The Direction of Destruction - Winning

Guest Post for Bring On Lemons by Dr. Leona Stucky

Power struggles often provoke couple or families into therapy, especially when one person wins most of the time. Typically, the more one person wins, the more dysfunctional the couple or family will be. No one likes to lose all the time and winning often comes at the price of damaged relationships.

So I ask each family member, “What does winning mean to you?” Frequently members will say, “It means I get my way. They let me get what I want.”

“Does winning come at a heavy price?” Now they look confused. The ones who seldom win often struggle because the typical winner is a poor loser and will make their winning experience miserable by using resistance tactics or displacing disappointment. Other than that, they aren’t so sure what the price of winning might be. But, to some extent, they have already expressed it. They all felt locked into unsatisfying dynamics, feeling resentful and unhappy, even the winner.

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Memoir

In the abusive relationship I described in The Fog of Faith: Surviving My Impotent God, most readers felt, at the start of the story, that I’m the loser and my partner is the winner. But that, in the long run, was not the case.

Whenever people persistently force their will or their way onto others, whether by physical or psychological ploys, they are paying a price for winning that will, in the end, be too high for them to be happy. Too high to allow them to gain a solid and satisfying sense of who they are. In those situations all parties are injured and the winner is also a loser.

In my case, though Ron could get what he wanted almost every time, his achievements made him less attractive, less satisfied with himself and with me, and less knowledgeable about the things that matter most to us humans – like being loved, being in tune with another, being capable of enticing another, being right for relationships. By winning, he lost the sense of being a warm and good human being. It made him feel bad and, soon enough, it deprived him of everything he thought he had gained, and more.

Famous Examples
Bobby Bare, the writer and composer of The Winner, tells of a young upstart challenging an older wiser guy who is a known successful fighter. Rather than taking it to the street, the winner reveals to the younger man what winning means – like losing a few teeth when you break the other guy’s bones, wooing the other guy’s wife only to discover you can’t stand her, and being drug into defending your title whenever a young-hopeful wants to take you on. After a litany of ‘winning’ consequences, the young man leaves the bar convinced he doesn’t want to be a winner.

Mark Twain, in the shortest story he wrote, The War Prayer (https://warprayer.org) made a similar case about winning war. Those who start war with patriotic fervor and a flourishing prayerful appeal for winning, he suggested, are expounding half-truths.

What if the prayer they uttered included the other half and sounded like this, “O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;. . .”

Sometimes realizing the full impact of winning makes us smart enough to choose another course.

Mark Twain was aware that The War Prayer might create a furor among his following. He published it after his death. I’m guessing that today some blog readers are willing to explore what winning means to them, and that any furor will be manageable.

To Be List
In my thirty-plus year psychotherapy practice, I have discovered many patients who developed satisfying lives by being a gentler version of themselves and employing an unusual winning strategy.
• They didn’t enter the fight but rather learned patience to await a suitable solution.
• They weren’t afraid to be goaded-on or laughed-at. They followed their own wisdom voice.
• They often reframed contests to enlist cooperation.
• They genuinely offered care for the other party’s well-being and attempted to experience the conflict from that party’s perspective rather than vilifying or dehumanizing them.
• They avoided battles of wills by using similar coping mechanisms parents use with three year olds, by redirecting and offering other opportunities.
• They offered workable compromises and compassion whenever possible.
• They insisted on fair play and while they were happy to come in first, they were also willing to take-it-on-the-chin sometimes.
• They were aware that projection is often the culprit that creates enemies of others and therefore they realized that many battles could be fought internally and didn’t need external representation.
• When they were angry, they contained their external reactions until, not captive to their amygdala-brain, they regained their rational functioning.
• Thus they presented a strong case for their position but also were open to hearing the other side.


Final Thoughts
When winning means mutual gains and losses, it means enduring satisfaction with oneself and others. It offers a lasting peace.

We might want to ask ourselves what kind of winning propositions our own lives represent. In which direction are we going?