Manage Conflict - Agree to Disagree
Hello Harper Therapy friends! Today we are going to have a conversation about something we rarely talk about…fighting, arguing, disagreeing. I don’t know about you, but as I was growing up I thought that if couples fought it meant that they were doomed. And little did I know, that my parents had their fair share of arguments, but behind closed doors. Neither of these scenarios (openly arguing or arguing behind closed doors) taught me the most basic techniques on how to manage conflict.
In the spirit of sharing life lessons, today I want to dive into arguments…the big ones, the little ones, the ones that inevitably hurt.
First things first, all couples argue, all couples have disagreements, all couples fight (we’re not talking about physical fighting, that’s a hard no in our therapeutic book), but we are talking about hearty, heated debate…it’s natural. And arguing has an end goal…mutual understanding. You heard me right, the purpose of arguing isn’t proving who is right, who is wrong or convincing the other person. The productive goal of arguing is understanding the other person’s point of view.
So where do we start?! We start with stating that all couples have problems. Some problems are solvable, some problems are perpetual. The solvable problems are situational. They are mostly annoying things that we do in the relationship (dishwasher loading anyone?!), or things that have a solution such as who takes the kids to soccer on Saturday. Solvable problems are exactly about the topic at hand, there is no deeper meaning to them.
The perpetual problems are the ones we carry from relationship to relationship no matter who our partner is, they pop up. I usually think of religion as a perpetual problem, it’s not something you can easily change, it’s something deep rooted, and if it’s a point of contention, it is something that should be discussed early in the dating period. Other perpetual problems could be organization, punctuality, cleanliness, desire of “alone time” required. These are more a part of our personality. When someone points out one of these issues they are pointing out lifestyle differences, and those are not changing overnight, if at all.
How do we talk about these problems without it turning into World War III? The step before all other steps is noticing if we are becoming defensive. If we are defensive, we loose our ability to listen with an open mind and an open heart, we are ready to “prove them wrong”, to criticize, to bring out the laundry lists of all the previous times our partner did X, Y or Z. We turn against each other instead of toward each other.
Because we will inevitably argue, here are a few techniques to help us manage the arguments better and find the common ground to agree to disagree. If you want to go more in depth about these next steps, please get the amazing book; Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Drs. John and Julie Gottman and Doug and Rachel Abrams (2018).
Step 1: Take turns to share what we were feeling during the event. Two minute turns seems to be a good length. Stick to the feelings, we do not have to recount the event step by step. “I felt sad, lonely, ashamed, insecure”, etc. are good ways to start.
Step 2: We take turns sharing how we saw the situation, from our point of view. There are no wrongs or rights here…it’s just us and our partner’s point of view. The idea of this step is to validate the other person’s reality. It doesn’t mean we agree, but that we can see how they may have seen it in a certain way. We can use phrases like “I heard you saying that you felt abandoned, now that I hear how you saw the situation, I can see how me not spending time with you could make you feel that way”. It’s much better than saying “You abandoned me!” or the partner responding “You are making things up, I was in the same room talking to my co-workers, I didn’t abandon you, I just can’t be by your side 24/7!”
Step 3: Identify the triggers. Triggers are issues we carry from before the relationship and tend to be nuclear buttons in our day to day interactions. If we felt triggered, we should share with one another a moment in the past where we felt the same way, so that our partner knows what happened in our past. It could have been a moment we felt excluded, judged, abandoned, powerless, etc. This opens the floor for understanding and empathy.
Step 4: Owning up to what our role was in the argument and accepting responsibility for our part. What can we own up to? Where we stressed and tired, and unable to come to the conversation with a calm and open mind ? Were we unable to recognize that we were stressed and tired and we didn’t ask our partner for a moment before we addressed the issue? Can we take responsibility for the tone, or the words used, or even the time chosen for a particular conversation…for example, it’s difficult to have a budget conversation while trying to get the little ones to bed. This image helps me remember this step, maybe it will help you as well… when we point our finger out to blame someone, there is one finger pointing out but three pointing towards us…we carry responsibility, therefore let’s think about what we could have done differently before dumping all the weight on our partner.
Step 5: This is my favorite part…it is the commitment to improve. What is it that we are going to do differently in order to prevent a repeat of this event. It is a promise not only to ourselves but to our partners. We create a plan together so as to not hurt each other’s feelings in the future.
Finally, at the beginning of this conversation I mentioned how neither having full blown arguments in front of the children or behind closed doors are a healthy way of modeling conflict resolution. I am not advocating you to have all arguments in front of the children, but if you happen to have a difference of opinion in front of the children, try to go through the steps together and then share with the children how you came to an understanding. We can use these techniques in our every day conversations and potential conflict with our children, family members, friends and co-workers.
Hopefully, this information will open doors in your process of improving your life, your relational life and your interpersonal life. If you feel like you would like to delve deeper, please give us a call at 813.434.3639 and let us at Harper Therapy be your home for Hope, Growth and Healing!
