Does it Really Take Two to Tango?

There are some lessons that no amount of wisdom, good parenting, books, sermons, or advice can truly teach us. Some things can only be understood once we have lived them. When I was growing up, I believed wholeheartedly in the phrase “it takes two to tango,” and honestly, it made perfect sense to me. I believed conflict was always shared responsibility. I believed if someone stayed calm enough, loving enough, patient enough, and kind enough, then peace could always be maintained. I carried that belief into adulthood, and I taught my children the same thing.

But life has a way of humbling us through experience.

Over time, I began to realize that not every conflict is mutual. Not every disagreement involves two equally willing participants. Sometimes there truly is an aggressor, and sometimes there is someone else desperately trying to keep the peace at all costs. Sometimes one person is trying to communicate while the other is trying to control. Sometimes one person wants a resolution while the other wants power. Sometimes one person raises their voice, manipulates, provokes, intimidates, twists words, or creates chaos, while the other walks on eggshells trying to prevent another explosion.

That realization changed the way I viewed human relationships forever. It also taught me something important about people who have never lived through certain experiences. We often speak in absolutes about situations we do not fully understand. We repeat phrases we were taught because they sound wise, fair, or balanced. But experience has a way of exposing the gaps in our understanding.

It took my personal lived experience to realize that there is a difference between healthy conflict and abuse. Healthy conflict involves two people who may disagree but still respect one another’s humanity. Abuse is entirely different. Abuse is about dominance, fear, control, manipulation, and power imbalance. One person may spend years trying harder, staying quieter, forgiving more, accommodating more, and sacrificing more, only to realize the problem was never mutual to begin with.

That can be a painful truth to confront, especially for people who pride themselves on accountability and self-reflection. When you are compassionate, empathetic, and peace-loving, your first instinct is often to look inward. You ask yourself what you could have done differently. You assume that if there is conflict, you must somehow share equal responsibility. But experience teaches discernment, that peace cannot exist when one person is committed to creating chaos, that some people do not want resolution because conflict benefits them. Experience teaches that not everyone argues fairly, loves sincerely, or fights clean.

And perhaps most importantly, experience teaches us to stop placing impossible burdens on people who are already carrying too much. I think many of us unknowingly shame victims by clinging to oversimplified sayings that fail to account for the complexity of human behaviour. We say things like “it takes two to tango,” not realizing that one person may be trying desperately not to dance at all. One person may be shutting down, staying silent, apologizing excessively, or sacrificing their own needs to survive emotionally.

Life experience has softened some of my previous black-and-white thinking. It has made me slower to judge and quicker to listen. It has reminded me that wisdom is not simply repeating familiar phrases. True wisdom requires discernment, compassion, and humility. Sometimes the hardest lessons are the ones we once felt most certain about. But there is growth in allowing experience to refine us rather than harden us. There is maturity in admitting, “I understand this differently now.” And there is grace in recognizing that many people are carrying battles we once could not comprehend until life brought us face-to-face with them ourselves.