Stalemate

The other day I got caught up in a somewhat intense conversation. It literally went a tit for a tat. Like a poker game with each of us raising the stakes with every response uttered. And not in a good way. Neither one of us was willing to fold and we finally reached the point of showdown and had to expose to each other what we were really dealing with. The hidden agendas and fears beneath the carefully played words.

And so the poker game conversation switched to a chess game. We both reached stalemate in our communication and the only way for us to proceed, was to remove each other’s pin, exposing a valuable piece of information, that we previously kept guarded from one another.

By exposing ourselves, allowing us to not only see but also honor our underlying fears, we were able to reassemble the pieces and start back over. Moving beyond the stalemate position with the recognition that this was not the path for either of us to continue, if we wanted to remain in each other’s life.