Let’s break it down.

Competing

This negotiation style is adopted when the outcome is important to you and the relationship is not important.

Let’s take the example of bargain shopping. This is a case where the outcome absolutely matters to you. You want the lowest price possible. At the same time, you are probably never going to meet that shopkeeper again, so the relationship doesn’t matter. You bargain hard and don’t take no for an answer. This is a competitive strategy applied in the right place.

Avoiding

Avoidance is the strategy to be applied when neither the relationship nor the outcome is important to you.

I’m sure you’ve been to those uncomfortable family gatherings, where a nosy distant relative badgers you about when you’re planning to get married or have a child. This is a great situation to apply the avoidance strategy.

This is a distant relative, so you don’t really care about the relationship. You’re probably not going to keep in touch with that person. You’re also not interested in winning that argument or making them understand your point of view. Their opinions are not going to feature in the making of your life decisions.

So, the best course of action would be to politely nod your head and change the subject to whether they liked the food, and oh my isn’t the weather horrible these days! Completely avoid the conflict altogether.

Accommodating

This is useful when the relationship is much more important than the outcome of that particular conflict.

What do you do if your mom buys you an outfit that you don’t like too much? It’s a no-brainer, you’d wear it when you visit her. You’d rather let go of looking fabulous for one day than upset your mom, right? The relationship is way too important to be harmed by something as trivial as an outfit.

Collaborating

Collaboration is for when both the outcome and the relationship are extremely important to you.

Let’s say you have dinner plans with a close friend who is visiting from another country, but something has come up at the last minute and she needs to cancel.

It’s tempting to argue and try to force dinner to happen at any cost. The outcome is obviously very important since this friend is visiting from another country. We’re not in college anymore, we can’t just see our friends whenever we want.

However, pushing the argument in this situation would be a competitive strategy. And definitely not a good idea. Because — you guessed it — the relationship is just as important. The key here would be to understand what the other person is going through and collaboratively discuss whether to reschedule or find a different way to meet before she leaves.

Compromising

Compromise can be selected when the outcome of the conflict is extremely important to both parties. Neither is willing to take a step back, but you also recognize that you need to maintain a long-term relationship with this person.

As a product manager, I see this all the time at work. I strive to get the perfect design and flow for the user, while my development team is insistent on picking the flow that creates the least complexity in code. Both sides always have valid points and argue for their side. And the discussion almost always ends in a halfway solution.

The best negotiation strategies in a relationship

Now when it comes to your partner, I’m going to make a wild assumption that the relationship is always important to you. That means we can completely rule out the Competition and Avoidance strategies.

You cannot keep competing and “winning” against your partner. Nor can you avoid the conflict altogether. (You just sighed and said “I wish”, didn’t you?).

You could use a Compromise strategy in certain situations, but I personally think this should be used as a last resort.

This brings us to Collaboration and Accommodation. I will explain how I use these in my relationship. Hopefully, this will help you to do the same in yours.

Collaboration in a relationship

Last year, my partner and I were planning an international trip. We were geeking it out, as usual, making shortlists on spreadsheets, and using categories and scores in pivot tables to decide things. We got into a conflict at the very earliest question: Which country do we want to visit?

I was leaning towards Malaysia, Thailand, or Vietnam. His top choices were Germany or the Netherlands. You can see how the Venn diagram wouldn’t even fit on the same page, let alone have an intersection. We couldn’t even combine a couple of countries because they were on different ends of the world!

Normally, most people (me included) would use a competition strategy here, where each person tries to convince the other why their choice is better. And only one can win.

This isn’t a relationship-ending problem. But it does lower the investment of the “loser” (for want of a better word) in the trip. One person will be less excited about the trip than the other. One person will be less involved in the planning.

People often make the mistake of using a competitive strategy in their relationships. This is not because their partner isn’t important, but because they take for granted that nothing will happen to the relationship because of this one decision.

And it’s true, something as trivial as trip planning will not end the relationship. But the little things add up in the long run. This negotiation matrix helps you minimize these little things and bring goodwill to your relationship (which also adds up in the long run.)

So here’s what we did. We into the reasons for our choices. We went beyond “It’s a beautiful country” and “I’ve always wanted to go there”. We dug deeper into the conflict.

It turned out that I wanted to go east, because our previous trip had been to the west, and I wanted to explore a completely new culture. He wanted to go to a rich country that was sparsely populated. Being from India, that in itself is an amazing tourist attraction for us.

Once we realized this, we found the answer: Japan. The Venn diagram had overlapped. And what an amazing trip it was!

Photo from my trip to Shirakawa-go

Yes, there will be situations where the Venn diagram never overlaps. But out of 10 such situations, if you get 8 overlaps, you’re kicking ass at your relationship. After all, if you’re going to keep score, it should be a “couple vs conflict” score, not “you vs me”!

Accommodation in a relationship

When we go out anywhere together, he always drives. I volunteer to drive only when he’s not well. And whenever he gives me the keys, I make some sort of excuse to get out of it.

The reason for this is — I hate driving. Especially in India, where nobody follows the rules and the roads are crazy and chaotic. I drive when I’m going somewhere alone, and I’m a pretty good driver, too. But when someone else is with me, I’d rather not be the one behind the wheel.

When we first started living together, this issue came up a lot. Neither of us was happy about it. It clashed harshly with the equal marriage we were trying to create and stank horribly of gender roles.

After many such discussions, we came to realize that we were trying to force-fit an idea that wasn’t helping us. I hated driving while he enjoyed it. It caused anxiety for me, while it was as normal as showering for him. All our fears were about what other people would think of it.

When we realized this, my partner decided to accommodate and be the primary driver for us. The outcome didn’t matter much to him, since he enjoyed driving anyway. But the relationship mattered and he didn’t want to force something that was affecting me mentally.

 

It gets easier with time

It sounds like a lot of work to remember this matrix and apply it when you’re in the middle of a heated argument.

And it is a lot of work, in the initial days. But if you make the effort for the first 5–10 fights, it slowly starts becoming muscle memory with practice. Eventually, you’ll find yourself automatically thinking “What’s the outcome? How much does it matter?” and deciding on autopilot whether you want to collaborate or accommodate.

Let’s face it, you’re going to be fighting with your partner all your life. There‘s no escaping it. It couldn’t hurt to have a framework in mind to resolve things before the fight gets ugly!