Wednesday, February 17, 2016

What Are You Selling When You Argue With Your Spouse?

In listening to Zig Ziglar's The Secrets of Closing the Sale for the nth time, I was pondering his lessons with respect to my marriage. I love my wife dearly, she's simply the best for me in so, so many ways. We almost never argue, but once in a while we disagree on things to one extent or another.

A disagreement, seen from a certain angle, is a sales pitch. You're trying to get the other side to agree, to "buy" your position.

When you actually argue or disagree with your spouse, what are you really selling? When you get angry, you're selling this: "YOU'RE WRONG!" There's not too many people who are going to buy that willingly and if they do, you can bet you're going to be paying it back in the future.

Instead, what if you keep in mind that what you really want to sell is this: "I love you and I want to have a better relationship with you." That's something that almost any spouse would be happy to buy. I would bet that your approach to disagreements would be substantially different if you were asking them to buy affection and closeness. I think we all want that outcome in the end, but it's really easy to lose track of it.

There. That's as far as my thinking takes me for today.

2 comments:

Ilíon said...

"I love you and I want to have a better relationship with you."

But, that can *easily* be converted/perverted into "If you love me and want to have a better relationship with me, then you will agree with what I am saying, even though you believe (or know) it to be false."

If one doesn't worship the truth -- no matter the cost -- then, necessarily, one will end up serving the lie.

Ilíon said...

... another thing --

If a *man* were to try to pull "If you love me and want to have a better relationship with me, then you will agree with what I am saying, even though you believe (or know) it to be false" on his woman, *no one* would have any difficulty identifying it as dishonesty and "bullying".

But, if a *woman* were to try to pull that on her man, almost everyone condemns *him* if he refuses to fall for it.