On Winning and Losing

 Who Won?

It’s a fair question after a disagreement, and most of us know the answer. One of us made the better point. The facts lined up. One of us was right, and the other was… well, you know, that other word. The other went quiet, conceded, or just gave up and walked into the other room. Score one! (Finger motioning to the scoreboard.)

And then the evening goes cold. Dinner is polite but quiet. Someone checks their phone a little longer than usual. Someone sleeps closer to the edge of the bed. The win doesn’t feel much like winning.

Same Jersey

I grew up playing football, basketball, and baseball, and one lesson came early. Coach never approved of celebrating beating a teammate in practice if the team lost on Saturday. You can be the best player on the field and still walk off a loser if the scoreboard says so. The team wins or the team loses. “There’s no I in TEAM,” Coach would always say. That’s the deal you sign up for when you put on the jersey.

Marriage is the same deal. In my office, I have a line I’ve said more times than I can count: You’re both wearing the same color jersey. You’re on the same team. If one of you loses, you both lose!

My wife loves games: cards, dominoes, board games. She played all sorts of games with her grandparents. Her Grandma B, Vivian (referred to as V by her husband), was legally blind, but, man, could she spot a card dealt or pair up some dominoes with just the right timing to win. My wife learned to be competitive in the games she’s brought to our table. I’ve learned to watch her closely.

Those are finite games. They have rules, a first and last hand, and a winner. That’s part of the fun.

The philosopher James Carse drew a distinction I find helpful for marriage. A finite game is played according to agreed-upon rules, with the object of winning. It ends when someone does win. An infinite game is played for a different purpose: to keep the game going.

Marriage is an infinite game. There’s no final score, no last hand where someone gets declared the winner. You succeed at marriage by staying in it, together, and playing in a way that helps both of you want to keep playing. Crush your opponent at cards if you like. Trounce your spouse in a contest of wills, and you may damage the only game that really matters.

And simply keeping the game going isn’t enough. A marriage can endure without flourishing. The goal is to build a shared life in which both people can grow in health, happiness, toward fullness of life, growth, becoming our best self, and holiness.

Win/Win Isn’t Compromise

When couples hear “win/win,” many assume I mean compromise. You give a little, I give a little, and we meet in the middle. Sometimes that’s the right answer. But compromise can also mean each person walks away with half of what they wanted and a quiet sense of having lost something. Two half-losses don’t necessarily add up to a win.

Win/win asks a different question. Not “How do I get my way?” or even “How do we split the difference?” but “What outcome is good for you, good for me, and good for us?”

That third interest matters. In every disagreement, there are three interests at the table: yours, mine, and the marriage’s. When couples lose sight of the third, the conversation becomes a negotiation between rivals. When they keep it in view, it becomes a problem two partners are solving together.

When I listen to couples in counseling, In my mind I’m developing three treatment plans: one for each person and one for the relationship itself. All three need attention and nurturing.

Notice these three variations on winning. Both of us at the same time in the same activity is one. It is good when couples know which activities they both enjoy and make room for them in their lives. This is a good place to apply the old shampoo bottle advice; lather – rinse – repeat.

We know that most of the time, though, two people can’t go through the same doorway side by side. Sometimes it’s your win and my neutral. You get something that’s important to you, and I don’t have a particular stake in it. I may not get my way on this occasion, but I’m genuinely glad you do. Your win becomes a win for me because your happiness matters to me.

This is where generosity enters the picture. If I can celebrate your good fortune without keeping score of what I didn’t get, we both benefit. Today you get the win. Another time, I might. Over time, the balance can work out just fine, provided we aren’t keeping a running ledger of every concession and disappointment.

John Gottman’s work on relationships offers a useful image here: a kind of emotional bank account. Our everyday interactions make deposits or withdrawals. Kindness, interest, affection, appreciation, and responsiveness build a reserve of goodwill. Criticism, contempt, and repeated disappointments can deplete it.

When that account has a healthy balance, we have something to draw on when one of us doesn’t get our way. We can trust that the relationship remains good even when the immediate outcome isn’t what we wanted.

There is a third kind of win/win worth recognizing. Sometimes a spouse has an interest the other simply doesn’t share. One of you wants to pursue a hobby, attend an event, spend time with certain friends, or explore something personally meaningful. The other has little interest in participating.

If the activity is ethically sound and consistent with your shared responsibilities, the win doesn’t require both spouses to participate. Sometimes the most loving response is, “Go enjoy yourself. Come home and tell me how it was.”

One spouse gets to enjoy something meaningful, and the other gets the satisfaction of supporting someone they love. The shared win is not in doing the same thing but in encouraging each other’s flourishing.

Some decisions, of course, affect both spouses profoundly and require genuine collaboration. The point is that being on the same team doesn’t require identical preferences or identical participation in everything. Marriage health can be like the basic nutrition advice to put a variety of colors on your plate. Protein, vegetable, and grain can be those common shared experiences, shared experiences preferred by one and other experiences shared afterword.

The Problem Is the Opponent

Healthy couples still disagree. I want to be clear about that because some people think a good marriage means peace and quiet all the time. It doesn’t. What changes is who the opponent is.

In a same-team marriage, the problem (challenge, obstacle, external circumstance) is the opponent, not the spouse. In warfare, there is a danger if you surround the enemy and find yourself in the pathway of crossfire. Sometimes it’s referred to as “friendly fire.” I’ve heard those who’ve been there say that “friendly fire is not so friendly.” In marriage, when we fire at the problem without regard to where our partner stands, we’re likely to hit the person instead of the problem.

The tight budget, the schedule that doesn’t work, the teenager who’s struggling, the aging parent who needs more help: these are real challenges. They deserve real effort. But the successful couple faces them shoulder to shoulder, not face to face in this instance.

When we drift off track, the question becomes, “Who’s responsible for this mess?” or “I didn’t have anything to do with this.” It should remain, “What are we dealing with, and how can we work on it together?”

I sometimes ask couples to try it physically. Instead of sitting across from each other to talk about something hard, sit on the same side of the table, with the problem in front of you both. Put it on paper if you need to. It sounds simple. It changes the conversation more often than you’d expect.

Two Are Better Than One

There’s a passage in Ecclesiastes I return to often with couples:

“Two are better than one: They get a good wage for their toil. If the one falls, the other will help the fallen one. But woe to the solitary person! If that one should fall, there is no other to help. So also, if two sleep together, they keep each other warm. How can one alone keep warm?” (Ecclesiastes 4:9–11, NABRE)

That’s the case for the same-team marriage. Two people together share the reward of their work. When one falls—and we all do—the other is there to lift them up.

Not to point out how they tripped. Not to remind them that they were warned. No, to lift them up.

You are each other’s help, not each other’s opposition.