Couples – “Fair Fighting” — Transcription
Hi everyone! I know it’s Wednesday, I’m a day late, so sorry about that. Things got a little hectic yesterday. So I did want to jump on here though and answer one of your questions. So I’m getting a lot of questions about couples and fighting. I think with quarantine with people staying at home more, especially as the weather gets colder, there are a lot of a lot of time spent with your spouse. So that can be difficult, obviously rewarding as well, but sometimes it can be difficult, especially if you’re both working from home, you’re not used to this. You usually have at least eight hours of your day where you’re separated. You can miss each other and you can come home and it’d be excited to see each other. That might not be happening that way anymore. So I want to go over some ways to “fight fairly” with each other.
So obviously every couple fights – that’s inevitable. You’re going to have disagreements and there are good ways and healthy ways to have these arguments or disagreements. So the first thing is to make sure that you’re not using any degrading language or name calling. This is really easy to do when moments get heated. But make sure you stop and think if you’re going to regret what you say and make that a rule that you don’t use any language like that when you’re fighting or having a disagreement with each other – it can just be really damaging. And even if you don’t actually mean it, the person still feels it and feels that hurt no matter what. So no name calling or degrading language towards each other.
The next would be no “stonewalling”. So stonewalling basically means that when you get to a point where you’re just arguing and you can’t find a solution, one person maybe shuts down, they leave the situation or they just completely stop responding. This is called stonewalling, and it’s not a good way to resolve a conflict because you’re really not getting anywhere. And the other person probably gets really frustrated that you’re shutting down and not saying anything. So try your best to stay away from stonewalling.
The next would be to use “I-statements”. So instead of saying things like your yelling and it really is loud, and it’s annoying that can come off as attacking the person, they might feel like they’re being attacked. So use, I-statements say things like “I feel scared when you yell”, focus on that you feel blank when blank. So that can really help with the conversation to feel less attacking or aggressive, and really get your feelings across versus blaming or attacking the other person for something that they may be doing.
And lastly take a break if needed. So things can get really heated quickly. I know that you can start to feel really angry and maybe yell and square, or, you know, throw things who knows what can happen, but it can escalate really quickly, which cannot be good in terms of safety, helping the other person to feel safe or just, it’s not effective way to communicate. So when you get to a point where you realize that the conversation is just not going well, things are getting heated, people are starting to yell and get aggressive or angry, have some sort of code word that you can say where that means stop everything we’re doing and take a 10 minute break and come back to this conversation. We typically show or act on only our emotions in the first 30 seconds of our response. So if you’re angry in those first 30 seconds, if you respond right away, you’re probably going to yell and act on those emotions versus logically thinking that if I yell, is this really going to get me somewhere? So really take a break 10 minutes, make sure you time it so you can come back to the conversation. You’ll be in a better space. You’ll be able to communicate more effectively and hopefully be a little more calmed down if you’re still not calmed down and take another five minutes just to make sure you always come back to that conversation and you set those expectations that you will continue this conversation, but when you’re both in a better state of mind and more calm.
So hopefully this helps you guys with your couples conflict. Again, it’s inevitable, it’s normal. It doesn’t mean that you’re doomed. It’s just, there’s ways to do this in a healthy way. That’s effective to be able to communicate with your partner. So I will talk to you all next week. If you have any questions that you would like to hear, please message me on Instagram or Facebook. And I will answer them. Have a good rest of your day!
