Hello Everyone,
I’ve been looking through the archives of couple therapy support materials that I’ve created over a couple of decades, and I rediscovered plenty of useful stuff. Most of it’s brief, easy to digest and not too hard to implement straight away. Positive behaviour changes stick if you understand the importance making them, and practice them until they become your new way.
I’m posting one of my archive videos today, about positive, non-violent couple communication because it hits some marks in this week’s question from a reader. Here’s a little of what they wrote to me:
I want to ask about an argumentative partner who makes excuses and throws everything back at me whenever I raise an issue that’s bothering me.
Nothing ever gets resolved because when I try to talk with him he just wants to tell me why I’m wrong, not address the issue. He says I’m always having a go at him whenever I try to raise anything between us. How do I talk to him? Can you suggest?
Yes I can.
First of all, thank you so much for dropping me a line. This is a super common relationship dynamic and your question is likely to help other people too. My little video below touches on some basic ideas around how to communicate well when you don’t agree over something.
If your partner has two minutes and eleven seconds (!) to watch it with you as a couple activity, that might start his cogs turning on what doesn’t help your relationship, and how to do things differently. That being said, I have more to add!
Many people’s anxiety is triggered if they get the slightest sniff of a possible disapproving comment from their partner, even when the conversation wasn’t intended in that way. It sounds like that might be what’s happening for your partner, even if he doesn’t realise it.
Asking the deeper questions of each other, as I suggest in the video, and listening patiently to each other’s answers, can help unwind tension building over small things and lower the defensive responses.
None of us like being criticised or rejected, but souls who are particularly fearful or sensitised to those feelings for whatever myriad reasons, may tend to misconstrue any conversation opener that isn’t all sunshine and flowers. They typically jump into defensive mode to try to block out what they’re afraid could be said, or might happen, trying to get out ahead of it and shut the threat down. In this state they may feel flooded with emotion, or click into fight or flight mode.
What I’ve learned over many years as a couple therapist is that most things in relationships are not single exchanges but parts of cycles, where one person’s words and actions set off similar responses in the other, time and time again. This often creates vicious circles of unhelpful words or actions and reactions, which can happen increasingly automatically and become more distressing the more they are repeated. The couple are usually too caught up in the cycle to see it and disentangle themselves, and can tend to turn away from each other in frustration, not knowing how to escape the spirals.
This is where a good couple therapist can sweep in and really help out if they can help identify that damn cycle. You can then make a plan as a couple-team to look for it happening, become aware of how it tends to get rolling, and decide to behave differently when it starts to take off, reminding each other that you are on the same side.
In sum:
The enemy is not your partner. The enemy is usually a defensive/fear-based cycle of interacting that comes between you when you aren’t on the same page. It isn’t usually one person’s ‘fault’, but an unconscious triggering of unhelpful feelings in each other.
What helps?
You both helping each other when you feel or see yourselves getting triggered and the cycle starting. You could agree to almost lovingly ‘parent’ each other and yourselves when the disconnection cycle starts, until you get the hang of not being drawn into it.
Let me explain:
It’s the vulnerable part in each of you that gets afraid when you’re disconnecting, right?
So, instead of going at each other or getting frustrated at each other and making it worse, agree to treat each other in those moments like a loving, emotionally intelligent parent would treat a scared child. (Not everyone had a parent like that, I know, but you probably have an idea how you would have liked to be parented, so that’s your guide.)
E.g.,
Take a breath before reacting. Don’t abandon each other with your words or actions.
Drop your shoulders and be present and open.
Listen and try to learn what your partner is saying and hear how they are feeling. Don’t cut them off. Try to listen for the core wish or need they are expressing - it’s usually the normal human things like wanting to feel good enough, safe, desired. Sometimes the words are about the dishwasher, but the yearning is about wanting to be heard, or feel closer!
Gentle words. No criticisms or accusations. They NEVER help connect you. Check your tone of voice too - Is it angry, impatient, passive aggressive? Is that going to help you get closer?
Remind yourselves that you are team-mates, not opponents.
Remind yourselves to respect and accept your differences. They probably attracted you to each other in the first place. Every relationship requires some degree of ‘Live and let live.’
Ask for help and teamwork, rather than telling each other to be different.
I hope that sharing these words and the video together will be a catalyst for starting to unpack the defensive cycles that get going between you. Also, take heart that you are not alone in these cycles. They develop in most relationships at some time and they are resolvable. Consider whether a knowledgeable therapist might help you really pin down your cycle, and beat it together.
The key is to turn towards each other under pressure, not to abandon each other with shut down and defensive or fighting words and actions. It’s your team against the challenges of the world, not the two of you against each other.
Love to you,
Hi Deb
Navigating disagreements is paramount to cohabitation. From sibling to adult, we must find ways to get through disagreements. The toddler wants to stay and play, the adult must navigate the path to leaving, the path can be teary and tantrums can arise, or the path can be negotiated and agreement reached for a joyful departure.
Disagreements can not be avoided or cancelled no matter how many may subscribe to that approach.
So how do we celebrate our diverging points of view?
Listen with empathy to another's view?
Find a way through that is satisfactory and or respectful?
Its seems like disagreeing is a right of passage to maturing as an adult.
A protest is like a tantrum. It gets attention but has no power to negotiate a way through.
Respectful and generous debates that celebrate mutual points of agreement would be more fun.
Censoring and cancelling an opposing point of view simply leads to deep division and then war.
It's time we made disagreeing a normal happening instead of a door slam or an abrupt end to a relationship.