When you’re married to someone you love — or even someone you want to love again — there is only one way to handle a disagreement over anything important. That is to find a Third Alternative, one you both like enough to happily walk away from your initial great idea that didn’t fly well with your husband or wife. The first step in finding a Third Alternative is the most...
I received this question by email recently, and it’s got three very familiar elements in it: I am reasonably neat and organized. Not obsessive and definitely not a clean freak but I like my papers organized and my home relatively tidy. My husband is one of the messiest people I’ve ever met. With his encouragement, I’ve organized his desk but it’s back to where it was...
As I wrote yesterday, I recently received a comment from Lorraine K, who wrote: Found your blog about a week ago and I have really learned a lot. I am wondering about third alternatives for future relationships because my S.O. and I broke up over two issues that I now think may have been avoided if we had found Third Alternatives. The first issue was about a few of his rude friends. My boyfriend...
I recently received a comment from Lorraine K, who wrote: Found your blog about a week ago and I have really learned a lot. I am wondering about third alternatives for future relationships because my S.O. and I broke up over two issues that I now think may have been avoided if we had found Third Alternatives. The first issue was about a few of his rude friends. My boyfriend didn’t want to...
I read about some interesting research recently that relates to Finding Third Alternatives. It showed just how much people like agreement and, even more, dislike impasse. Just labeling an option “Agreement” made people in a negotiating experiment more likely to choose it, even if it wasn’t their best option. But labeling an option “Impasse” had a bigger effect...
