Susan and I have a new method for fighting.

We start with her expressing what is pissing her off — pure stream-of-consciousness thoughts, feelings, memories, plans, images, etc.

When she is done, I steelman her grievances, speaking as much as I can from her perspective — as if she were addressing me. I attempt to method act her point of view, adding sarcasm, emotional digs, humorous abuse and expressive flourishes to indicate insight into her feelings as well as her thoughts.

Then Susan joins in and piles on, with additional points I neglected to mention, which I integrate into the overall argument.

Essentially, we collaborate on kicking my ass as thoroughly and brutally as possible, until she feels everything has been said as thoroughly, clearly and forcefully as possible. She tells me that this process helps her feel thoroughly understood.

Only after she ratifies my understanding do I try to answer her points. Obviously, it’s pretty easy to steelman my own perspective, since it’s the perspective that persuaded me.

Then we try out possible resolutions of our differences. For each candidate possibility we do the same steelmanning, method acting and collaboration until we find a shared perspective and common ground to use as a new point of departure.

This is essentially polycentered design applied to domestic conflict.

I feel fortunate to belong to a two-person organization with this kind of collaborative culture.