Joe observes that when two people are fighting, they’re both doing the same thing: throwing shame at each other — “you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong.” But underneath, both are saying the same thing: “I want to be seen.”
“Two people in a fight — what both want is to be seen. And what they’re usually doing is throwing shame at each other.”
The mechanism of resolution is remarkably simple: one person stops trying to win and instead genuinely sees the other person’s reality. The moment someone feels seen, they almost immediately want to reciprocate. Joe describes fights with Tara that used to take hours or even a full day resolving in about 10 minutes once he learned to simply listen with an open heart and recognize her experience as valid.
The reason this works is that feeling seen is the actual need underneath the argument. The content of the fight — who did what, who’s right — is secondary to the relational need. Once that need is met, the urgency of the fight dissolves on its own.
“As soon as someone feels seen, almost immediately they want to see the other person, and so the fight just almost instantaneously resolves.”
Related Concepts
- Seeing their truth, not finding ‘the’ truth
- Every fight can bring you closer
- Feeling seen dissolves politics
- Shame stagnates behavior
- Seeing others is the counterintuitive exit from feeling unseen
- Fighting without shame transforms conflict
- Dropping shame is the prerequisite for seeing your partner
- Letting go of being seen allows you to be seen