How To Consciously Share Your Feelings When Fighting.
Have you ever found yourself in what you thought was a casual conversation with your man - suddenly go from zero to 60 in less than a second - ugly words all of sudden being thrown around out of nowhere?
You’re both instantly in a full blown argument and you can feel your heart pounding and sinking simultaneously.
That was NOT at all the intention of the “innocent casual conversation.”
You’re now in a full blown fight.
Where exactly did you go wrong?
And how did this escalate SO quickly?
If you really think back over the argument - if you become a detective and take a closer look - it’s often easy to see that fine line that we all cross over too quickly that leads from ‘innocent casual conversation’ to a full on verbal war of regretful words and hurt feelings.
It happens when we CHOSE to cross over that fine line - we make that choice ourselves.
It may have seemed like the right thing to do in the heat of the moment yet looking back we can see and feel the hurt - and all the unnecessary damage we have done to our relationship in just a flash of words.
Looking back over the fight, you may have wished you had said something else - or acted differently.
I have been there - mulling over hurtful situations that were my doing or that I contributed to.
We can’t change the past.
We just have to Radically Accept that what was said was said, and that if we want to break out of this cycle of ugly words - fighting - we have to be a detective and learn from the situation.
You CAN turn things around for yourself - if you want to - you can break this cycle of arguing by implementing your FREEDOM to choose how you respond to the whole situation.
Let’s say, for example, whenever your man is feeling insecure, he brings up a past situation that involved you that he has strong negative feelings about - perhaps something you had done in the past that he didn't agree with.
You can see the fight brewing - he has brought this up before a few times since you’ve been together - it seems to be his go to argument, whenever he isn't feeling good about his life or himself.
He starts picking on you “ I can’t believe you! How could you have done that!”
He’s getting more and more worked up - insulting you - saying he can’t trust you - he’s not sure if he will ever get over this.
You’ve heard this all before - you have had this same fight many times.
What you have to do is STOP doing what doesn’t work.
Stop approaching the argument the same way you have done so in the past - trying to justify your behaviour, blaming, explaining why things happened, defending yourself, accusing…
“If you REALLY loved me you wouldn’t speak to me this way...how dare you!”
And this could go on and on - if you let it - possibly only ‘resolving’ itself by going to bed angry and waking up the next day with the mess of the night before ‘forgotten…’.
Only for the same argument to happen again in the future.
This approach doesn’t fix anything - it offers no solution at all - and leaves both of you feeling sad, resentful and drained.
It doesn’t create the love, trust and partnership you crave in your relationship.
It only does the complete opposite - killing any good feelings between the two of you - breaking down trust, creating emotional distance, and feelings of loneliness in your relationship.
The longer you let this cycle and habit of arguing continue, the more damage you are doing to your partnership.
So how do you fix this?
You have to understand that your reflex response of defending, explaining or blaming, DOES NOT WORK.
The only thing it does is to cause your man to become defensive causing him to shutdown - which will just worsen the whole fight - getting you nowhere.
When you’re in this intense emotional state it may feel like you have no choice but to argue back.
I want you to know that you do have a choice - you need to be the partner that leads by example - if you want a beautiful relationship you need to step up to the plate yourself - take the lead and show your man that fights don’t have to be this way.
Instead of defending yourself, explaining why what happened happened, accusing him of being nasty to you and not loving you - take a step back.
Catch yourself - be that detective - really listen to him - respond to him from a higher place.
I want you to feed his words back to him.
Be a detective - describe to him how you hear him feeling and being.
You can answer like this “ I hear sadness and anger in your voice, is that right? “
Feeding back what he is saying to him validates his thoughts and emotions making him feel more understood and seen.
You're doing this in a way that is emotionally neutral - without blame and defensiveness.
He may respond in an angry way - unwilling to meet you at your level - trying to get you to argue with him.
I want you to stay focused on your goal of choosing not to argue - being aware of the emotions at stake.
Do not get sucked into the black hole of fighting.
If he's poking at you, you could say something like: “I hear how disappointed and hurt you are, and I’m not going to fight with you about this. When we both feel calmer, I’m open to talking about how to fix this so that we can both feel better and move forward. Until we can do that I’ll be here listening to you but I won’t be arguing with you.”
This may take you going into what my mentor Rori Raye calls “broken record” - you might have to repeat the same thing over - that you will NOT be participating in the argument - that you WILL be open to talking about how to resolve the issue.
I am not at all justifying poor behaviour - No man should be verbally or physically abusive towards his partner.
However, YOU are the one with the power to choose how to handle the situation - to choose how to behave in the argument.
I remember with much sadness many special moments that were absolutely ruined between me and my boyfriend, as insecurities would well up which led to me self sabotaging these beautiful bonding moments.
It took a lot of self awareness to break out of the cycle and shift our whole dynamic by refusing to get sucked into the fighting ‘game’ with him.
As soon as I stopped engaging at his level with further blame, shame, excuses and defensive words our whole vibe shifted.
It took a few rounds of being strict and committed to the process of choosing my words correctly.
Slowly our fighting dynamic shifted to a more mature ‘discussion style’.
You can have the best intentions for your relationship but if you don’t say it in a way that will leave him open to wanting to hear you and understand your point of view all your effort will be lost.
If you feel like your struggling in your relationship to break out of a similar negative cycle - I can help you bring more awareness into your partnership.
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