What’s tough about your arguments? Is it that they grow? Is it they keep coming up? Is it that seems to be all you do? If this sounds like you, it may be time to try to improve your relationship.
Can you have discussions that don’t turn into an argument?
Discussions evolve into arguments when there are unfelt and expressed emotions. We get picky, irritable, or just pissed; then an innocent conversation turns into a heated debate. You may be observing it as it happens. You watch you and your partner get angry about something silly…and you keep arguing.
Change Your Relationship
You want to change your relationship argument dance, change how you connect.
Often the fight is not about what you think you are fighting about; it’s about feeling disconnected and insecure in your relationship. Subtly, you are in the survival response of fight or flight. One of you may be pursuing (fighting) and the other may be flightening (withdrawing)—or a combination of those two.
You can read a lot of advice about you need to learn to compromise or fight “nice.” Sure, those things can work for a while. However, because you aren’t addressing the underlying cause, the fights will come back. Often they are worse, because you are doing all the things ‘the experts’ tell you to do, and it’s not working then you start thinking you are doomed. With that mindset, any connection that was left quickly diminishes.
Treating symptoms never work in the long run, be it taking pain pills for an infection, getting new tires and not aligning your wheels or fighting better when you are disconnected. The problem with arguments is no one told you what the underlying cause is or how to deal with it.
Connection is the way to deal with arguments
We are hardwired first to ensure survival; once you are in that state, your entire body-mind orients to surviving. The same reactions our bodies have to physical threats can be triggered in a verbal fight. However, you partner is not a mountain lion chasing you! You need to understand the importance of connection to overcome this fight-or-flight predisposition.
In the middle of an argument you can call a timeout and reconnect, but that’s very difficult to do in the heat of the moment. You are much more likely to succeed if you talk with your partner outside of the emotionally heated environment of an argument. There are some straightforward actions that you can do take change your arguments.
Discover your dance to help diffuse heated moments
Every couple has its own specialized way of communicating, connecting, disconnecting, and arguing. No one way is better or worse than another. You and your partner should discuss how your discussions can escalate into a fight. Try to analyze your pattern in a rational, emotionally detached way. How do you emotionally dance from one level to the next in these interactions?
Your goal is to discover how to deescalate a fight pattern when you are not fighting. With a new understanding, you have space to feel the deeper emotions, the more vulnerable emotions. Sure, there are emotions when you fight—the deeper emotions of feeling disconnecting often drive the survival emotions of a fight—and you should strive to understand and feel them.
As you get a sense of the dance, start talking about each of your roles. Who tends to lead, who tends to resist, and who tends to withdraw?
Improve Your Relationship with authentic connection
Once you and your partner can back away from being driven by your argument pattern, you can begin to do what you want to do—connect with each other. You do that by being emotionally vulnerable.
It’s harder to be emotionally vulnerable when you feel emotionally unsafe. With this new space, start sharing what you feel from an exposed place. In general, adults don’t often do this.
This is one place in your life where it’s less about getting it right and more about taking the risk. As you continue to stay connected to what you feel and want, keep speaking with and listening to your partner. When you feel the urge to “react,” remind yourself to breathe. When you want to make a point, take a second to connect to the more vulnerable place. You don’t have to be “right.” You just have to be connected.
Replace that parts of your relationship that are empty and often trigger a fight with a connection with your partner. You won’t do it in one discussion. It will take practice. Make your practice fun. Accept mistakes.
Forgiveness can change your relationship
First, forgive yourself and your partner for not knowing this. Few of us were taught how to connect. Forgive your partner.
Support connection and create rituals that support your connection to each other. Maybe once a week you go for a walk in, whether in the woods or in your neighborhood, to talk about your week.
When you fight, and you will, see it as a sign that you need to foster more connection in the relationship. For example, in the middle of the argument one of you can hug the other. Physical touch and emotions are often connected.
Your Plan to improve your relationship and connection
So, what are you going to do to have your arguments transform into connection?
Commit to taking one action in the next three days. From there, take another. Your relationship is worth the investment. Go for it.
Let us know how it goes. I will respond to your comments.
