It's the most courageous thing in the world to ask for the thing. You most want that you're afraid of asking for I am so excited today because I'm chatting with someone that I have heard about for years. His name is Max rivers and he is also called the marriage mediator. Isn't that a great title? He's written books on.On the topic around communication and mediation and his last book is called loving conflict, which I think is a fantastic title. And that's really what we're going to chat about today to actually have a reframe around conflict. Right? Exactly. So do you want to dive in right there and just tell us a little bit because conflict is so huge with couples. A lot of couples comes Tantra actually because there's conflict going on. On in there trying to resolve it. So what that's well that's exactly why I chose mediation instead of therapy as the modality for doing healing with couples because I don't think couples have a psychological problem when they're having conflict. I think they have a conflict issue. And in this culture, we don't know how to deal with conflict. I mean look at what's going on in the west right now and politically if if somebody disagrees with you they become your enemy. Yeah, and that's especially better if you sleep But yeah, you want to go to war with the people that you're living with and so I was finishing up a computer career when I met my fiancé now wife and we I was looking for a new career and one that would solve this issue first. I was thinking of the world actually and then realizing the same thing was happening in our beds that was happening in the wide world. How could we expect politicians to deal with conflict if we can't do it with the person we love I love most in the world. Absolutely. And so I stumbled on to mediation and my fiance and I took a 20-hour training. So the concepts of doing conflict resolution are not that complicated because in 20 hours, you can become a professional mediator. The thing is we're not taught those skills. And what happened was her and my relationship our communication improved a thousand percent. Wow. Because all of those places where we had differences, we now could get the benefit of those differences instead of descending into conflict. Wow. I love that so conflict being just a problem to be solved you actually found benefit in it. Exactly and it turns out relationship is about difference, you know, there was a Seinfeld episode where he goes out to on a date with a woman and she orders cold cereal for dinner in a restaurant and he tells us Friend George the next morning. That's what I've been looking for all along. It's me and by the end of the week. They're so bored with each other. They don't even bother breaking up. You're not looking you're not looking for you you have you it's looking for other you're looking for the rest nice. And so no matter what your list is what your conscious mind thinks you're looking for. It turns out our unconscious is looking for the Fulfillment of the Of the universe to come into you to complete you and also to have what you do have be given in love to another partner. Yeah, so I saw a love this idea. It reminds me when I got married many years ago. I'm a fire. I'm a triple fire sign and I fell in love with the man is all water. I always do and when we got when we were doing our uniting ceremony, I bought a ball of fire with a candle. He bought a bowl of border and we exchange them. To honor that we're here to give our gifts to each other that we're different but that it can actually be a gift but we realize it's important that you see that the difference is is something you're attracted to and even something you need exactly and you can see that's a great metaphor because you can see if you work them together you could have warm water and tea and soup and if you don't do them together, you get steam. Yeah, right most couples are settling for steam. Yeah. Few skills. So the skill set that allows and I my wife and I were using together. We were in small claims court then as mediators and we were trying to teach that to the clients claims court most people know each other and it was hard to do that because the new model of mediator is a third party a neutral third party and most people don't have mediators in their relationship. We happen to have two in ours, but most people don't we were bemoaning that at in the lunchroom at the mediation place and somebody said you want to teach them NVC nonviolent communication. And so we studied that and at first it seemed like he was right that NBC is mediation skills, but for the two people that are involved in the conversation it turns out as you go into it though, it actually took us deeper into the cause of conflict. Aha, which is really where The way I like to do my all of my holistic healing I don't like plucking at the leaves. I want to go down all the way down to the root. Yeah, and it turns out according to Marshall Rosenberg who created and we see everything we do and everything. We say is an attempt to get our beautiful life-affirming positive intended needs met and if you consider that everything your partner is doing and saying Is about that and something that they do doesn't seem like it's about that instead of attacking them for not doing it. Right or if a need of yours goes unmet instead of attacking them for not meeting that need what you want to do is get curious about. So where is what is the Beautiful Life affirming heart's desire, which is what I call me. It's now, what is that heart's desire. Trying to fight feel what your partner's needs are or you trying to feel what your needs are or is it sometimes a bit about always a bit of both. In fact strangely. This is the advanced relationship is a skill. I teach there are two sets of needs in your relationship. Always always always. Yeah, and if only one of them is being represented half of the world is missing. I love that. Yeah, and so if getting your need met becomes all you're thinking about even if you succeeded that I mean some people can scare their Partners into saying like this is the message of anger. The message of anger is we're going to talk about my needs and only my needs right and if you can scare someone into saying yes, but you don't really want your partner to say yes to that want them to say well, yeah. I'm interested in your needs but my Need to get met simultaneously and that's that possible. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because sometimes to The Logical mind it looks like for example the need for space and the need for connection is a typical one that comes up in couples right one needs more security and the other one needs more freedom often the masculine ones more freedom, but not always and so then in The Logical brain, it's like well that's conflict of needs. How do we match both when they appear to be so vastly different? So yeah. Yeah, I'm sure you give it to me your worst for the beautiful thing Marshall did was he separated out strategies from needs? So the need is the desire that the heart has Freedom connection, whatever and what you'll notice about those words is they they are a description of the truth of you not the truth the truth of you and they don't refer to other people they refer to your truth. Strategies what so first. Let me say a little bit more about needs as a result of that. They're incredibly flexible. So for instance the need for nourishment can be Mastered by anything that human beings can digest. I mean you certainly going to have preferences about what it is you want to eat but there's a thousand different things that can meet your need for nourishment. Right? Another thing about needs. Is that other people don't cause them. Our needs are our needs are caused by the need of our system of our spirit and our of our physical system in order to function and flourish. So the people don't cause the purging owning our needs because I know that in relationship we kind of project them and make it someone else's responsibility or someone else's fault, right? Yeah. We need to just own our needs. Well, there are two sets of needs according. To my theory the there's autonomous needs okay, and there are relational needs and and autonomously it's you really need to meet yourself. Yeah, there are some that are both as well like security but it turns out that you need to meet yours first. So if I have a need for security if I'm feeling insecure in myself, I will end up feeling insecure in the relationship and there. To security that can come from being in relationship. But if my partner is really trying to convince me that the relationship is secure but I haven't done the autonomous part of security yet that person is going to be pouring their beautiful intention into a bucket with no bottom. So our needs refer to ourselves and we need to understand them and at the very least be able to communicate them as the beauty of our desire and not As what the partner is doing wrong now think couples often do is when they get in touch with a desire, they immediately go to what I call their sticky strategy the strategy that they would most prefer to meet that need and they communicate their need as a strategy. The strategies are important. They have the way we get our needs met their the action we take to get our needs met but they only exist to satisfy need so Let's say that I have a need for nourishment and my favorite strategy for that this pizza and I say to you want to go out for pizza. That's fine. If you say yes we go out for pizza. If you say no I need to give up pizza right away because we don't really understand what we're asking for. When we ask a question question is really three parts. The first part is I have a need the second part is I have a strategy I'd like to suggest but the Ian I'm really asking is would that strategy meet your need right? And when a person says no, they don't not asking you to explain better why this meets your need my own need they're saying it's not meeting a need of yours. What should you be doing getting curious about what this need is yeah, she dropped this strategy drop down to the need level. Okay. Well my need was for nourishment. Well my need was for for And I wanted to go out to a movie and there's one in like 20 minutes. So what should we do? That's the place where it seems like needs are in Conflict. Yeah, they're not this is what's true about that. This is what's true about you. Then the next step is co-creating a strategy that will meet both of your needs. Ha ha ha. That's nice. Yeah, now that may mean that you know, there's a piece of place right next to the movie theater. And so we'll go there while you're getting the tickets. I'll get a slice or whatever and we may have to do them. Sequentially one of us may have to park our needs or whatever. But what happens is couples if you are fighting you are fighting at the Strategic level. If you have conflict you're at the Strategic level. What's the answer to that? Should you shout at your partner? Should you call them names? Should you try? Force them into your way of thinking no, you drop your strategies float down to the need level and have a needs based negotiation. Oh, that's so fantastic. I love it. What if you don't know what your needs are like, it's easy with pizza. Okay, I need nourishment. But what about like, I don't know. Sometimes we want we have a strategy that we're really aware of and we and the need can be a little bit curious little bit, you know difficult to really pinpoint why we Why we have that strategy. Do you have a way to help people, you know get in I do I do so, yeah in a capitalist hierarchical culture. They prefer that we don't know what our needs are. It's much easier to sell and control someone who doesn't know what their needs are. If you know, you have a need for rest and your employer says I want you to stay for overtime. You're less likely to stay for overtime because you know, you have a need for rest your much harder to control and your much. Harder to sell to they can't keep selling Eugene's just by slightly changing the form when you know, you've only had a need to be closed and you already are satisfying that mean so I think that's some of the reason also well, that's some of the reason why needs are hard for us to know. We're not taught them. it's actually necessary that you be able to name your needs all the time, but there are certain needs that show up for us in a form which is really detrimental to relationship and society and your own well-being and Marshall talked a little bit about this some of our needs we express as what he called moral judgments of the other person when you communicate your need as a judgment of the other person, although you are Focused on the trying to get this dissatisfaction off of you when you're on the receiving end of a judgment. It feels like an attack because it yeah. Yeah and you give an example of that excess sounds really interesting and I'm thinking how often couples have a judgment about one another I'm thinking of the typical you never take the garbage out or something like that and a tax into a launch and its really useless to get the need met, right? Right. Yeah, how would that be reframe? How would you yeah move that from your attack your me a judgment. Exactly. So the example you gave is really interesting too because it illustrates a point. I want to make what I think Marshall talked about how judgments are what he called tragic expressions of unmet needs tragic because if you express your needs as a judgment, you don't get it met you get conflict. Yeah. It doesn't hear in your attack what it is you're wanting the interesting thing about a judgment that I figured out over the years is that they tend to be the opposite of what it is. We're wanting. This is ID account with forbidden needs. There are a certain pile of needs that each of us have that went unmet so consistently When We Were Young or an earlier relationships that we've come to believe that they're forbidden to us, right and if they're forbidden to communicate Kate but you have the need and you have to get it out. What should you do to this psyche and it's kind of wild artistic crazy way that it handles things. It makes you say the opposite. So if I'm wanting warmth from you and intimacy, what I'll say to you is you and I first met you you seem like a really warm person, but you're kind of a cold fish, aren't you write that in that well and so by you by Form in which we communicate our beautiful needs we create conflict violence and re-create our family of origin in what was designed to be the situation where we healed that hmm, and it's the exact opposite of what it is. We're trying to we deeply deeply want to achieve maybe we're almost so afraid of not getting our needs but met that we kind of jeopardize it, you know, like sometimes we just recreate what we expect to find and you know and end up with that instead of breaking through it. You can watch we because we don't see people modeling pushing through their Terror and it is each of these little forbid needs is kind of candy coated with a coating of Terror. Yeah, and when you touch into it, the first thing it discharges is this gas into the air of Terror and it was the most courageous thing in the world to Ask for the thing you most want that you're afraid of asking for and unfortunately or fortunately it turns out that's the way you heal a forbidden need three successful requests for a forbidden need from your partner, which is met with a successful. Yes. The Forbidden need begins to dissolve. Wow, that's fantastic. So three successful meats and you could you could make that really conscious. Don't even say you know beloved as a child. This meat need was never met. Would you be willing to meet it for me, you know just saw that I start to heal that wound. You could kind of do that conscious exactly and in fact, yeah. In fact, that's what I do in the first couple of sessions with couples is identify their forbidden needs and what's because they were unconscious phenomenon. It's interesting at the end of like a session where I've talked a lot about a person's forbid needs often when they have them kind of hand on the Order leave they say no. I have the feeling we talked about something really important, but I can't remember what it is only because that's the relationship between conscious and the unconscious and I say it's okay. I stored that information in the hard drive, which is your partner. That's and that's why doing this work as couples is so perfect because first of all, they're designed to heal your forbidden needs second of all, they're the perfect projection for you to do. It's so that we can find out what your forbidden needs are the opposite of the judgment and third of all, they're the ones who can know what you're forbidden needs are and so when you either judge or are courageous enough to ask they can know that this is the place to trade really tenderly in this relationship and that mean even if it's a little inconvenient in that moment to begin the healing process. Yeah, right that this is the greatest gift we can give to the one that we love is to be Conscious of their forbidden needs and to know that that's an edge for them and you know because it's all so I assume as they listen to you. This is also the point where we get really triggered right? It's like you blow up really fast because this subconscious mind feel just got trodden on and you know, it's like there's a lot of charge right behind some of these things but that's another way to tell about a forbidden need because the charge will not be be equal to the situation. The situation will be light and the charge will be heavy that happens. That's a forbidden need that just blew up. So I'm not that crazy about using the word trigger because in this culture it has kind of a there's nothing I can do about that or it's going to be very hard to deal with that in my model you just time-traveled into the past and you're screaming at your mother and but my wife says that when I go into it In need she sees it in my eyes. She's very loving and gentle or sometimes leaves and I really going at it and she'll cut show come back and see the first thing she does is look in my eyes and she'll say oh you're back. Ah, so really does not true. Thanks for couples hard to know when you're when you're looking what I do use the word trigger, but I use it with transformation. Because I think it's one of the most useful things to learn about ourselves. Yeah, and I actually think of we work with those areas. That's where we can build trust. I believe you're saying the same thing that the very things was the biggest conflict in the worst triggers are actually the places that are that are calling us in and if we know how to go into them, we could be best trust and the most solid relationship ever rates. So it's not it shouldn't have these things. It's just that we need to know the tools to work with them to turn them around and to and to liberate. Love's that's trapped inside of them. Yeah. So I'm okay to say I am noticing I'm triggered the one I don't like is you just triggered me. Yeah, totally but because I'm a real self-responsibility freak because that's really work can get done. Yeah, so there's some other ways that you can notice that they're triggered was one of the things that you said always and never are part of the communication of a forbidden neat. Aha. So please do this and you never do that. It's Immediately the partner should switch out of the the content about strategy and shift down to oh, we've got a forbidden need here. Hmm, that's not talking to you. It's like your partner goes you never put the garbage out. That was my thing. Right? And then the other one instead of arguing about. Yes. I did it last Tuesday today. I think we're here. Let's see what that is. Right just shifts into a whole other level. Yeah. I mean the way I would actually use sponsored is I'm hearing that you're wanting more support. Is that right? So you do what we call make in guests and what's wonderful about making needs guests is my recommendation is that you try to make it slightly wrong. Oh really contribute needs the goal. The goal is for them to come to identify them consciously. So I had a client. That was I think about it and they'll go actually know what I really need is this that's right. See when you make a guess what they need to do is go inside and check to see if it's true. And that's exactly what we want them to do. We want them to go inside which is why I call my work embodied in VC. I think that Marshall was so embody. He didn't bother talking about the D piece of it but most of the rest of us when we get triggered we go flying up into our heads and start talking about our beliefs and our limiting beliefs and are upset and all of that stuff and that's all at the Strategic level or the Judgment level which are way up here. What I want to do and what I do is as a mediator is I make feeling and needs guesses from people who are about to get triggered or just in the beginning stages of getting triggered so that because they like just about to launch out their attack and I go so I'm wondering if what you're feeling is this and you I'm an NLP practitioner also, so I'll watch their eyes drop down as they look into their body trying to figure out what it is. They're feeling I've got them right where I want them in their own truth. Yeah. Yeah, so instead of going into projections and whatever they start to have a look at what's really important. What's really Underneath It All exactly so and You think it's therefore possible for just one person and a couple the you know, something that comes up that I hear from a lot of people I work with especially I do women's Retreats and they'll do all this work and they're like, but how am I going to go back to my husband? He doesn't want to do workshops. His you think it's possible for one person in the relationship to transform it or do you think it's just not a good idea to have a relationship that's like that. Well, first of all, I think if you're if you too Tune in to some of your forbidden needs wherever you are. You need to work that cuz that's your material. And if if one person if two people are tangoing and one person stops tangoing, at least you can't complain that we're tangling all the time together doesn't guarantee. The other person is going to stop dancing and it's I mean the reason I do couples work because I believe that that's the an amazing configuration for doing Co healing E of this stuff so the answer is if you are the only one working do your work. You know, I've created a very low bar on the work that I do. My first session is guaranteed. There's no charge of either party says this wasn't any good. So you're wasting is an hour and a half. And so I've had a lot of people drag their Partners in and how could their Partners resist because there's no charge and I go after that partner the whole session getting their needs met because that's really what this is about, right? They're expecting me to join with their partner and gang up on them. And what I'm going to be doing is trying to satisfy their needs because that's the source of all of our satisfaction. Yeah. Yeah. So actually they're going to want to come back for more because finally someone's hearing their deep needs and that fulfillment is such a natural longing for us as humans, isn't it? It's like fulfillment is peace. Yeah, so at the end. Of the guaranteed session. I say I stopped five minutes early and I say, okay. So this is a guaranteed session. Did this have any value and the one who was dragged in always speaks up first. Yeah. This was great. That's fantastic. I love it think of all the energy psychic energy you using fighting or walking on eggs or whatever it is. You're doing while you're in the field of battle. Imagine what it would be like to live in what Marshall called the field of non. Judgment where I mean, I've been in a relationship for 15 years and I haven't been wrong in 15 years. That's a great line. There are there are times when I haven't met her need and she communicates her desire but you know in most relationships, that would be me being bad or wrong. Yeah, majan being never being bad or wrong ever again. Yes, love and them never be wrong for you. Yeah, nice so want for a couple said something I so want I know. Really on the same page here. I also love to work with couples and I love seeing when conflict can be dropped and love can break through because we have the potential that coupledom can be the greatest source of choice in our lives. Then it can also be a battle zone for years and years on end. So it's it's just wonderful to hear your words music to my ears. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this incredible. Insightful tips for a couple's it's really profound and I think it's going to help a lot of listeners who are listening to this. Yeah, I hope so so they can go to my website and watch the video of clients make an appointment with me. I do all my appointments over the Internet. Most of my appointments are worldwide super and if you're a Healer and you work with couples on my website, you can look into the training that I'm doing. I'm going to be teaching people how to This into the process that you're already doing. So if couples going to conflict instead of spending a lot of time dealing with that because I only work the maximum of six sessions with couples and usually I'm done in 3, so this will be a very fast way it is just a hundred and eighty degrees just turn them around from conflict back into the return of effortless love a fantastic. I hope to join you on your training. I think it would be a great piece to add into all of my potential work. Glad that you're also working with Tantra and fusing it all together. It's just what the world needs. Yeah. Thank you so much for everything. You've said and for all the work that you do in the world. I will be posting all the links for everybody so they can find you great. This is fun. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Bye.
How to deal with conflict in your relationship? For many people, arguing takes the fun out of being in a relationship, and can even be the cause for the whole relationship to fail. Marriage Meditator, Max Rivers, explains that although conflict can ruin relationships, it also can actually take your relationship deeper. You simply need to know how to transform it. His explanation is that we argue on one level, but resolve on another. Trying to resolve an issue at the level at which is causes conflict is actually not going to work. Because we need to get underneath into the underlying issues. Once a couple know how to navigate to the underlying layers, then the exact same issue can actually open both of your hearts to deeper levels of compassion and understanding. Together you can start to build trust instead of torment. In this interview, Max shares the steps to take to make this shift. * How arguments can be retreated over and over again because we are at the wrong level for resolving it. * How to access that deeper level and communicate from there. * Non Violent Communication taken a step farther, into understanding the mystery of forbidden needs. * How we attract the very person who can trigger us, and why. How to let those triggers take us deeper into self-understanding. * The secret of how never to be "wrong" in your relationship. * How to build a relationship that fulfills both people. NOTE: There are a couple of small audio delays due to failing internet, however the information is still clear. 