Raise your hand if you ever take the blame on yourself when you are at odds with your partner. If you raised your hand, you might find this article irrelevant. So, just scroll down and share your killer strategy.

For those who cannot take the blame, rest assured that you are not alone. It is pretty common not to take responsibility in a fight. Indeed, when feeling angry, we ignore that our thoughts may be faulty, just because what we care about the most is to be right.

In his book “Feeling good together: the secret to making troubled relationships work”, eminent psychiatrist David D. Burns, MD, describes all possible cognitive distortions our mind creates during a conflict. However, as Burns points out, the real problem is not falling into these biases but the strong desire to stick to them.

It feels good to think about ourselves as righteous and moral, doesn’t it? Especially in a conflict. What is worse, the conflict goes on and on because cognitive distortions get reinforced. They start a toxic circle that leads to overwhelming emotions, negative reactions, and other cognitive distortions.

Here is a list of the ten possible distortions, in case you want to become an expert.

Realizing we are biased in a conflict is important but not enough

Unfortunately, being aware of making thinking errors during a conflict is not sufficient if you are not willing to take your share of responsibility. Reframing the way of thinking is pretty hard when we hate to be wrong… which happens very often when we are at odds with someone. We need to dig deeper within ourselves to understand our real motives.

It is crucial to understand our real motives

To help people in conflictual relationships, Burns developed a new form of therapy that, besides reframing distorted thoughts, considered also motivation in the equation.

After a few sessions, people were able to realize a difficult truth: they were not so motivated to regaining intimacy with their partner, as much as they were interested in feeding their pride, their sense of fairness, their desire for control. They just wanted an expert (the therapist) who finally remarked how good and right they were.

There is an impressive amount of evidence suggesting how typical some of these psychological needs are in conflictual relationships and why they compete with intimacy. These are two common personal needs competing with love:

• The need for fairness
• The need for revenge

Turns out a “first-order” need for fairness is affecting your relationship

In their study, Brosnan and de Waal describe the trade-offs between the sense of fairness and the need for long-term cooperation with a partner. Brosnan and de Waal suggest that our ancestors have developed a second-order sense of fairness. They were willing to give up a benefit to reach equal outcomes and stabilize valuable, long-term cooperative relationships.

For our ancestors, the sense of fairness kicked in also when they were getting more benefit than their partner (second-order sense of fairness), not just when they were treated unequally (first-order sense of fairness).

To save their long-term cooperations humans adapt to a higher-level sense of fairness.

This more sophisticated sense of fairness is unique to humans and close primates, like apes. Indeed, it requires the ability to think about the future, and the self-control to turn down an immediate reward. This means that engrained in our nature is the ability to predict equal and fair outcomes with our partners, considering the reiterative nature of our interactions. However, some evidence suggests a one-sided sense of fairness is still strongly present in our modern society and is detrimental to relationships.

People with a high sense of entitlement have a strong perception of being treated unfairly in a relationship in comparison to what they deserve. In a study enrolling a sample of 195 women (18 to 60 years of age), those with an extreme sense of entitlement were more likely to adopt destructive conflict strategies with their partner (for example verbal aggression, control, or dominance). Women with a balanced sense of entitlement (I deserve to the same extent he/she deserves) were more likely to adopt compromise and negotiation as tactics to overcome conflict.

The need for revenge

A second need competing with love is the need to hurt someone as much as they did with us. Interpersonal conflicts can be exceptionally painful when on the opposite side there are those whose opinions we care about the most. Interpreting their comments as negative remarks makes us feel lonely and vulnerable. We might start to perceive our partner as a total stranger. When this happens, there are different trajectories we can take. Some people react by forgiving, some others with a need f0or emotional revenge.

A study shows that people with low self-control resources fail to inhibit retaliatory and aggressive impulses. In the article, engaging in drinking behavior is the cause of self-control exhaustion. In other words, when we finish our self-control resources, we are more likely to engage in revenge acts. Namely, we reiterate anger, verbal aggression, and refuse to forgive.

Drinking is not the only way to deplete self-control. Being mentally fatigued from working late hours can drain our self-control resources. In a study conducted on a sample of 900 people, self-control exhaustion due to protracted work duties led to difficulties in attending after-work activities, especially family-related.

What does it take to control the need for revenge?

People in healthy relationships might have the answer. They might strategically decide not to completely deplete their reserves of self-control. How? They might try to maintain a healthy work-life balance. They intentionally put their phone off when they are with the family. They might prefer to go to sleep instead of engaging in fatiguing mental tasks after dinner. A good night’s sleep is an effective way of restoring our self-control resources.

If rather than spending resources in blaming the other person, we focus on reformulating our sense of fairness and finding a balance between work and personal life, we will notice that along with our attitude, also our partner’s attitude will change. So, bottom line, the other person starts changing exactly when we start changing!

Bear in mind:

1. Blame your partner only if you want to destroy your relationship. Otherwise, taking responsibility is a better move. You can make things work if you are in control.

2. Adopt a two-sided sense of fairness. If you find it hard, try to envision a long-lasting future together: in the long run, you’ll be equal.

3. Don’t deplete your self-control resources, you need them to think clearly. Or at least, avoid engaging in complex discussions with your partner when you are exhausted.

Being right in a conflict is not so beneficial, after all. If we want to build a healthy relationship, we have to be willing to practice some modesty and reconsider our priorities. Knowing is not half the battle. We need enough motivation to put a good habit in place and commit to it.