Sometimes people miss it. Knowing yourself and how you communicate and how the other party communicates will help resolve conflict. This is an example from my life.

My partner and I hired someone to touch up our car. We knew his Needs Languages were an RV (Right Value) however at the time we did not know what his tendencies were. Both my partner and I met the contractor in the Need Languages of Value, speaking cost vs benefit. However, both of us did not speak Right. We spoke a different language.

I told my partner before we hired him that I didn’t feel that he was a good value for our money. I felt he was too chaotic for us to deal with. However my partner felt different.

In the end, we ought to have gone with my thoughts because he left my car looking like leprosy and decided to store his tires in my car ruining my seats and justifying his behavior. If we had known the fullness of his personality communication and his tendencies along with our Needs and tendencies we would have saved all of ourselves a lot of heartaches and not entered the victim-predator rescuer triangle together.

This is where Gretchen Rubin’s model comes in.

What we discovered is how our Needs Languages can sometimes be expressed are through tendencies. We estimated the person’s tendencies we hired were rebel obliger, my partner’s were obliger, and my upholder.

Personally, I saw he did not uphold to my standards and I did not feel it was worth it (going into Value Needs Languages). My partner felt they had made a commitment to the person to do the work obliging to them and it would cost them to not keep their word and they want to be nice to me (Value Needs Language).

He did the opposite which is what many rebels do, he was upset when we had to take our car back in a time frame that he could not commit to even though we told him ahead of time, it wasn’t “right”. It cost him so it was going to cost us. His tendencies and Needs Languages mixed together in communicating with us.

Because we didn’t listen at first we were drawn into the triangle and bruised up. We were called names and property was destroyed.

I share this story with you to show you how powerful it is to know yourself and others’ Needs Languages and how they manifest.

When you do you don’t have to enter the triangle. I want to continue to talk about this story because I want to show you what you can do once you are in the triangle and how you can come out of it.