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Key points
- The "youmeus" question: Ask yourself whether the problem is you, the other person, or core incompatibility.
- In conflicts, there are three options: Accommodate, assert, or exit.
- The same three options show up in biology, law, games, politics, and the serenity prayer.
- How you answer the youmeus question determines which of three opposing paths to take.
I’ve got a five-minute rule for when I’m angry at someone. See, I’m a high-strung, sharp-tongued guy. I snap when I feel crossed, even if I wasn’t. So yeah, I’ll give myself five minutes to talk down at folks from my high horse, but then I’ve got to dismount and visit what I call the "youmeus" question: Is the problem you, me, or us?
Picture life as dancing on a crowded dance floor. If someone’s elbows hit my rib cage, my impulse is to jut my elbow back at them. With the youmeus question, I have to consider the possibility that the problem is me, that I elbowed them first, or us because we’re dancing too close on our crowded patch of the dance floor. Five minutes. Then I have to visit the youmeus question.
Likewise, when people are pissed at me, I expect them to visit the youmeus question, too. Eventually. Maybe not in five minutes. Maybe more like five hours or days. If someone takes five weeks to visit the youmeus question, I assume that we’re incompatible in how we negotiate our incompatibilities. At that point, I wish them well elsewhere. That’s too long for anyone to jut their elbows at me, automatically insisting I’m the problem.
It’s not healthy to dance intimately with people who automatically turn every frustration and disappointment into shaming and blaming at me. It could be me, but I expect them to wonder. If they can’t, it’s not just hard to tolerate that much shaming and blaming; it’s unhealthy for me. It makes me defensive. It makes it too difficult for me to visit the youmeus question, which I need to do if I’m going to keep learning from my mistakes.
The youmeus question matters because what you do in response to an insult differs depending on whether the problem is them, me, or us. If the problem is them because they crossed a line, I’ll jut my elbows to make them back off.
If the problem is me because I crossed the line, I need to tuck in my elbows to make room for them.
And if it’s us in that we’re just out of sync, dancing to different drummers in different styles, we should dance our way apart.
These responses are opposites of each other. You can’t exercise all three at once. For example, you can’t tuck and jut your elbows simultaneously. You can be ambiguous about what you’re doing, but you can’t do both at once.
The youmeus question boils down to three universal options in a conflict: Accommodation, assertion, and space-taking. In other words, give vs. take within a relationship and in vs. out of a relationship. Those are our main options no matter what the conflict—like win, lose, or draw in any game.
In biology, they’re called three of the four F’s: fight, flight, and fear, the fourth being sex, biologists say with a wink. Fight is self-assertion within a relationship. Jut your elbows, or if you’re a dog and don’t have elbows, snarl. Flight is exiting the relationship. Fear is accommodation within the relationship, like when a dog responds to dominance by bowing its head, the canine equivalent of tucking in their elbows.
The youmeus question is the difference between can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t, as applied to someone’s behavior that you find annoying. If they can’t change, you accommodate them. If they can change but won’t, you assert yourself to get them to change. If they can and won’t, but shouldn’t change because, after all, different strokes for different folks, then exit. Live and let live elsewhere.
In political science, the three options are called exit, voice, and loyalty. If you’re frustrated with your government, you can exit, relocating to be ruled by a different government. Voice is protesting, demanding change, and jutting your elbows. Loyalty is accommodation, acceptance, and bending in compliance to accommodate one’s government.
In law, the youmeus question is guilty, not guilty, and nolo contendere. Guilty is, of course, tucking in one’s elbows, an admission that the problem is me. Not guilty is jutting one’s elbows, and nolo is like stepping away from the question.
In any relationship, two questions differ by one word: How can I make this work? vs. Can I make this work? "How can I make this work?" assumes one can. The question is where to tuck and jut one’s elbow within the give and take of the relationship. "Can I make this work?" opens one up to the third option: Exiting the relationship.
Two of the three options are covered by the serenity prayer. The serenity to accept what you can’t change is accommodation, tucking in your elbows. The courage to change what you can is assertion, jutting your elbows. The serenity prayer doesn’t cover disengagement.
And though serenity and courage both sound virtuous, the prayer clarifies that you have to seek wisdom to know when to apply each. You don’t want the courage to try to change what can’t be changed, nor the serenity to accept what’s intolerable and actually could be changed.
That’s how it is with all supposed virtues and vices. It depends on the situation. We hear all sorts of blather about how acceptance is always a virtue! Likewise, there are all sorts of memes about how you should always be self-assertive or always exit any frustrating situation.
Nonsense. It depends on the situation.
So the youmeus question. Worth visiting when you’re frustrated. Doesn’t have to be five minutes. But pretty soon after lashing out, you should wonder whether the problem is you, them, or both of you.
Oh, and there is a fourth option. When you’ve been confused about whether someone frustrating can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t change, you can let go and resolve that they didn’t change. Who knows why? Chalk it up to mysterious bad chemistry.
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