Conflict only exists when one or both partners are feeling misunderstood. If you want your partner to understand you, first do everything you can to understand them and let them know that you do.
People have different ways of coping with their traumas, patterns they developed as children and continue to use into their adulthood and in their relationships with other people, including their spouse.
Many of these coping styles revolve around our being an individual, an “I”. As an empowered “We” you’ll need a new set of tools or coping strategies to develop a secure, effortless and permanent connection.
Before you install “good” coping strategies, it’ll be helpful to recognize old programming patterns that you have used in the past.
Common Copying Styles And Patterns
The coping styles we all employ are initially developed in our childhood. These were used to deal with a past pain or trauma. If you grew up with abusive parents, you may have become a frightened, passive victim or the rebellious defiant child that leaves home at an early age. The resultant coping mechanisms depends on the temperament we were born with and how unconsciously choose one parent over as a role model.
For instance, when an “Abuser” marries the “Victim”; the child might choose to copy one of those or a combination of the two. In either case, the coping style selected is used to survive childhood.
By the time we reach adulthood, our styles of coping become well ingrained into our psyche, and we repeat these styles long after survival needs as a child has passed. The responses don’t disappear as they become part of our personality and communication style.
They become maladaptive responses.
These unconscious responses lead us to act in ways that block our development. Instead of growing and improving ourselves from our conflicts, many people become isolated, stubborn, or suppressive with our emotions.
Basic methods of coping.
Surrender: The surrenderer gives in to the situation and allows it to repeat over and over again. This person becomes submissive, avoids conflict, and is passive. They rely on others and constantly seeks affiliation. They become a people-pleasing follower.
Avoidance: The Avoider tries to find a way to escape or block the situation. Avoidance has subsets that can take several forms.
Social Withdrawal: The person seeks social isolation and excessive autonomy. They often have an exaggerated insistence on self-reliance and independence over involving others. This person will sometimes retreat to private activities, such as too much television, reading, or surfing online.
Addictive Withdrawal: Avoiding the world by withdrawing through drugs, alcohol and over eating.
Psychological Withdrawal: This includes any form of psychological escape, including numbness, denial, fantasy, and other forms of dissociation.
Counter-Attack: The person who counter attacks does the opposite of what is being imposed upon them. Like the Avoider, counter attacks can take several forms.
Aggression: The person counter-attacks by attacking and blaming others, being overly critical.
Dominance: An excessive need to directly control others to accomplish one’s goals.
Manipulation: Any method of covertly exploiting others is deemed okay, be it dishonesty, seduction, or conning.
Rebellion: On the outside they may appear compliant, but they are punishing others or covertly rebelling through procrastination, pouting or complaining.
Excessive Orderliness: Insists on maintaining a strict order to the point of obsessiveness. Has excessive adherence to his routines and rituals, and devotes an inordinate amount of time to find the best way to accomplish his tasks while avoiding negative outcomes.
By reverting to theses coping styles, a couple in conflict turns away from one another; they have become subjects of their ingrained subconscious responses. Communication must be balanced and equal, turning towards one another instead of against.
Eye-rolling is not communication, neither is the “either-or” way of thinking that leads to such absolute responses as, “I’m right, you’re wrong”. Rely on your old coping strategies while in a conversation with your spouse and it will become a fight if it wasn’t already. One might play his domineering strategy, forcing the other into the submissive role. Another might be trained from childhood to always be on the alert for a fight, and so as an adult seek them out, always be expecting a fight in anything their spouse says and react accordingly. Or you might resort to the blame-game.
Any of these sound familiar?
The different types of cycles and interactions are endless but all of them result from our old childhood coping strategies. Learn to adapt different coping strategies that allow you to turn towards one another, positive responses where the couples become masters of their relationships instead of its victims. Learn to work through your problems, thus forging a deeper connection, in even the most negative of situations.
Positive coping strategies, like becoming self-aware, require understanding, tools and practice.
Here are a few ideas that we use at our WE3 workshops.
Head Space Versus Heart Space
There are a large variety of responses that a couple can have to different situations. Sometimes it comes down to being preoccupied; too much in either their head or their heart to pay attention to the other person and connect.
Someone who is involved in an activity, be it watching television, doing a task, or working, is in his head space. Task-oriented people are often so preoccupied their brains don’t even register that you spoke.
Coming out of this state would take some effort on their part and probably be seen as an interruption to his job just as surely as if you had walked into his office while he was in the middle of a conference. As a “We” you both have to gently find the right time and manner to move out of the head space before engaging in a discussion.
Someone in their heart space is able to connect emotionally with another about his fears, needs, dreams, and desires. However, being too much in your heart space may leave you unable to focus on anything except a specific issue, on an insignificant detail. A person who only has heart space may end up turning away instead of turning towards their partner. You become less interested in hearing what the other is saying and more interested in making them hear you about your one detail. The other becomes unimportant.
How many arguments have revolved around one spouse being fixated on one minor issue like it is the end of the world, while the confused partner is trying to draw attention to some more significant matters? It’s like a computer program that is stuck in a loop, reprinting the same message over and over again on the screen. Nothing gets done, no progress is ever made.
Before you open up a proper communication channel with your spouse, make sure you are both in a balanced space between head and heart. Be sure you can see one another and hear what each is saying. Actively focus on the act of communicating before you begin, or you are just saying words.
The Emotion That Lies Beneath
Emotion in Latin means “to move”, so emotions are going to move couples in different ways depending on which emotion is present. Identify which emotion lies underneath your partner’s response in a conflict before attempting to resolve the conflict. Like the child that cries all the time; simply telling them to be quiet won’t solve the underlying problem that caused them to cry in the first place. Rather, one should look beneath the surface for what is making him cry; then deal with that issue. The ability to connect one’s outward actions with the underlying thoughts, feelings, and emotional states, is called “mind sight” by psychiatrist Daniel Siegel of UCLA, and is the basis for self-awareness and empathy. Strong emotional memories get chemically recorded in the brain and can later manifest in our actions from a trigger, unless we are mindful of them in ourselves and in others. Knowing the possible types of emotions that can lie beneath one’s actions is an empowering first step towards understanding your partner.
Here are a few typical emotions that lie beneath what you may see on the surface.
Shame: You tried to create an emotional connection but there is a lack of authenticity or vulnerability because of some imperfection. Shame means hiding, creating emotional distance as a means of protecting one’s self from fear of judgment or criticism. This is a big one with men.
Anger: This is usually an emotion of moving against. Be it passive-aggressive anger or hostility, you are trying to protect yourself because an alarm went off in your head shouting “Danger” about the current situation. Anger can be a healthy release, but it becomes unhealthy in a marriage when left unresolved and bitterness and hurt are allowed to linger.
There are two types of anger:
– The kind that creates passion or energy.
– The kind that results in destruction and hostility.
Healthy anger can get you to act for the good of the relationship, to protect yourself and the one you love. The unhealthy kind, however, places a wedge into a relationship. Unhealthy anger hurts the one you love when left unmanaged.
Joy: The emotion of joy is about the desire to connect and share something with another. A very positive type of connection, but if it is met with a negative, angry or dismissive response, joy can quickly evaporate.
Sadness: Sadness as an emotion learned from something we have seen or experienced. Sadness is asking to be comforted, to open a communication with someone who can relieve us of the pain of sadness. Seeking comfort, however, can make us dependent. Taken to the extreme, one can become functionally dependent upon another. We become so used to being dependent on our partner for relieving our sadness that it becomes habit. We end up avoiding responsibilities and dealing with the original problem that made us sad in the first place.
Any of these above emotions can make you dependent upon another, for the good or for the bad. Being dependent upon one another is not bad; in fact, it’s at the core of any healthy relationship. But when one becomes dependent to an extreme, the imbalance becomes unhealthy. The dependent one begins to shirk his or her responsibilities. The dependency slides from a bonding mechanism to an obsession. The other partner begins to feel like they have a tumor growing on their back. The unhealthy dependency becomes fuel for aggression.
A couple that is co-dependent upon one another, however, is a couple in balance, a couple in love. Their mutual dependency becomes a healthy coping mechanism. A healthy co-dependent couple is able to depend on each other for support, but if their partner is unavailable, they don’t fall apart, as in the case of an unhealthy co-dependent relationship. As Steven Covey states in his book, 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, the couple becomes inter-dependent.
Whatever the apparent reason for an argument or conflict in a relationship, look for the emotion that lies beneath. It’s not about the checkbook or the steak you brought home, it’s not about how uncaring he seems to be that his wife lost her baby, it’s about what we don’t tell one another, and it maybe something we’ve nearly forgotten about ourselves.
Coping With Good And Bad
You come home after a great day and your partner treats you like something the dog left in the back yard, or you’re pulling that cake out of the oven and it falls flat, ruining your kids birthday party. We tend to view things as either all good or all bad, then resolve the problem by keeping good separate from bad. This black and white view of a world of grays leads us to deny all the shades in between and an inability to tolerate weaknesses and failures in ourselves and in others. If we fail then we are bad, and if we succeed then we are good. By extension, we see everything our partner does in that same light and therein lies the circular reference that freezes the relationship like a computer.
There are four ways of dealing with the conflict between good and bad results, only one of which works.
Deny The Bad: Denying your faults, the denial of your emotions as not being acceptable, or denying the existence of sinful feelings such as lust or envy lead to sadness and an inability to cope with the problem that caused it. Nothing goes away.
Narcissists have this affliction. So focused are they on themselves, that they deny anything they do as being wrong, sinful, or unacceptable. This makes them unable to cope with relationship problems because they see no problem; at least not with themselves.
Deny The Good: Often one has become so buried beneath a pile of “ideal” expectations that they do away with standards altogether and live without any awareness of being bad. Alternately, we deny the good in others and view everyone as being all bad, always having ulterior motives, and no one caring for anybody but themselves.
You will often see this manifested in teens. So buried by expectations from one authority figure or another, they’ll often say, “Screw it,” and ignore everybody as not knowing anything as they pursue their own teen rebellion. If not dealt with or corrected by the time they reach full adulthood, they could slip into the alternate version where they view everyone as being bad and self-serving, including whomever they may decide to partner with.
Attack And Judge: This is the most common way of dealing with the bad. While there may be some truth in the attack, if it is not done with some grace and acceptance, the result is harsh and hurtful.
A harsh attack and judgment from one partner upon another can often lead to the other partner responding in kind with his own attack, and that only spirals out of control. Alternately, the one attacked could retreat. This accomplishes nothing but engendering bad feelings and another problem added into the mix. It is a fine line you walk if this method is used to cope with conflict; a misstep in either direction away from constructive criticism could be viewed as an attack.
Acceptance: Here we deny nothing, accept both the good and the bad as parts of Life. The bad can be forgiven, while the good is our idealized goal. We meet both with grace and acceptance. We deal with both as they show up in our lives. Since we do not condemn, detached acceptance allows us to love and connect with the other.
Acceptance, naturally, is the only way of dealing with the conflict between good and bad. This style of coping works 100% of the time. It will always lead to communication and results that both sides can accept and leave plenty of room for love to continue to flourish.
Building The Bridge Through Talking
In addition to acceptance, let’s examine some great tools and ideas to build a strong “We” beginning with the art of conversation. Each conversation you have deposited more coins into your love bank. However, knowing know how to talk, requires one to understand your partners love language.
Love language is about knowing what your partner means when they says something. Let’s take the example of the hard working couple, both working full time in careers, raising a family and success oriented. A common excuse for their relational conflict is not having the time to unwind and talk. She used to like going for take-out on Friday nights but he insists she cook a meal on Fridays. She says she’s exhausted and that he’s too demanding. But from his point of view it’s not about the meal or even how it tastes, it’s about showing him she is contributing and pulling her own weight. He cooks the other four weeknights, and he just wants to see her contribute that one night. What she had taken as simple complaining was something else, but she could not see that until she had figured out how to speak his language in the way that he meant it.
Watch the Way you say something
Relational gridlock results from simple miscommunication and your marital computer has now frozen. It could have been the wrong choice of words, or quite often, simply the tone. You may have meant your tone as nothing more than being too tired to smile, but your partner will take it to mean you are being mean and belligerent. Start by backing away from your automated responses and begin to analyze what your partner is saying. Take a sincere, hard look at what you are saying and the way you are saying it. Don’t assume your partner is telepathic. Be clear and upfront.
Start by actively listening.
Listen to the way in which something is said. When it’s your turn to respond, keep it light. If you are responding emotionally, it may sound too critical and defensive. This style of communication is an open invitation of the Four Horsemen into your conversation. Speak from a place of feeling, not aggression. Keep it conversational. Break the tension from time to time with a little humor if that is your way. Remember you’re both on the same side.
There is such a thing as intentional versus non-intentional conversation. Non-intentional is casual conversation, the topics won’t have any serious impact on anyone’s lives. Intentional conversation, on the other hand, is an expectation to be listened to and is best exemplified by the old, “Say what you mean and mean what you say” axiom. A real close conversation with your partner, the kind where you connect with that person thoroughly, should always be intentional. Have an atmosphere where each person talks openly and honestly about his or her conviction, is unafraid to voice any concerns or beliefs, but does so in a manner that precludes any hostility on either’s part.
Be empathetic to whom you are conversing.
Next, be empathetic towards one another; do not assume the worst in what he or she says. Always give each other the benefit of the doubt. He might have had a bad day and his words came out wrong, or she may have simply been too tired and worn out to phrase things better. Remember what you know regarding your partner’s personality type. If you both have strong personalities, then remember to tone it down. She is still your beautiful tenderhearted wife and you are still the one she sees break out into childish grins under the right circumstances.
It’s been said we are given two ears and one mouth and they are best used in proportion. When it is your turn to talk be sure you thoroughly understand your partner’s point. If you don’t, ask a few clarifying questions, first. When they realize you were actively listening, they will be more receptive to your point of view. Help them understand what is important to you about the issue and why. When you ask clarifying questions, nod your head and pause before responding, you are actively listening. Active listening means you don’t simply hear the other’s words, but you understand it from their point of view. Show an interest in what is being said; be a part of what the other is trying to tell you. Don’t interrupt, don’t judge, and don’t start trying to think of counter-arguments; this is not a debate class. You may not agree with everything said, but you can give the courtesy of actively listening and validating your partner’s value, if if you disagree with their point of view.
Listen to what the other is saying.
Everyone wants to be heard, understood, and validated. It shows caring. Once you have each communicated your side of the issue to one another, it may be time to find middle ground. What solution can you find that you will both be happy with? Compromising is about finding that middle ground, but too often people will use the word “compromise” as a means to trick the one person into conceding to their demands while getting nothing in return. Do not distort the concept of a compromise but stay true to its spirit and find that middle ground.
Don’t just communicate when you have to, and don’t assume that she knows that you love her. People like hearing affirmations on a regular basis. A quick kiss in the morning, note on the pillow, message texted at lunch, even a quick phone call from work just to say, “Hey, I love you, you know.” It’s not always about the words but about hearing the tone. If you hear that loving tone from one another on an often enough basis then when a crisis comes up you will both be in a better place to deal with it, talk it out, and remain close during the entire process.
Successful couples invest about 20 to 30 minutes a day reconnecting, talking about their needs, what happened that day, what they’re looking forward to, etc. Beyond that, we should also invest another ten to fifteen hours a week of quality time together. You rarely have to offer solutions for your partner’s problems, in many cases, being heard is validating enough.
To better learn your partner’s love language:
– Listen
– Understand
– Validate
From Joe:
“I’d like to say something to her without her freaking out.”
Why’s her reaction a problem? What’s wrong with your partner freaking out?
Most folks have shared with me the reason they hold back their truth in a relationship is because their partner can’t handle it or will get too upset. Sorry folks, but the main reason many of us hold back is that we are afraid. Afraid of what? For most people, they are afraid of our reaction to their reaction. We are afraid of our own stuff that gets triggered when they get triggered. This is the enmeshed stance in a relationship. “I can’t be me because I might upset you, so I’ll protect myself and withhold what I really want to say.” Meanwhile I rob them of the opportunity to grow by not saying anything. So what if the other person gets upset? That is their problem, not yours (and, if we are on it, we can make space for their reactivity and love them through it). We have to learn how to be smarter and more courageous than this in a relationship, especially if we care about being who we truly are, and especially if we really do love the other person. Let’s give them a chance and trust they can handle who we are.