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⚡ One Idea This Week ⚡

The User Manual For Me: Most Fights Aren't Disagreements, They're Two Undocumented Settings.

How to write a user manual for yourself with AI, so the people closest to you stop misreading your intentions.

Do you know that most fights you have with a friend, workmate, family member or your partner aren’t ‘just’ disagreements, they’re really about each others inner wiring. An unseen meaning lurking with the subconscious recesses of your minds.

And much like a Mac and a PC aren’t always compatible till you download the right drivers or apps, when you fight you’re simply two people running different software, and neither has read the other's inner user manual.

I learned that again last month, flat on my back with the flu.

Melbourne was doing its damndest to blanket me in it’s bleak, wild, windy winter routine. I rarely get sick, so it caught me off guard, a little gift my son almost certainly carried home from a snotty kid at childcare.

But a flu is never just a flu in a house with two adults and a sick toddler.

It doesn’t stay in your body.
It leaks into how you treat each other.

And nothing pulls up two people's hidden settings faster than how each of them wants to be cared for when they’re sick. I’m sure you know what I mean because you’ve been there too; haven’t you…

In my case, this is where our missing manuals caused us unnecessary pain.

Because here’s the thing about me when I’m sick.

I want to disappear.
Retreat into a cocoon.
Heal in silence.
Say very little.

Partly because the silence and solitude is how I heal, and partly because I’m not my most delightful self in that state. I’d rather not slather my grumpiness over anyone.

As a former lay Zen monk, I’ve become better at managing this state, but it still rears its ugly head every now and then.

My partner, on the other-hand, is the exact opposite to me.

When she’s sick she wants presence.

To be held.
To be checked on.
To be waited on hand and foot.
Comfort, up close and out loud.

And that week, both of us had the flu at the same time; and a sick, screaming, toddler stuck between us.

So there we were.

Two and a half sick people wanting opposite things, each silently upset and hurt that the other wasn’t offering the comfort the other needed.

I wanted space.
She wanted closeness.
Funnily our son wanted a bit of both.

The two of us were, in our own way, asking to be respected, but we just couldn’t give each other the version of ourselves that the other person truly needed to feel better.

Nobody was wrong and that’s the part that took me a while to see.

Because here’s what I didn’t understand, what I had totally backwards. I thought we were failing at the same task; we weren’t. Each of us was succeeding at a different task, and reading the other's success as failure.

That’s the one Well Wired idea this week.

Most fighting and friction in a close relationship is not a problem that has to be solved, it’s simply a difference that has to be understood. And AI, of all things, turns out to be a surprisingly good ‘relationship’ translator and pattern matcher.

Why Nobody Was Wrong

Not long ago I discovered two interesting relationship researchers that can explain way better than I can, why things went sideways during our flu week.

The first researcher is Gary Chapman, who noticed that we give and receive love in different "languages": words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, gifts and physical touch.

The trap is that we often give love to our partners in our own language, not the other person's and inevitably they misinterpret the way we show them love. And vice-versa.

My partners love language is touch and words of affirmation.
Mine is acts of service and words of affirmation.

So when I silently refilled her water, bought her flu supplies and sweets, then let her rest, I thought I was loving her consciously and carefully. In the way, I wanted her to be towards me when I was sick.

She felt abandoned, because the touch was missing.

When she tried to hug and comfort me physically and ask me how I was, in the way she wanted me to be towards her when she’s ill, I felt claustrophobic and smothered because I just wanted to be left alone to heal.

We were both loving each other fluently, in languages the other didn’t speak.

The second researcher is John Gottman, who spent decades in a room watching couples argue. His most freeing and fundamental discovery was that roughly two-thirds of relationship conflict is "perpetual," rooted in lasting differences in personality and need, and it never fully resolves.

The couples who thrive are not the ones who solve those differences, they’re the ones who learn to understand them without contempt.

Read that again, because it’s vital for your relationship too.

Loving in Different Languages

Here’s a visual of the relationship psychology research I discovered.

During my flu friction with my partner Jade, the goal was never to fix the gap between my need for solitude and her need for closeness.

That gap is in-built, inherent, permanent.

The goal is to understand this space between each other, to translate your partners intentions to make them legible, so their love stops landing as rejection or claustrophobia.

Remember, a fight is only a difference you haven’t named yet. A space or a setting is a difference you have. That’s it!

So How Do You Name The Pattern?

This is where I did something that sounds clinical, but turned out to be deeply caring and compassionate.

I asked AI to help me write a user manual for myself.

Not a personality test.

A plain, honest operating guide.

• How I work when I’m sick, stressed, tired, or low.

• What my silence means, and what it doesn’t.

• How I show love and how I best receive it.

• What to do, and what not to do, when I go quiet.

• And so much more…

Then I asked Jade to write one too.

We swapped.

It was the least romantic and most useful thing we have done in months. Half of what we had been filing under "coldness" or "neediness" turned out to be simply a setting neither of us had written down; or truly understood.

Last issue, the move was breathe first.
This week, it is name the feeling first.

Name it Before it Names You

Naming a difference out loud, mid-argument, rarely works.

You're both too flooded to listen, and the words you reach for in the moment are usually the wrong ones anyway; too sharp, too defensive, built for winning rather than being understood.

Naming needs a container that exists outside the fight, something you can write when you're calm and to be read when you're not.

That's what this relationship manual is.

Not a personality test, not therapeutic homework, not a way to diagnose who's "too needy" or "too distant."

It's a plain-language map of your patterns and defaults, written once, referred to often.

The point isn't cleverness, it's clarity: fewer guesses, fewer stories you make up about what your partner's silence means, less contempt creeping in where confusion used to be.

You don't need a flu week like Jade, my son and I had to need, and appreciate, your own manual.

You and your partner, like every couple on the planet is already running on unwritten settings; you just often find out what they are the hard way, usually mid-conflict and usually at the worst possible moment.

Writing it down first means you find out today instead of during round three of a three day argument neither of you meant to start.

CyberMonk Field-Notes: The User Manual for Me

Here’s a visual of the user manual why, how and the what were about to create.

The Practice: The User Manual for Me 🎒

Here’s the exact user manual prompt Jade and I used to create our own relationship user manuals about each other.

Remember, you’re not trying to change anyone, instead you’re making the invisible settings visible, so the differences stop getting mistranslated as disrespect and distance and instead transformed into desire and dedication.

Write yours first, then invite the other person to write theirs. Swap and read them on a good day, not mid-fight when you’re going nuts!

[ Start of Prompt ]

Help me write a short, honest **“User Manual for Me”** that I can share with someone close — a partner, family member, or friend — so we can understand each other’s defaults instead of misreading them.

The goal is **not** to analyse my personality, decide who is right, or tell the other person how they must behave. It is to make some of my less-visible needs, reactions, and ways of showing care easier to understand.

### What I already know about myself

[Write a few rough lines. You might include:

* how you recharge;
* what happens to you when you are tired, sick, stressed, overwhelmed, or low;
* whether you tend to seek space, closeness, reassurance, practical help, distraction, quiet, etc.;
* what your silence or withdrawal usually means;
* how you tend to show care;
* what makes you feel cared for;
* what helps during friction;
* what tends to make things worse.]

If I have given you enough information, write the manual directly.

If an important section would require you to guess, **do not invent an answer**. Ask me up to **five short, specific questions** first. Only ask about gaps that materially affect the manual.

## Write the manual in my voice

Write in the **first person**, as though I am speaking directly to someone I care about.

Keep it warm, plain, candid, and specific. It should sound like a person explaining themselves on a good day — not a therapist, personality test, relationship expert, or corporate handbook.

Use these sections:

### 1. When my battery is low

Explain how I tend to recharge and what I am usually like when I am depleted, sick, stressed, or overwhelmed.

Include what tends to help me recover and, where relevant, whether I need more **space, closeness, quiet, reassurance, practical help, or something else**.

### 2. What my quiet or mood means — and what it doesn’t

Explain behaviours that someone close to me could easily misread.

For example: if I become quiet, distant, irritable, less affectionate, highly practical, or unusually needy, what might actually be happening internally?

Where supported by what I have told you, explicitly distinguish:

**“When I do X, it often means…”**
from
**“It does not necessarily mean…”**

The purpose is to reduce stories such as *“they’re rejecting me,” “they don’t care,”* or *“I’ve done something wrong”* when those conclusions are not actually warranted.

### 3. How I tend to give and receive care

Describe separately:

* **How I naturally show love or care**
* **What most reliably makes me feel loved or cared for**

Do not assume these are the same.

Do not force my answers into a “love language” category unless I have explicitly used that language myself.

### 4. When I’m having a hard time

Give a short, practical explanation of:

**What usually helps:** [based only on what I have told you]

**What can backfire:** [based only on what I have told you]

Explain the difference without blaming the other person. Something can be loving and well-intended and still not be what I need in that moment.

### 5. When we have friction

Explain what helps me reconnect after tension or misunderstanding.

Include, where supported:

* whether I need time before talking;
* how I best receive an apology or repair attempt;
* what helps me feel safe enough to reconnect;
* behaviours that tend to prolong the conflict.

Make clear that these are **preferences and patterns, not rules the other person must obey**.

## Important writing rules

* **Use only what I have told you. Do not invent hidden motives, needs, childhood explanations, attachment styles, diagnoses, or personality traits.**
* If something is uncertain, write it tentatively: **“I tend to…”**, **“I often…”**, **“What usually helps is…”**
* Avoid absolutes such as **“I always”** or **“I never”** unless I have explicitly said them.
* Do not portray my preferences as more reasonable or valid than the other person’s.
* Do not frame differences as defects, incompatibilities, coldness, neediness, or pathology.
* Do not flatter me or make me sound unusually self-aware.
* Include imperfections where I have given you evidence for them.
* Do not turn the manual into instructions for managing me.
* Do not add relationship advice, psychological theory, or diagnoses.
* Keep each section short enough to scan easily.
* Keep the entire manual roughly **400–600 words maximum** unless I ask for more.

The finished manual should create the feeling:

**“Ah — now I understand what that behaviour means.”**

Not:

**“Here is a list of rules for dealing with me.”**

## Finish with reciprocity

After the manual, add this short invitation:

**Your turn**

Give me **three gentle, concrete questions** I can ask the other person to help uncover their own settings.

The questions should help me understand rather than compare or challenge them. Focus on things like:

* what they need when depleted;
* something they often feel misunderstood about;
* how they experience care or repair differently from me.

Do not suggest that either person needs to change their underlying preferences.

**[ End of Prompt ]**

[ End of Prompt ]

When I read hers, one line undid the whole flu week fiasco in an instant.

Under "what my silence doesn’t mean," I’d written: "If I go silent when I’m sick, I’m not withdrawing from you. I’m conserving what little energy and mental bandwidth I have so I can come back to you warm and welcoming."

She’d never known that because she’d been reading a language I’d never taught her. And she hadn’t shared her own.

Final Thoughts 💭

In a short while we got much better at being with each other, and giving the other what the other needed, even during a messy flu. Not because either of us changed in some dramatic way, but because we stopped expecting the other to.

That’s the gift here.

You don’t need to become more like each other, you simply need to become more legible and readable to each other. Our love we shared for each other didn’t just disappear, it was simply being transmitted, and translated, in a format the other person couldn’t receive or interpret.

So before your next small fight, over the dishes, that snark or snivel, the way one of you goes quiet and the other leans in, try writing your own relationship manuals and sharingthem instead of assigning the blame to each other.

Two different people running different software can still love each other for a lifetime.

You just have to stop expecting your other half to boot up the same way every time. You also have to remember to upgrade each others system every now and then as well.

Granted Jade and I still have a long way to go, but we now have an agreement and a manual, a heart map, to guide us along the way.

Because it was never just a fight about who needs what, it was a setting, the flu, that triggered us to take action and taught us to not just treat ourselves, and our son, better, but also each other.

And that starts with creating and reading each others relationship manual.

P.S. What’s one thing you wish the person closest to you simply understood about how you work?

Hit reply and tell me in a line. That sentence is the first entry in your manual.

⚡ STAY WELL | STAY WIRED ⚡

They see silence and read distance, but what you really mean is exhaustion. You offer solutions and they hear criticism. You mean care, they give you space and you wonder why they disappeared. They thought they were helping.

Same room.
Same relationship.
Completely different subtitles.

So this week, make one invisible setting visible.

Tell someone close to you one thing they usually have to guess about you: “When I do this, it usually means this. It does not mean that.”

Nothing dramatic.
No summit meeting.
No twelve-point relationship audit.

Just one small translated piece of you and then ask them for a translation in return.

Hit reply and tell me yours if you want. I read every one, and sometimes putting the sentence into words is enough to realise how long you’ve expected another person close to you to somehow know it already.

And if someone you care about is often misunderstood despite having the best intentions, forward this to them. It might save you both a few prickly stories.

Ps. And if you want to get clear on where AI is genuinely helping you versus silently running the show, come find us at @cedricchenefront or @wellwireddaily, where we talk everything AI + wellbeing and self growth.

Talk soon,

Cedric the AI Monk; stay well, stay wired! 🧠⚡

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