Intro:
I want to start with a picture in your mind You and your spouse have been having the same argument over and over. There are some slight changes to the argument, but the essence of it is the same. What could it be about
A husband saying to his wife “You never want to have sex when I do”
A wife saying “I can’t believe how much money you are spending on things”
A wife saying to here husband “you are always on your phone when we talk”
You have told yourself you won’t have that argument again, but here you are having it!
and so on and so on…
This is not about what you are fighting about, it’s that the same fight, the same disagreement is happening over and over
The feeling is awful. It’s a mix of frustration, anger, and resentment. Often the argument is accompanied by a feeling of hopelessness and a sense of helplessness – a feeling of being trapped. It can feel like being knee deep in quicksand, where everything you do to get out only makes things worse.
Why?
It’s time to fight smarter
Is it a bad thing to fight?
It’s not necessarily a bad thing to fight. There are plenty of strong yet volatile couples, colleagues and friends. But certain lines should not be crossed, and it’s important to repair. To do that, you need to validate the other person’s feelings and appreciate that he or she experiences things differently than you do.
What are you actually fighting about
What most people don’t realize is that you’re not actually fighting about money or commitment or who does the housework. What you’re really fighting about is feeling a lack of affection, respect, power...or some combination of three.
How do you know it’s fight that happens over and over again
Fighting with a pattern involves arguments that have happened again and again and again. One of the surest ways to know you are fighting with a pattern is by paying attention to the thoughts you have during the argument. When you’re fighting with a pattern, you’ll catch yourself thinking things like:
“Here we go again!”
“Same old, same old.”
“This is never going to end.”
Even if it has been some time, if it is a fight that repeats, it need to be addressed
The Form Fights Take
The content of your fight doesn’t matter nearly as much as the form. If you stood on a courtyard balcony and watched a bunch of other people fighting on their balconies, you would see the same patterns play out over and over again.
FIRST DYNAMIC
The first dynamic is when you gather evidence that reinforces your beliefs and disregard evidence that challenges them. We call this confirmation bias. We favor information that proves our point, you give more weight to evidence that confirms your beliefs
“You purposefully didn’t call me yesterday because I don’t matter to you” Even if you told me, “I didn’t realize not calling you would make you feel that way, and I’m sorry,” I’m still going to prove you wrong. That’s how crazy it is—I would rather have my confirmation bias proven than to be relieved by hearing it’s not true.
Confirmation bias is so powerful that, as shown in a study co-authored by Michael Cipriano and Thomas S. Gruca, even when there is concrete evidence showing that our beliefs are wrong, and even when holding onto those beliefs costs us money, we tend to stick to our incorrect conclusions.
Conformation bias affects how you look at the world around you. When you are feeling a little lousy about yourself and hop on Facebook and see people having a great time, if you say to yourself “see, everyone is living a great life, I am such a loser” THAT is confirmation bias. You choose to seek information that confirms your crummy feelings.
With your spouse, conformation bias makes you see their flaws and focus on their flaws. We all have flaws, Its a fact of life. We didn’t see these flaws when we ere engage and dating, but now that it has been 5, 10, 15 years, even though they are doing the same thing they have always done, we perceive it differently.
Why do we do this? There’s a few reasons, some researches say its related to self esteem-we better and more confident when we find information that supports our beliefs
Confirmation bias provides us with an order to our feelings, and we’d often rather have an awful order than no order at all
You’re convinced that only one person can be right—i.e., you—rather than accepting that there’s another person next to you who is having a completely different experience of the same issue and has a whole other point of view. That leads to a standoff.
SECOND DYNAMIC
The second dynamic at play in an argument is negative attribution theory. If I’m treating you poorly, it’s because I had a bad day. If you’re treating me poorly, it’s because you’re bad at relationships.
It’s the thinking that my experience is tied to a situation but yours is based on your character and is about you as a person.
If you’ve done, this and I am guilty of this. This is a bitter pill to swallow, but its important to push past our ego and consider the external sources to your partner’s behavior. How do we do this. We can’t consider the external sources unless we know what they are. We need to talk to each other. Ask about each other’s day and really ask. Be attentive to each other. If you know that your spouse has had a tough meeting today at work, be a little more empathetic and gentler than usual
THIRD DYNAMIC
The third is the negative escalation cycle. This is when we incite from a person the very behavior we don’t want. There’s something in the predictability of this that brings us a defeating certainty, even though it’s the opposite of what we long for. For instance, I’m going to talk until you scream, then I’m going to say you’re a screamer and I can never get through to you.
None of these dynamics are productive because they lead to the same old fights. Moreover, we blame our partners, for escalating the arguments and fail to see how much we contribute to our own misery.
The Commons Mistakes Everyone Makes
1) Feelings are not facts
Most couples, colleagues and friends think that when they say something during a conflict, it is an absolute truth rather than a reflection of an experience they felt in that situation.
If I feel it, then it must be a fact. I f I feel you don’t love me anymore, then you don't love me anymore. We need to understand this-that feelings are not facts. This can be a big game changer
2) Using the words always or never
Another thing that makes fights go sour is using the words always and never.” I always do all dishes” “You never help with dinner”
It leaves the other person with no option but to refute what you just said about him, to stonewall you, or to attack you for your offenses. What else is he or she supposed to do? You’ve just said that it’s a fact that they are a terrible person. Nobody likes to be defined by someone else.
“You always” and “You never” should be stripped from our vocabulary.
3) Chronic Criticism
Another mistake is chronic criticism—when you criticize so much that you leave the other person feeling like he can never do anything right. (That’s how contempt builds, and contempt is the kiss of death in a relationship.)
The truth is, a criticism is often a veiled wish. When I say “You never do the dishes,” or what I really mean to say is “I’d love for you to do them more.” But I don’t say that because it makes me vulnerable. If I put myself out there and say, I would really like this, and then you don’t do it, I have to think that you don’t care.
4) Don’t throw the kitchen sink at it.
Piling on every complaint is a typical — but not at all useful — approach to dealing with conflict. It’s the idea that when a fight starts, I’ll throw in everything I’ve been holding against you. By the end we’ll have no idea what we’re actually fighting about anymore. Instead, when you have a problem, deal with that problem only. Don’t start talking about the last three years of everything you’ve been through. Focus on fixing one issue at a time.
5) Let go of your need to be right.
When you KNOW you are right and your partner is wrong, you know you are in trouble! (Of course there are certain things that ARE wrong, lying, hitting, breaking commitments. But most often we are feeling self-righteous about our point of view rather than an actual transgression.) It may feel justified, but it will usually fuel even greater conflict and distance.
Esther Perel is a great author on marriage issues and she has a podcast epidote called “You can either be right or you can be married”
6. Agree not to discuss the problem until the storm has passed.
When we are in the middle of the trouble we are bombarded by neurochemicals that are while arguing, most of us are “flooded” — bombarded by neurochemicals that make it hard for us to relate constructively. We are reacting, not responding.
Taking time out, going for a walk, agreeing to come back to it within 24 hours may help you each become calm and reasonable enough to find a resolution. And of course, if there’s an ongoing issue (and no, not just a habitual, unproductive communication dynamic), you may sometimes feel like you can’t make progress. In those cases, consider seeking the help of a skilled counselor or coach.
HOW DO WE STOP THE FIGHTING?
Switch from reacting to reflecting
One of the most common patterns in fighting is REACTING. Your husband annoys you and you annoy him back. Your wife disrespects you and you disrespect her back.
Instead of reacting, why don’t we try REFLECTING
When you’re having a conflict, before you disagree, try telling the person you’re speaking with what you heard them say.
Research shows that when you’re in a disagreement, you’re generally capable of repeating what the other person said for only 10 seconds. If you don’t instantly do the reflecting, after 10 seconds it becomes increasingly more difficult. After 10 seconds you will tend to go into your rebuttal or tune your spouse out—we don’t want that.
It’s important to RELFECT by repeating what was said so they feel acknowledged.
“What I’m hearing you say is that when I do this at these moments, you feel X.”
It’s also helpful to use a method developed by relationship scholar John Gottman and colleagues called an XYZ statement: When you do X in situation Y, I feel Z.
“When we’re out with friends (or in a meeting) and you cut me off, I feel put down.”
I’m not telling you that’s what you’re doing, I’m telling you how I’m feeling. (You can argue with how a person defines you but not with how a person feels.)
The XYZ statement method is an important mind shift that opens the door for a much calmer and more vulnerable conversation as opposed to a hurtful back and forth that leads no where. This also helps defuse escalating fights because it forces you to slow down and think about what you’re trying to say, and then the other person has to repeat it.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing to fight. There are plenty of strong yet volatile couples, colleagues and friends. But certain lines should not be crossed, and it’s important to repair. To do that, you need to validate the other person’s feelings and appreciate that he or she experiences things differently than you do.
2) Validating and empathizing
Next comes validating and empathizing.
People fight because they want to feel that they matter, that the other person respects what they’re going through. A simple I can see where you’re coming from is deeply validating.
When your experience is acknowledged, you feel sane.
The two of you don’t have to agree, but you do have to acknowledge that there’s another person who experiences the event very differently from you.
“It makes sense that you would feel neglected when I talk over you when we are out with friends. Looking at it from your point of view, I would feel neglected too. But it was not my intention at all”
Listen to the way that sentence sounds. That is not a sentence that invites agreements, yelling, name calling, screaming. It invites openness and understanding
You are holding on to your truth yet are able to acknowledge that there’s another person who has another interpretation of the same event.
3) Think of the person as a person and not as an object
4) Assume Good intentions
When you assume good intentions, you don’t automatically presume that someone forgot something because they just didn’t care enough about it or you to remember it. When you assume good intentions, you don’t presume that your spouse is angry with you because they are in a bad mood. When you assume good intentions, you don’t think they are slighting you when they say no.
When you assume good intentions, you give your spouse, your loved ones and the world at large, the benefit of the doubt. Assuming good intentions means you accentuate the positive and while you may not be able to eliminate the negative completely – you don’t assume the negative immediately. You weigh and you measure and you listen and you give the benefit of doubt to what you care about and to whom you care about.
Conclusion
We can’t expect to never again argue with our partner. We are only human. We will continue to have those moments, especially during stressful times, when we lose our cool, and end up saying things that we regret later.
Accept what you can’t change. No matter how hard you try,, nothing you do is going to alter your partner’s behavior. Your partner has to decide whether or not to adjust — and typically that choice comes out of empathetic understanding, not pressure.
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