Justin Patrick Pierce teaches the "I See and I Feel" practice: pause during a fight, acknowledge what your partner is experiencing without blame, and stay present through breath. He shows how naming what you notice—"I see you're hurting because I yelled"—lets them feel seen and shifts the fight to reconnection in minutes.
But just imagine if every time you had a conflict, you didn't have to wait 2 weeks to have the makeup sex. You could have the makeup sex in 10 minutes. And that has become our reality, and it's all a result of this practice. What we've developed as a result of this exploration was the I See and I Feel practice, because it is the fastest way for you to develop that skill. When the two of you can sit down in an I See and I Feel and learn how to take this moment of hostility where I'm going to speak, and when I say what I see, it's going to be another dagger, and when you say what you feel, it could be another attack at me, and it's just going to continue to look and feel like hostility. And you're like, Justin, I'm doing the practice. I'm doing, I see, I feel. Yeah, but the whole point is for you to recognize how unskillful the two of you are seeing and feeling and how it's the unskillfulness of the way you express what you see and feel in those moments that's making the moment worse. So the first skill we have to develop is the ability to sit here and say, I see, I feel. And what we'll do is we'll be able to take this moment from absolute hostility into healing. We just had a fight. I said something stupid. She says, I feel hurt. And then I have the maturity to say, I see you're hurting because I yelled at you earlier. Just that demonstration of awareness creates an opening for healing to take place. Suddenly she starts to feel seen. And if she's able to stay in the present moment, she'll be able to receive what I'm saying. If she can't be present, She'll say, "I feel mad because you did that again," and she'll just keep pointing at the previous moment. So the discipline for both of us is, I'm going to be here in this moment, and I bring that awareness. I say, "I see you're hurting because I screamed at you earlier." She's going to do is she's going to take a breath and receive that seeing, and then she might say next, "I feel seen. I feel I'm coming back to this moment." "I see all the ways that I hurt you." I see what I put you through, even when I don't mean it, and it breaks my heart. I feel close to you. I see the woman I love and I want to protect. I want to take care of you. I see that you're just trying to love me. This is great, we're getting unconditional love, but now can you bring your sexuality? And in this moment, what London will do the moment she starts to open is she will lean back and wrap her legs around me. In that moment, the invitation came for our bodies to reconnect, and now we're suddenly making love. So that's the process. We have to train our ability to see and feel. We have to keep breathing through the moment. We have to be present with what is here right now and let go of the ego that's trying to be right, justify, or defend itself, or say you need to be punished. That will get us nowhere in love because that's not unconditional love. But when we show up in this way and we keep opening to the moment, lovemaking is available on the other side of every conflict.
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