. He was very happy with the price. And it was all progressing well. But he was one of 11 people in England — I don’t know how you do it in the states, but in England we have these chains… So someone’s buying and selling their house, which allows them to buy the next house, and it all happens on the same day. But there are eleven people who are buying and selling different-sized houses, moving up or down, so that the whole chain would be able to complete and everybody would be able to move house. Am I making sense?

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah. Wow, yes.

Juliet Grayson: So that’s the way we do it in the U.K. And he came to dinner with us three days before that completion date had been set, utterly in despair, because the person who was selling the cheapest house, their buyer had dropped out. So what that meant is that no one was gonna be able to sell the houses, because that cheapest house wasn’t gonna get sold, so they couldn’t afford the money for the next house, and so on and so forth. So all 11 houses in that chain were no going to get sold.

And having been someone who for many years has done this chunking up and thinking about other solutions for a problem, I said “Nicholas, what about if you bought the cheapest house? You’re selling the most expensive  house in the chain. You’re getting a good price for it. You really want to sell it. What about if you bought that cheapest house and then you sold that in a couple of months’ time?” And he thought that was absolutely brilliant, went away, and two days later he bought the cheapest house, which meant the chain went through, and he got the very good price for his expensive house.

So one of the things with a couple is to help them learn how to brainstorm loads of solutions to get them around an apparently insoluble problem.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: And what do you think helps them start to get on that track?

Juliet Grayson: I think it’s about getting creative. You have to be open to thinking there may be other ways of solving this beyond those that you’ve considered. You have to get a flexible mindset that maybe there’s an even better way of solving this problem.

There’s also something about working together as problem-solvers. One of the things they talk about is how to separate the problem from the people. So if I sit opposite my partner and we’re having a negotiation about something, it’s like the problem is sitting in the middle between the two of us. So as I look at him, it’s very easy for him to become the problem. If I sit side by side with him and we gesture as if the issue that we’re talking about is off to one side, and we both look at this imaginary issue that’s off to one side, we become co-solvers, co-problem-solvers to deal with this problem that we’re trying to sort out. And neither of us is the problem. The problem is outside of the people. So separating the problem from the people, and starting to use “we” language. So if we did this and if we did that, rather than I and you, which makes it what they call positional, where we get stuck opposite each other.

So when we’re working together and we’re thinking together about what possible solutions there are, there’s a very powerful, different paradigm about how to work in a negotiation. You can expand the pie, you can kind of think about other things by offering concessions that are low-cost for you, so they’re very easy for you to give, but they’re of high value for the other person.

So years ago I used to run a riding school, and I had a manager who worked at the riding school. She came to me and she said she wanted more salary. And we really didn’t have any more money in the pot to be able to give her. But I’d heard about this horse that someone was selling very cheaply, and I said to her “I can’t give you more money, but what about if I get the horse and I arrange to buy that on a loan basis, and I can pay the bank back later on, and we keep it here at the riding school, so I cover the costs of the keep, and you school it in your own time and educate it to make it better, and then we sell it on in 3-months’ time or 6-months’ time and share the profit? How would that be?”

So it’s how can you do something — it didn’t cost me much to have an extra horse in the yard. I wasn’t going to need to pay for it just yet, because I was gonna borrow the money from the bank for that… And this was a way to keep her satisfied and keep her engaged. So coming up with these new solutions I think is something that’s a low cost to you, but a high value for the other party, so that you kind of have a mutually beneficial trade-off with each other. I think that can be very helpful for couples.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. It sounds like what you’re saying if you start using the “we” language, and you start seeing the problem separating it from the people, then you create an alliance. And there’s this fundamental trust or understanding that we care and we’re for each other, and we wanna be collaborative, and we wanna be allies. Is that right?

Juliet Grayson: Absolutely, absolutely. And another part of that is what in NLP they call second position. In NLP they distinguish, first position is me in my own shoes, absolutely knowing what I want, going for what I want, and if you like the archetype of a first-position person, it’s someone like an athlete who’s running a race, and you’re just coming up the line, and you’re gonna be the one that wins; that’s first-position. That’s me in my own shoes, knowing what I want.

Second position is me stepping into the other person’s shoes. So that’s me with empathy, to try and gain an understanding of what the other wants, so I can create options that appeal to their needs… So I get really curious and ask questions about what’s it look like from their perspective, and I really try and understand the subjective experience of the person that I’m talking to.

And then third position is being objective. So third position is kind of like standing on a gallery, or the helicopter view, where you’re kind of looking down and going “Oh, that’s interesting. Juliet is talking about this now.” So it’s an objective, not emotional, not connected in to the emotions of what’s happening, but just being able to very rationally look at a situation.

And in NLP they talk about being able to move between those three positions. We all have one that we prefer, and we all have one that we don’t use so much, and then we have one that we use quite a bit. So quite often, a hard negotiator will be very good at first position, and a very soft negotiator will be very good at second position. But the second position person tends to give away too much. So if you’re someone who spends a lot of time in second position, then you’re going to be over-generous, you’re gonna be compliant, and you’re going to tend to give away, and yield, and give the other person more than feels fair, and then possibly feel resentful afterwards.

In a principled negotiation, when you’ve separated the people from the problem, being able to go into second position with your partner and ask them questions to really try and understand what’s going on for them, and realize how different people are. That’s another thing that I think couples often don’t realize, is we are so different; and we are motivated by such different things. And sometimes, because it’s so obvious to me, I can’t understand how it’s not obvious to my partner that this is the best way forward. But for him, actually, it isn’t.

So the ability to move between first knowing what I want, second, really tuning into what my partner wants, and then third, looking at it objectively and deciding “Was this a wise decision?”, that’s a very useful model for helping couples to see negotiations from different perspectives.

I write about it a bit in my book, “Landscapes of the Heart: The Working World of a Sex and Relationship Therapist”, and I describe this first, second and third position… Because for years I didn’t really have a very good first position. I was very good at second position, and quite good at third position. So very good at feeling into someone else and knowing what they needed, quite good at being able to be objective, but really poor at knowing what I needed, and that’s been a journey for me the last 15 years, to really tune into what I need and know what I need, and then I can ask for it.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: And do you find that it’s helpful — or what helps couples that maybe have a skewed balance, in one maybe being more assertive, in that first position, and one being more comfortable in that second position?

Juliet Grayson: Well, I think recognition is the first thing. So self-awareness and being aware of your own patterns, and being willing to admit – “Actually, yes, I’m the one in this relationship that has a strong first position, and therefore I need to be more willing to yield, open up and be vulnerable, and soften, and not expect to win.” So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is that the person who’s stronger in the second position needs to kind of stand up for themselves. So they need to be able to kind of step up and ask for what they want and expect that it is okay for them to get what they want. It’s kind of like stepping into power, but not in a harsh way.

So often when couples first stand up for themselves, they do it in a very harsh way. And this is more about how to step into power in a relational way, and to recognize that if I’m the one that’s always in first position, and I’m the one that generally gets my way and gets what I want — well, I think Gandhi really summed it up; Gandhi said “An eye for an eye, and we all go blind.”

So if I’m always or more often the one that’s getting what I want, then my partner is gonna get more and more resentful, more and more angry… So again, it’s in our best interest as a couple to be able to support each other in getting what each other wants some of the time.

And there’s a very simple thing I often give to clients, and I say, when you can’t decide who should get what they want, when you’re just completely stuck and there isn’t an obvious alternative solution and you can’t expand the pie to make it bigger and come up with another option, then a simple thing to do is just to say, “On  a scale of one to ten, I really want this eight out of ten.”

So maybe we’re going for a walk, and — a couple I was working with recently, they had this one… They decided to go for a walk, and she said “I’d love to go for a swim in the river on our way home.” And he said “Let’s go for a cup of tea.” And they didn’t actually even discuss what they were gonna do, they just ended up going for the cup of tea. And later on, he said “I realize I got my way that time.” And I said to them, “Well, how would it have been if you’d said “I want to go for a cup of tea about 8 out of 10. I really want that today, in this particular tea shop; it’s this particular place I want to go.” Then she might have said, “Well, I want to go for a swim, but actually it’s a 7 out of 10 today.” Or it’s a 9 out of 10. And use that just as a guideline to help you decide who gets their way.

Of course, what they could have done is they could have chunked up what’s important about the tea. “Well, I want to be able to have a hot drink after our walk.” Okay. What’s important about the swim? “Well, I want to get some exercise and I want to freshen up after I walk.” And you could come up with another option. “Why don’t we take some chairs and a flask of tea and a piece of cake, and we can sit by the river and have a cup of tea?”

So again, being open to other ways to satisfy what you seem to want, because sometimes there are alternatives that you haven’t yet thought about.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Exactly. And I wanna comment – it sounds like this is all in the spirit of cooperation and mutual care for one another.

Juliet Grayson: Absolutely. How can you help me get what I want, and how can I help you get what you want? Because when we’re working together in that way and there’s a sense of generosity in the relationship, then — I think generosity is  so important in relationships. That’s going ot leave you with a legacy of positivity towards your partner, so that when they want something later on, you’re more likely to give it to them, because they’ve been generous to you earlier on in the day.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. Well, the question that’s coming up for me as I’m listening to you is what about the people that perhaps get stuck in an adversarial, or perhaps get triggered and they’re in that fight, flight or freeze and they  can’t perhaps access that generosity?

Juliet Grayson: So one of the things that I think is important is to think about what’s your goal in this negotiation. Is your goal to win and piss off your partner, or is your goal to lead you towards having a more loving relationship? If you keep the focus of your negotiation about “How can we conduct this negotiation in such a way that it enhances the love between us and our loving relationship?”, that’s a really important thing, and they call it “Keep your eyes on the prize.” So know that although you also want to get what you want, it’s not at the expense of the relationship. So how is what I’m about to say going to lead me closer or further away from my goal? In other words, is it going to enhance our wanting to be together? So that’s one thing.

If you are feeling triggered, then sometimes the best thing to do is actually to take a break and to recognize that “I’m too triggered to continue this negotiation. Let’s leave it an hour and come back.” But always agree when you’re going to come back. Don’t just say “We’ll talk about this some other time”, but then leave it. So agree when you’re gonna come back.

I think it’s important for couples to learn about how to manage their own anxiety; so they’re not relying on their partner to calm them down, but they’re soothing themselves when things do get a little bit tense in a negotiation. And let’s face it, it probably will, because often we’re negotiating because we do want two opposing things.

So how can you soothe yourself, and how can you be non-reactive to your partner’s reactivity? So when your partner starts getting upset, and perhaps going into a younger part of themself, and acting out, and getting crossed, or withdrawing a bit, how can I stay in my absolute best adult self, and be kind and tolerant and open, and not join them in going into that child state? That can be really tough, that can be really difficult to tolerate that discomfort. But if you’re able to do that, then that’s — tolerating discomfort for growth is one of those core skills that I think really help couples.

And then apologizing can be really helpful. When you realize that you have said something in a way that’s a bit strong, or difficult for your partner, “I’m sorry. I really don’t want you to feel bad. What can I do to help you feel better?” So really being aware of the relational aspect, being aware of  your own non-verbals… So it’s very easy to find yourself looking [unintelligible 00:33:20.09] or looking judgmental, and then reacting  to that… So it’s really important to be aware of your own non-verbal signals and make sure that you’re not giving out a judgmental signal, or trying to imply that someone else’s option that they’ve just created is  a load of rubbish, but to validate and support and be as open as you can.

Sometimes I’m aware that I can sound a bit patronizing when I’m in an argument. So I  might say to my partner, “Ooh… Did that sound a bit patronizing? I’m really sorry if it did.” So I’m checking myself, I’m not waiting for him to tell me; I’m checking myself and apologizing before it’s even necessarily landed with him. That kind of openness – it requires a lot of couples to be able to do that, but that openness and that willingness to use negotiation as a self-development tool in itself can be really helpful for couples.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Mm-hm. And as you said earlier, sometimes the awareness of what’s at play can really bring attention and intention to the goal… And as you’re describing how to approach if you’re feeling that reactivity – I mean, I can recognize there’s times inside myself where I’m like “Am I wanting to fight right now, or am I actually wanting to have a win/win, or am I actually wanting to get to a resolution?” And there’s times where I can genuinely feel I’m upset, and I don’t know that I actually — and that’s more in the past than it is now, but I remember that… And then also just that recognition, that break can be so helpful to calm the nervous system… Like, “I’m too defensive right now”, or… I do say this, “I’m finding myself getting upset and I’m having a hard time listening to you”, just calling that and then inviting a return.

And then thirdly, like you’re saying, one of the things that’s been really helpful is looking if my partner is acting in a way that I could have judgment about, or I can see he’s reacting, is to reframe that in the sense of “He’s hurting right now.” That’s when I’m in my balanced place, and if I feel myself reacting, then maybe I go to number two, or taking a break…

And then the last thing, of just staying in my lane, being responsible for myself. So often couples get caught in this refereeing each other, or taking offense, and somehow just — “Well, you did this, and then I did this”, and the blame game… So if I stay in my lane and take that responsibility, then I can really recognize my role and the moves I make to participate, and maybe things I don’t wanna be doing, so really cleaning that up.

Juliet Grayson: Absolutely. And the other thing is that John Gottman, who is a famous couples therapist, who’s written lots of books – he says that 69% of couples issues never get resolved; they’re perpetual problems, often based on a personality difference between partners.

So bear in mind that there are some things that — so a couple that I was working with a while ago, one wants a child and the other one doesn’t want a child. Those things are really difficult. You can’t have half a child. It’s a really challenging one.

And what he says – in order to get out of that gridlock, he says “Unrequited dreams are at the core of every gridlocked conflict.” So he says you need to identify the dreams, or the fundamental differences that are fueling the conflict, and then find a way that honors both partner’s dreams if you can. And in a way, I see that as that chunking up, which is that thing  we’re talking about before, which is what’s behind that. Why do you want that? What will having that give you? And that can be a really important way forward.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love what you said too about in the long run, if one person’s getting their way, really, it’s not serving the other person or the relationship; or what is happening isn’t in support of the other person. And that’s not relationship.

Juliet Grayson: Exactly, exactly. So bear in mind that every time you’re in a  negotiation, it’s a chance to be generous and enhance your relationship. But I’m saying that to the first position person, who’s likely to want to win; they’re the ones that need to be generous, because there’s a compliant one who’s more in second position, who’s probably over-generous, and they need to be able to tune into what they want, and stand up for themselves, and make sure that they get their needs met.

So it’s about honoring where you’re coming from and understanding that it’s really okay where you’re coming from, but in service of the relationship, both of you need to win some of the time. And that win/win that you were talking about.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Because the second position, if someone is feeling that it’s the generous and empathetic and loving thing to do is to be caring for the other – well, long-term we can see, as you described, the resentment or the unhappiness that starts to set in, or as you’re describing with John Gottman, these unfulfilled dreams… It really doesn’t serve, and it’s not the most loving.

Juliet Grayson: Exactly. The most loving thing you can do is know what you want. And then whether you actually get that or not… But to really be clear about what you want, and to state that clearly, so that your partner knows. For a second-position person, that’s an act of love. Even if your partner doesn’t like it, because they’re used to getting their own way, it’s a really valuable thing bringing the relationship to a greater level of health.

What I’d like is “What will having that do for you? What will that give you? How can we resolve this in a way that works for both of us? Let’s put that issue over there and focus on the issue together. Let’s work together and be problem-solvers.” These are all great statements and questions and ways of thinking about how you’re going to negotiate.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Juliet, do you find that pivoting towards these questions, like you were saying, opens up or expands the pie? I’m curious if there’s something that happens in the brain, because I know so often it’s the quality of the question; our brain starts working on that, and just opens up new terrain. Do you find that to be true?

Juliet Grayson: Absolutely. And I think it’s the quality of the question, but it’s also where you’re coming from in yourself when you ask the question. So if you’re coming from your resentful, triggered, younger self that’s remembering a bad experience from your past, either consciously or unconsciously, then even if you use the right words, the voice tone will be wrong. I’m sure your listeners know there’s been a lot of research that shows that words are a very small percentage of a communication, and the voice tone and the gestures actually make up far more in terms of how the communication lands with the other person.

I kind of learned this with my first husband – we’d have a row, and I was never very good at remembering what he’d said; I was just kind of emotionally in the row. And then afterwards, he would say “Well, I said this and this and this”, and it sounded so reasonable when he said it in a nice voice tone, but the first time around he’d said it with a kind of lashing out edge of anger, and that’s how I’d heard it, and so I’d been hurt by it. But when he said it again, I couldn’t find fault with it.

So the voice tone and the gestures that go along with what you’re saying is really key, and that’s down to where am I in myself when I’m making this communication. Am I in my best adult self, or am I in my triggered child self? And if I’m in my triggered child self, what do I need to do to soothe myself and calm myself and stop and take a breath, and let myself settle so that I can come back to my adult self and carry on the communication?

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Do you have any other tips around how to get into the adult self?

Juliet Grayson: I have a little model, again, that’s in my book… But it starts off with breathing. So the center of it always for me is taking deep breaths, and knowing that you relax on the out breath. So the parasympathetic nervous system gets triggered and awoken in the out breath, and that’s the rest and digest. So taking breaths in and a long breath out is a really good start.

Checking for yourself “Am I coming from my adult or am I coming from my child?” and when you realize that you’ve got triggered and you’re coming from your child, what can you do to soothe yourself? Most of us have techniques about calming ourselves down. It might be that we say something to ourselves that’s supportive. My little catchphrase to myself used to be “I’m doing okay, and you’re okay.” And kind of like just “I’m okay, you’re okay. We’re doing okay.” And putting us on an equal footing; so I’m not superior or inferior, but we’re equal, and we’re both doing our best. So just remembering that  can be a helpful way to bring ourselves back.

And then consideration – that second position thing, considering what your partner needs. Sometimes when you do that, that can help you soothe yourself, because as you said earlier on so beautifully, you recognize that your partner’s in a triggered state, and they’re coming from their young self. And they can’t do any better than they’re doing at the moment. So just recognizing that makes you be perhaps a little more compassionate or a little more generous towards them.

It’s also worth thinking about “In this negotiation, what can I offer? What can I give?” There may be something that’s not gonna cost me much to give, but where can I afford to be generous? If I want to use the car — maybe we’ve got one car between us, and I want to use the car. And I know that he’s been meaning to go and pick up his dry cleaning for three days… Maybe I say “Look, if I can borrow the car tomorrow, then I’ll pick up your dry cleaning for you.” It’s not gonna be difficult for me to make a little diversion and pop in and do that.

So what can you offer that makes the other one want to give you what you want? That  can also help them  to get back into their adult self.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: That’s so helpful. Juliet, do you find that people, when they start practicing these skills and this negotiation, that it helps build more capacity? Because as  you were talking to your friend with the house that was being sold, it sounds like you were very easily able to orient towards other ways of thinking outside the box; I’m just curious if this is like a muscle that you can build?

Juliet Grayson: Absolutely. It’s absolutely a muscle you can build. And the more you do it — so often we think that the box is a restricted box and it’s only so big… But once you start to take the sides of the box and imagine that maybe the box is bigger than you thought it was, and you just open yourself to that possibility and you — you know, something I love to do is to kind of brainstorm with my partner or whoever I’m negotiating with, you know “Let’s go mad here and just come up with all the ridiculous possibilities we can to solve this problem.” And we allow anything to go. So there’s no judgment over a stupid idea. Anything can go. And then out of that  sometimes pops an idea that actually isn’t so stupid, and turns out to be the one that really allows us to move forward and solve things. So yes, absolutely. Practicing, thinking of many, many alternatives can be really helpful.

And probably one of the last things to say is that when you’ve thought about those different alternatives, you need to evaluate them. A good way to evaluate them is to think “Okay, in the short-term what’s the positive of that option, and what’s the negative of that option? And in the long-term, what’s the positive of that option and the negative of that option?”  So you’re really thinking through in a very thorough way all the different pros and cons of each option, and then it becomes clearer which one is going to be the wise option for both of you to take. Because remember, our goal in a negotiation is a wise outcome, efficiently reached in an amicable way. That’s what we’re heading for.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that. And I’m reminded too, like you’re talking about, the third position – I remember when I had my brick and mortar practice I would ask couples to imagine putting the situation on the table, and if they could walk around the table to think about different options, but to be in service of both positions; so evaluating that it serves both. Because if it doesn’t serve one and it serves the other, or if you’re generating ideas and you’re evaluating the pros and the cons, it might viably be that “Oh, the long-term – I can see how that’s gonna be possibly a problem for you.” What do you think about that?

Juliet Grayson: I absolutely love that. I’ve never thought of suggesting that to a couple, but that’s a beautiful way to do the putting the problem outside the people. So you’re putting it on the table, the problem’s on the table, and you can walk around and look at it from different perspectives, different viewpoints. I think that’s just a really simple way to explain to people how to do that, so I love that. Thank you for that.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, and I just find in myself that if I’m contemplating with my husband about a potential solution, and we’re able to do that third position, I’m actually genuinely in service of him equally for myself; so I can think for him, or anticipate for him as he could do for me, maybe that we might not see in the moment, and that’s a great way to be in partnership, I imagine.

Juliet Grayson: Absolutely. And you’re doing the generating options, and they may be options that serve you, or they may be options that serve him… When you generate options that serve him, he’s gonna be more likely to want to generate options that serve you. There’s a kind of automatic reciprocity that begins to happen when we’re generous to our partner. So yeah, absolutely… I’m talking about all of this as if it’s easy to do…

Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs] Right.

Juliet Grayson: Let’s get real and say that in the heat of a difficult time in your relationship, or when you’re discussing something and you really disagree over whether the kids should go to this school or that school or whatever, it can be really difficult. But we’re breaking it down to the components, and I hope that what we’re doing today is that we just give some people a few more ideas about how they could go about it and get past the stuck position if they find themselves getting into that.

And once you start getting the problem outside the people and you’re working together as problem-solvers, then that changes the whole basis of the relationship. For me, it makes it collaborative, cooperative and sweet. I don’t know if you know the model of Harville Hendrix. I think it’s his model… He talks about there are three phases of a relationship; the ideal (which is the romantic, early phase), the ordeal (which is the power struggle phase), and the real deal, which is what you get to when you’ve kind of moved through that horrible power struggle phase that for some couples lasts six months or a year, and for some couples lasts 20 years or 30 years. So ideal, ordeal, real deal. And the negotiation style that we’re talking about is moving you into the real deal, where you’re working together, you’re collaborating, you’re wanting your best for your partner, your partner wants their best for you, and you both want to be able to stay an adult as much as you can. It’s beautiful; it’s an absolutely beautiful time in a relationship.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. Thank you for being real, and also holding the potential… Because as you said, this does require tolerating some of the discomfort, and there is this struggle that can be incredibly hard and painful… And that there’s a process of transformation and learning. When we’re talking, I almost feel this synergy that’s available when we’re collaborating and negotiating, and as you’re describing, it can be quite beautiful. Thank you so much!

Juliet Grayson: You’re very welcome. It’s really lovely to talk about this stuff and to share it, because some of these tips are quite straightforward and simple, but they can really help. And of course, if you’re not sure, if you’re having a difficult negotiation, then go and get a therapist to help you with it… But choose a therapist who’s good at negotiation, who can teach you some of these techniques while you’re in the therapy session, and help you get to a good solution with each other.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes… And Juliet, how do people get in touch with your teaching, and what you’re up to?

Juliet Grayson: So the main website is www.therapyandcounseling.co.uk, and then there’s a second website, which is www.landscapesoftheheart.co.uk. And one of the things that me and my team do is that we run trainings for therapists about how to work with couples. That’s a six modular training. We’re doing them online at the moment, so people can join us from anywhere in the world… And they’re usually in the afternoons in the U.K, so that works for America, or parts of America. We do them over three days, so it’s 15 hours over three days.

The six modules are — there’s the Fundamentals of Working With Couples, Meeting Your Partner’s Needs, Dealing With Affairs, Couples in Conflict, Communication Indifference, and Sex Arousal and Aging. So those are the six modules, and people can just take one module, or they can take all six, they can do them over one year, or five years, whatever speed they want. So we just put the individual modules on, and people do them in their own speed, and as their diary and finances and desires allow.

So we really welcome people coming and joining us on that if they’d like to know more about working with couples and get some training in how to do that.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: And where would that be found? On which website?

Juliet Grayson: That’s on the TherapyAndCounseling.co.uk. All the dates coming up are on that frontpage.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Nice. And what about couples or people that wanna access your teachings or your work?

Juliet Grayson: At the moment I have a waiting list, so I don’t have the space to take people on at the moment… But you can always contact me and ask. I also run personal development workshops using a method called the Pesso Boyden system of psychotherapy, which I just adore; I find it the most effective healing method, for healing early attachment issues, and the early traumas that people have suffered. And again, nowadays with Covid and all of that, I’m doing that online as well. And I’ll be starting new groups for that in the new year. So again, if you contact me via the therapy and counseling website, there’s a Contact page on there, so you can get a hold of me there. I love making contact with people and hearing from people, so feel free to get in touch.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Lovely. And what’s at the Landscapes of the Heart?

Juliet Grayson: So the Landscapes of the Heart is really — that’s the website that I produced when I wrote the book. There are loads of articles and things on there that I’ve written, and various resources that people can access… But the focus of that one is the book, Landscapes of the Heart.

I also have another one — because the other work I do, which we haven’t talked about, is that I work with people who commit sexual offences. So I think that as someone who was sexually abused, I think it’s really important to work with people who are abused, but I also think it’s really important to work with perpetrators, and to help them not to act out. And the way to stop abuse I think is to go upstream and work with perpetrators. So the other website I’ve got is http://www.sexuallyinappropriatebehavior.org. So people can go there and there are resources there for people who are struggling with inappropriate sexual behavior, also for family members of people who are struggling, also for people who’ve been sexually abused, and then resources for therapists who are wanting to do that work, or have got a client who might be looking at child abuse images, or something like that. So that’s another website that people might be interested in.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wow… What a wealth of contribution that you’re making… I so appreciate what you’re doing, and I will make sure to have all of those links on today’s show notes. Juliet, thank you for joining us today. It’s been such an honor.

Juliet Grayson: It’s been a pleasure, thank you so much.

I hope you have enjoyed today’s conversation, in looking at some of the helpful tips, tools to consider when negotiating with your significant other, to really achieve a win/win outcome. Again, if you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast and you can find today’s episode, 248, “How to negotiate skillfully to reach a win/win in relationship”, an interview with Juliet Grayson.

If you’re a consistent listener, just on a side note, she is partnered/married to William Ayot, who just shared with us about the power of ritual. So I will link that to today’s show notes if you’re interested in checking that episode out.

And lastly, if you’re interested in getting support in the way of group coaching, I would encourage you to visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Work With Me, and you can find all the details under the title Group  Coaching. You can contact me directly to set up a time if you’re interesting in learning more, to make sure it’s a good fit.

Until next time, I hope you take great care.

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