Can Two Captains In A Relationship Run The Ship Together?

In our Love by Book (http://www.lovebydesignbook.com/) as well as many of our articles we talk about power struggles. One of the common power struggles include both couples in a relationship wanting to be in charge of the relationship, or what we like to call the Captain of the Ship. We have discussed in our Love by design Book how to develop systems to work with couples where one partner is the Captain and the other partner is the Crew but we have not gone over the question, can two Captains in a relationship run a ship together?

The answer is yes, if they have as many as possible of the following factors in their relationship.

1) The same values and visions

2) Understand that their partner has a good intent.

3) Have an interest and openness to learn new systems

I’ll go over each factor in more detail.

1) The Same Values and Visions

Having the same values and visions is what will determine whether the couple will fight like cats and dogs are not. Values can be described as something that is important to you. It is something that you are willing to focus on, and put attention and time into in order to maintain. A vision is what a person targets as a focus and future goal to move towards. It can be a way of life, a specific goal, a timeline or anything that moves a person towards something and causes a person to focus concentrated energy on.

In any relationship if a couple doesn’t have the same values and visions there will open and hidden power struggles as well as one or both partners not getting what they want.

When two Captains don’t have the same values and visions it can be explosive because both are dominant and unless they understand that there are others ways to get what they want other than forcing a person, they will continue to force the other person to do what they want to do.

Other personalities such as people who like to be a member of the crew can handle the Captain’s directive approach, but if another Captain is not on the same agenda, there is no way the other Captain is giving over the reins. So the couple spends all their time fighting and arguing and doing their own thing, so nothing is productive or is really getting accomplished. They are both subjecting themselves to a toxic and deficient environment. Yes, Captains are more immune to conflict and often enjoy it, but even they after a certain point can get worn down from the constant aggravation of the power struggle.

An example of this is a couple that Rob (Director/ Counsellor Centre for Life Management/ LMC Relationship Centre) sees at our Centre who we will can Roman and Pam. They are a married couple in their 40s with children. Both are very successful career people. Both of them are Driver Analytical personalities although Pam is also Expressive. To explain personalities, at our Centre, we have a Personality Chart that we use, that involves 4 basic personality types that can have 16 variations when the personalities are mixed together. To keep my example simple, the following is a very basic overview of the four main types (For an extensive understanding, check out our Love by Design Book at (http://www.lovebydesignbook,com/ )

Drivers: Are bottom line aggressive people who like results, tasks, control dominance and authority. They are independent, goal oriented, bossy, and sometimes even rude.

Expressives: Are emotionally based, love people, dominant and friendly, love appreciation, approval, centre stage, change their minds a lot, charming, humorous and fun. They have excellent people skills.

Amiables: Are friendly, like people, not aggressive, tend to promote harmony, safety, security, like to blend in and not make waves, accepting.

Analyticals: Analyticals like to work alone, precise, accurate, have rules, standards and procedures, finicky. Judgmental, critical and sometimes negative.

Roman is work and relationship centred. Pam on the other hand is work centred, family then relationship centred. Even though their values almost align, the problem occurs between the family centredness for Pam and the relationship centeredness with Roman which causes a constant power struggle. Since both of them are dominant personalities neither one of them are going to back down on what it is that they want to do.

Now contrast that to two captains (who are in their 40s) who have the same values and visions. Take my brother and sister in law for example. They are not clients; in fact they have never had any need to go for counselling. Both of them are Driver Analyticals, both of them are very talented and very successful careers. They got married in their 20s and had 3 children while in their 30s.

They love to argue with other people and always held positions of leadership in any occupation they had. Yet they never argue with each others. They get along like two peas in a pod. Why? Because they both share the same values and visions. They are always aiming for the same goal so no one is getting in the way other the other person’s needs or forcing the other to do something they don’t want to do when they don’t want to do it.

2) Understand that their partner has a good intent

The Competitive Adversarial Paradigm (C.A.P.) is a belief system that the world is scarce, there is a lack of abundance and not enough resources in the world for everyone, therefore everyone has to grab for the limited resources. They have been taught that the way to do that is to fight and compete for these limited resources and in order to survive and strive, they have to win. There is no such thing as a win, win, there is only win or lose.

The C.A.P., (which is what the majority of our society is in,) has a large effect on how one partner will view the other partner. Since they believe the world is a scarce place, people are going to be trying to take something away from them, especially if the partner in judgment is a Driver personality. One of the Driver’s greatest fears is not to be taken advantage of. Any actions that appear like they are being taken advantage of will come across to the Driver that they are dealing with a bad person, an enemy. The other personalities aren’t off the hook either, for an Expressive, if they think their partner is trying to make them look bad or intentionally trying to take their freedom away, they will judge their partner as bad or that they have a bad intent. An Amiable person will think their partner is bad or has a bad intent if they don’t promote harmony or are willing to go along with the Amiable’s balancing act. An Analytical will think their partner has a bad intent if they are not following the Analytical’s rules and order.

The key here is understanding. With the exception of dealing with a character disordered person, their partner is only trying to get what they want in the way they know how. It is nothing personal, it is not that they are intentionally doing something to hurt you and it is an abundant universe so you can replace anything that they appear to be taking away. As long as both partners understand this, then there will be no need to go into battle against each other, build up protective barriers or constantly be on the defense. This frees up energy, drive and focus to deal with their task at hand instead of battling each other.

3) Have an interest and openness to learn new systems

Even with couples that are not that compatible but decide to stay in their relationships for the time being can successfully get along, be functional and effective if they are open to new systems. This is the same for two Captains in a relationship.

At our centre we often have couples where both members are Captains and the difference between the couples that get stalled in their counselling and the couples that make progress are that the couples that are open to learning and accepting responsibility for themselves. Partners who believe that there is nothing wrong or they don’t have hand in the issues in the relationship or who are not interested in learning do not get anywhere.

Even with Roman and Pam, for the first three months of seeing us, Roman didn’t think he had to change or learn everything; it was Pam who had to change. The relationship counselling wasn’t going anywhere after three months, Roman tried blaming us saying that we didn’t have anything to offer them that could help their relationship. Pam was picking up our system, but Roman wasn’t convinced that he needed learn or change any way of thinking.

Just before Roman was about to call it quits with the counselling, he finally decided to be open to learning some of our concepts. He then began to understand and suddenly he couldn’t get enough information. Roman wanted to start coming in for individual counselling and even though Roman and Pam still had some issues to deal with regarding their value clashes, they were now both open to understanding each other as well as learning relationship mastery skills in order to be able to enhance their ability to both be captains in their relationship.

So then you may be asking, in addition to relationship mastery skills and a shift in their paradigm from the C.A.P. what are the most important understanding and or system that Captains need to know? For starters, Rob said the couple need to:

• Understand what their areas of conflict are including their values and visions
• The couple needs to setup up a structure where they have a division of labour or else they will step on each other’s toes.

With all of the above factors, two Captains can share the helm and have a creative, expansive, productive and yes, even peaceful relationship together.

Melody Chase is a Writer and Counsellor at the Centre for Life Management/ LMC Relationship Centre and Co-author of Love by Design. She can be reached by email at support@lovebydesign.com

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