Influence is critical to learning how to manage conflict as well as how to compromise in relationships.

Accepting your partner’s influence helps your partner to feel supported, acknowledged, and significant.

Dr. Gottman found that couples whose relationships were more likely to prosper, shared power more equally in their relationship.

He expressed this by stating that for a relationship to thrive “they both have to share the driver’s seat.”

Learning to empathize with your partner and put yourself in their shoes is the first step in learning how to accept influence.

First, try to understand your partner’s position and search to find something to validate in their experience, request, or statement.

Next, ask questions for clarity so you can better understand the importance of their position on an issue. With further questioning, we usually find that the importance of the matter, is related to a core value or belief.

What is a request your partner has made that you are resistant to?

Ask yourself if the importance behind your resistance to the request, is more important than the significance that the request holds for your partner?

Go and talk with your partner about what you found.