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When you’ve been wronged, it’s especially important—even though it can be really difficult!—to commit to practicing unilateral virtue, as we explored in chapter 24 (“Take Care of Your Side of the Street”). Know what your own Dos and Don’ts are. With certain situations and people, it’s helped to remind myself of specific “instructions,” such as: Stay focused—don’t pursue their distracting accusations. Keep breathing. Stay measured and to the point. Don’t feel that I need to “prove” or justify myself. Also tune into the feeling of being calm and centered.
If you are going to be interacting with this person again, think through how you’d like to conduct yourself in specific situations, such as a family gathering, a performance review at work, or bumping into an ex- while you’re with your current partner. You can mentally “rehearse” skillful responses to different things they might say or do. It might seem over-the-top, but practicing these in your mind will help you actually do them if things get intense.
Try to stay out of quarrels. It’s one thing to work with someone toward the resolution of an issue. But it’s a different matter to get caught up in recurring wrangles and squabbles. Quarreling eats away, like acid, at a relationship. I was in a serious relationship in my mid-twenties, but our regular quarrels finally so scorched the earth in my heart that the kind of love needed for marriage couldn’t grow there.
If the other person starts getting fiery—speaking more loudly, getting provocative, threatening you, blasting you—deliberately step back from them, taking some long slow breaths, and keep finding that sense of calm strength inside yourself. The more out of control they get, the more self-controlled you can be.
Much of the time, you’ll realize that you just don’t have to resist the other person. Their words can pass on by like a gust of air swirling some leaves along the way. You don’t have to be contentious.
Your silence does not equal agreement. Nor does it mean that the other person has won the point—and, even if they have, would that actually matter so much in a week or a year?
If you find yourself driving, driving your point home, insisting that you’re right and they’re wrong, speeding up, coming in hot with guns blazing . . . try to have a little alarm bell go off inside that you’ve gone too far, take another breath, and regroup inside. You could then say what’s on your mind in a less aggressive or allknowing way. Say less to communicate more. Or you could stop talking, at least for a bit. I definitely have a tendency to hammer my point home, and then I try to remember the acronym I heard from a friend, WAIT: Why Am I Talking? (Or WAIST: Why Am I Still Talking?!)
You might acknowledge to the other person that you’ve gotten into a kind of argument, and then add that this is not what you really want to do. If that person tries to keep up the fight, you don’t have to. It takes two to quarrel, and only one to stop it.
If you need to, stop interacting with the person who has wronged you—for a while, or permanently. Leave the room (or the building), get off the phone, stop texting. Know what your boundaries are, and what you’ll do—concretely, practically—if someone crosses a line.
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