Jordan Gray says that all arguments can be diffused… you just have to know what to do.
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Fights happen in all relationships and they are a completely healthy occurrence. But are you engaging in them in a way that might be doing long-term damage to your partnership?
And what if you knew how to swiftly and accurately defuse any fight from escalating? Well, wouldn’t that just be nifty! I’ll tell you how in a second. But first, we have to understand what we’re working with here.
Take these situations for example…
1. A woman gets angry at her husband because he didn’t inform her that they had been out of milk for a couple of days.
2. A man gets upset with his girlfriend because she decides to go on a week-long vacation without him.
3. A man shuts down and becomes verbally unresponsive when his wife gets upset with him about bringing home the wrong kind of lightbulbs.
It’s all too easy to cast blame on one or both of the partners in question by labelling one as selfish, or insecure, or any number of undesirable character traits… but there’s something happening under the surface in every one of the situations listed above.
You see… whether we’re talking about the three examples above, or any argument that you may currently have had or are currently having…
The argument isn’t about what the argument is about. It’s about the underlying hurt emotion that isn’t being expressed explicitly.
So for example #1 with the woman who is upset about the milk, she may be outwardly expressing anger or frustration, but in reality she is feeling inadequate as a mother because she feels like she is already falling behind in the maintenance of her home life. That she hadn’t noticed the shortage of a staple in the family diet was, to her, further evidence that she is a failure as a mother and a partner.
For example #2, the man gets upset with his girlfriend because he has the underlying belief that she is far too good for him as a partner and he sees her not consulting with him as further proof that she doesn’t think of him (or care about him) on a daily basis.
For example #3, the man shuts down and becomes verbally unresponsive because he was constantly criticized in his childhood for not doing anything right and for being stupid (when in reality nothing could be further from the truth) and so he shuts down and goes numb to weather the pain of feeling worthless.
So what are you to learn from these examples, and from the underlying theme that fights aren’t about what they’re ‘about’?
Follow the following three steps and I promise you that you will be able to stop any argument in its tracks. And, if you use them consistently, your entire relationship will run more smoothly.
1. Recognize the pattern
The first step is always awareness.
If you’re not sure what your exact triggers are, think back to the last time that you felt angry/frustrated/upset with your partner (or upset with an argument that you were having). Go back to it and try to access what you were feeling in the moment.
2. Point the flashlight in the corner
Once you remember the last argument and the feeling that it evoked in you consciously, it’s time to go deeper.
Inevitably there was the emotion that you may have been showing externally (anger, frustration, withdrawal, etc.) and then there was the emotion that you were trying to run away from or suppress.
Sit with that feeling and really try to feel in to what that suppressed emotion was. Where can you feel it in your body? What does it feel like? What would the emotion say if it had words to speak with?
I like to think of this step as pointing the flashlight into the corner. Imagine you are going up to clear old junk out of your attic. There might be corners that you’re a bit nervous to point the flashlight into… but you must. This is where the good stuff is hidden. Until you face the underlying emotional need you and your partner may be stuck in an unconscious pattern where you repeat the same damaging cycle over and over.
A quick example would be if you feel like your partner is verbally/emotionally attacking you during an argument, and you lash out with anger. But in reality, the emotion you are trying to hold on to is one or any combination of hurt, sadness, fear, loneliness, desperation, or feeling invisible, rejected, or inadequate.
This can often be a difficult step to self-diagnose since humans are unaware of their own blind spots… so feel free to reach out and chat if you want help diagnosing what your emotional triggers are.
3. Work through it as a team
Once you realize what the underlying emotional need is (generally the more scary and vulnerable one) it’s your job to let your partner in on the secret. This can be a scary step and it’s one that takes a lot of courage to bring forth to your partner.
I find that it helps to bring this emotional need up to your partner (at least the first time) once the dust has settled from your argument.
Telling them something along the lines of “So yesterday when I got upset with you about the milk… listen, I’m really sorry. I lashed out at you and it wasn’t even about the milk. It’s just that sometimes I freak out because I feel like I’m not doing a good enough job as a parent and I’m really hard on myself. I’ll try to catch it in the moment more often, but I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t upset with you at all… I was just feeling insecure and kind of scared.”
Now, unless you’re with a monster of a partner, most significant others would be quite relieved to hear that piece of feedback. Knowing that the argument was about an unspoken emotional need being unmet (which, hint, they essentially all are) gives the receiving partner the awareness of that pattern for the future and helps them to de-escalate that cycle going forward.
As your ‘thing’ comes up in future arguments, knowing that you can recognize, call out, and work through the underlying hurt emotions together puts you back on the same team. It’s an empowering mindset to be able to work through the negative pattern together versus feeling like it runs your relationship.
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If you enjoyed this post, you might also love reading:
7 Things All Women Need In A Relationship
10 Questions To Ask To Go Deep In Your Relationship
Half A Dozen Hacks For A Thriving Sex Life
The One Thing To Remember When You’re Dealing With Any Person, Ever
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This post originally appeared at JordanGrayConsulting.com
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
If you want to stop arguing. Stop talking and take time to get that silence and when your ready speak up slowly and calmly. Adjust one another. Take it easy. Stop pushing arguments on one side situation. Put up more understanding. Pray together. Love each other and last dont be slefish.
I really agree with this post, because of your partner is wanting to grow with you, she will not use things against you and if she does, then you know where you stand. We can’t control people but we can control how we react to situations.
As Freud probably never said, “a cigar is sometimes just a cigar.” This advice piece would have us approach every argument with the assumption that it’s really about something else, which would probably do more harm than good for a relationship. Think about it with example one: 1. A woman gets angry at her husband because he didn’t inform her that they had been out of milk for a couple of days. Wife: “How long have we been out of milk?” Husband: “A couple days” Wife: “And you didn’t tell me or get any milk? What the hell am I… Read more »
Haha. Everyone can use a reminder to come back down to earth from all this philosophizing and conscious striving. But, if two partners are going to get into an ARGUMENT about being out of milk, I’m just going to go ahead and say that there is DEFINITELY some underlying issues coming up that aren’t being addressed. That, or they’re both just assholes.
Yeah, the assumption that the woman was having an emotional crisis was over the top sexism. She was mad because hubby wasn’t haring household duties.
Thank you for the very helpful article.
As G points out, we are conditioned to win argumens at a cost.
So you are basically advocating that we free-mindedly put a “loaded gun” in the hands of our partner, not only to know exactly what buttons to push, but also why and how they work, and further increase their leverage on us!
For your argument to be valid, you have to have a partner you can’t trust to be responsible with your feelings and secrets and who you are. If you see your partner knowing those things about you as them having “leverage” over you, you either have trust issues or you’re with the wrong person. And I’m not being passive-aggressive, I’m being very sincere. I’ve had trust issues stemming from childhood and from being with the wrong partner, and since I continued to be with the wrong partners, I felt the same way that you do. But believe me when I… Read more »
Yes, Ditte. I totally agree that we should all be responsible with the feelings and secrets of our partner’s. That is how it SHOULD be. But then again, being in an argument in the first place, isn’t that proof in itself that we are not always the way we want to be? I am not saying that any partner is actively _looking_ for any kind of “leverage” within a relationship. But in my experience, that will usually not stop them from using whatever they know precisely in the heat of an argument. Short story: Since I was a kid I… Read more »
I don’t know the story behind your personal experiences Kal. But sometimes during a fight or disagreement, I do go “silent”. I don’t do this to punish the other person. I do it because first, yeah..unfortunately, it’s probably a defensive mechanism and a self-protection mechanism. Secondly, sometimes I need time to process the argument and I withdraw a bit into myself to do that and this was only pointed out to me more recently by someone that it comes off as giving the “silent-treatment”. Even though that’s not how I saw it. Once they pointed it out to me though,… Read more »
Thank you for sharing your perspective, Erin.
I really really appreciate it!
Need to go now, I’ll try to get back on topic tomorrow.
Kal – in a healthy relationship no one should purposely be looking to push their partners buttons. Sure, it might happen time to time by accident through an argument or because you don’t realize what your partner’s buttons are. But if your partner is “looking for leverage”…I don’t think that’s going to be a totally healthy relationship. You should be able to share those things that bother you.
Thank you for your answer Erin,
On the subject I totally agree with you. But things aren’t that often the way they SHOULD be. Please see my response to Ditte above.
What bothers me is how people keep pushing other people’s buttons and don’t know when to quit and then all of a sudden there is a fierce backlash against them and then they cried that they didn’t do anything wrong, they are the victims, and then they seek to retaliate against you.
Most of the time they know it and are claiming they don’t. The bulk of the rest of the time they don’t value the other person’s feelings sufficiently to pay attention to the signs.
Either way, unless that person is actively working on developing better social skills it’s best to just avoid them. People who are like that and can’t change are rare enough that it’s best not ruining your own life over them.
Your entitled to your believe and that belief is what will keep happening to you, because it’s dominant in your existence.
People are getting too angry over anything and everything no matter how minor and it doesn’t help when there are guns in the home residence.
On Ted Talk, there is this guy that talks about arguing: ://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_h_cohen_for_argument_s_sake?language=en where he states that we have been condition to win arguments at all costs and how we can learn from losing in an argument.
We haven’t been conditioned that way, that’s humans in their default factory settings. The amygdala is located closer to the blood supply than the prefrontal cortext. When you get angry or scared it literally reduces the amount of blood flow to the parts of the brain that do the rational thinking. So, the result is that you get angry and then can’t think straight by default. Obviously, not everybody flips out to the same degree as everybody else, so there’s clearly more to it than that. But, by default people who are scared, angry and such are going to behave… Read more »