In Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz 004, the marriage counselor, psychotherapist, and author shares the 5% rule to break free from circular arguments that go nowhere.

The 5% Rule is a proven technique to get your partner to stop, slow down, and actually hear you.

Learn what most therapists get wrong about fixing arguments, the common mistake that guarantees your partner won’t listen, and the simple shift in language that will change everything — all in this episode of Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz!

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You’re in a disagreement, perhaps with your partner, perhaps with a child, perhaps with a parent or your spouse. You say something. They say something back at you. You defend yourself. They defend themselves.

It’s like watching a ping pong ball back and forth and back and forth, but nobody’s winning a point. There’s no break in the action, just back and forth. It’s monotonous.

You’re both fighting to be heard and to be right. And what nobody ever taught you, the moment you need to win, your partner has to lose.

Now how in the hell is that going to work out? Particularly in a relationship. Who wants to lose?

I’m going to be sharing with you a technique, an intervention, which is so effective in stopping arguments before they explode and get in the way and escalate. And this is going to go against everything that instinctively prompts you to want to win an argument.

My name is Mel Schwartz. I have been a marriage counselor and a therapist for over 30 years. I’ve developed this technique many years ago in my practice when I was working with a couple who were tirelessly stuck and mired in this pattern I just described. Nothing was working. So I tried something new, instinctive, it was counterintuitive, and it changed everything.

Today I’m going to teach you what I’ve come to call the 5% rule.

It’s the technique I’ve used with couples for decades to break the cycle of frustrating, moronic arguments that go nowhere and that will do something that most people think is impossible. It will finally get your partner to actually slow down and hear you.

Let’s begin.

Early in my career as a therapist, I found myself feeling so frustrated, so ineffective in my ability to assist the couple with whom I was working. They were going back and forth in an argument and I kept saying the same thing to them. I kept saying, “Listen this is not about right or wrong, you’re not in a courtroom, this is a therapy session.”

This kind of flailing about represents a low point in so many relationships. We’ve all been there. I was searching for a way to help them slow down and actually listen to each other to get past their gridlock.

In the midst of one session, I reflected for a moment my thought with myself was, “I have to approach this impasse differently. I have to get them to pay attention.” I learned that when I pause and get out of my own way and just set my intention for something new and insight, it kind of appears, kind of like magic. This was a moment like that.

It came in the form of my asking the husband, let’s call him John. Of course I changed their names to protect confidentiality. I said, “John, can you try to find just a small percentage of what Barbara is saying that you could agree with? Let’s look for just arguably 5% that you can validate and temporarily suspend that 95% that you want to go after her about.”

I was asking John to go against the grain and act counterintuitively. By not defending himself or trying to score a point, I explained to John that he wasn’t pleading guilty or surrendering. The goal was simply to establish a temporary truce, a sort of a repartee, so that they could actually hear each other.

He finally managed to affirm one of Barbara’s complaints, and he took ownership of having hurt her through his words.

I noticed that Barbara barely paused as she was about to go right back at him. I raised my hand gently. I said to her, “Barbara, you need to reflect for a moment. John just validated that he regrets what he said to you and he feels badly about it. Now you need to validate him.”

Somewhat begrudgingly, she said, “I appreciate your caring about my feelings and saying that you did hurt me.”

I then asked Barbara, could she validate some part of John’s issues with her? And she began to do so.

Now they both began to turn the corner. Their energy began to shift. They moved from the individual competitive spirit of winning an argument into a conciliatory energy.

A new technique was created for me, one that I now call the 5% rule. The 5% rule is reflecting back something you just heard that you can acknowledge. Again, even if you disagree with the vast majority of what you’re hearing from the other person, you can ordinarily find some small part to agree with.

I know that’s counterintuitive. That’s not how we operate. We typically marginalize, if not ignore the part that we can agree with because it gets in the way of our argument. This default is grounded in a right versus wrong battle. Our thoughts are just looking to refute rather than confirm. We get trapped.

Even though we say we care about each other or we love each other, we don’t act lovingly. Right versus wrong battles sink relationships. If we can break free from the insane goal of winning an argument and try to find something to validate in what the other person is saying, we begin to turn the corner.

The results of this approach can be astonishing. After all, if you need to win, once again, the other person has to lose. It’s not going to work. It never does. Allowing your partner to feel heard and affirmed is the goal. Once your partner feels heard and affirmed, he or she may be in a far better position to take in what you have to say.

But timing is essential here. When they find five percent to agree with, you can’t just immediately say, yes, but, and go back into your argument. That’s part of the process of invalidating them.

Instead, pause. Affirm what you just heard. Let some conciliatory spirit fill the space so you’re validating them so the energy can shift away from that noisy back and forth argument.

Timing again is essential. The shift now becomes fertile ground for a meaningful transition and maybe some constructive exchange. If you rush to reframe or assert your own position, your affirmation is disingenuous. Affirming five percent, of course I’m just making up the number five, ten percent, fifteen percent, we don’t have to quantify it, but affirming some small part of what you just heard in no way means that you’ve abandoned your position or the feelings you need for them to hear, but you want to set the stage so they can take in your words and your feelings so you’re not talking to a wall.

This process permits us to halt our addiction to being reactive and moving toward being responsive, slowing down the process. When we react in an adversarial way without pausing to reflect, we are ensuring the failure of a conversation. We become the ball in a ping pong match. Our reactions, by definition, are not well considered.

Just think of the word reactive. Reactive is not well considered or purposeful.

Here’s your uncommon sense.

If you want to be heard, understood, and validated, you need to surrender the need to be right. That doesn’t mean default to being wrong. What it means is find some small percentage of what you’re hearing that makes sense that you can affirm and validate and do so.

That will work. It will turn the tide and the energy of the relationship. Try it.

Now, what do I mean by this word validate? Validating does not mean I agree with you or have to agree with you. Therapists get this wrong when they have you mirror back the words, which is automatic. Validating means I care about you, I care how you feel, and I want to become curious about your feelings, not refute facts and do battle with each other.

So to validate, I’m going to dive into what your feeling is. What is it like to be you? What is your perception and experience of me? That means I have to let down my guard, stop fighting a battle, and put my money where my mouth is and really care about what you’re feeling.

Feelings aren’t right or wrong. Feelings are subjective. It requires curiosity and you have to move past their words into what they’re trying to express to you.

Validating prompts empathy, caring for each other, trying to experience what they are experiencing. Are they experiencing me, my actions, and my words, seeing myself through their eyes, so to speak? This shifts us from an adversarial, antagonistic energy into a compassionate, empathic energy.

Find five percent that you can validate, that you can appreciate. Then you can feel free to share your feelings with them.

First validate, then educate. Now what do I mean by this?

You can’t validate and then say, “but.” Validate let the validation sink in, let some time go by, let them feel heard and affirmed. Then gently, you can shift their perception of you by adding new information. Again, timing is absolutely essential here.

And by the way, please let me know if you’ve tried this five percent rule and how it’s working for you. Share it with me in the comments.

Here’s another story I’ll share with you from my own life. I remember having an argument with my former wife at bedtime. I would often say to her, “It’s hot in here.” She’d say, “No it’s not, it’s cold.”

This went on, time and time again, until I had an insight. I was making an objective statement, it’s hot in here. Thunderbolt of insight came to me and I said, “I feel hot.” If I say, “I feel hot,” she can’t tell me I’m wrong, I’m expressing a feeling.

Express feelings, not facts. When you get into arguments and impasses, share how you feel. Ask each other, do you care how I feel? And if you’re in a loving relationship, you can’t say I love you and not care how I feel.

Remember, subjective feelings can’t be wrong. So to facilitate this, try to start your sentences with the word I. It might sound like I feel, I think, or even better, may I tell you something I feel or I have felt or how I experience you. You’re then taking a subjective ownership of your own feelings. There’s no debate, they don’t have anything to close down.

Again, if you love me, you should care how I feel. But if I make an objective statement and say you are, you always, you never, we’ve set up the argument. Nobody is listening to anyone. Break free from the argument and share your feelings.

And by the way, I speak to this in great detail in my book, The Possibility Principle. The five percent rule is just the first of many steps on the road toward attaining excellent interpersonal skills based on effective communication. Developing these techniques and tools allow our relationships to prosper. Just as relationship skills and emotional intelligence ought to be core educational requirements, communication mastery has to be the bedrock of any life that aspires to happiness, emotional success, and fulfillment. It’s vital that we learn the necessary nuances and skills of communication so that our words can actually be heard. Communication is the heartbeat of relationship.

Uncommon sense is this. If I need to be right, how’s that going to work out? The need to be right means we’re each going to be invalidating one another. Regrettably, this is all counterintuitive in the culture and society in which we live, which teaches us, be right, never be wrong. That’s antithetical to relationship success.

We have to break that messaging.

First validate, have empathy, find the five percent you can agree with, then you have an opportunity to share your feelings. We then come together in a vital, generative, prosperous relationship where it’s not just putting our words out there of I love you, we’re acting lovingly.

You can do this, but you have to break the rules of engagement. They do not work.

Go for it.

This has been Uncommon Sense. If you want to thrive in your relationships with others and with yourself, be sure to follow the podcast in your favorite podcasting app. And if the podcast has helped you in any way, please leave a five star rating and a review.

I’m Mel Schwartz, and I’ll see you in the next one.

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