035: Easing Through Arguments: Tools for Conflict Resolution
Nov 07, 2023
Tommy Geary
Ever wonder why you or your wife hold a grudge, or why last week's disagreement comes raging out at unexpected moments? Relationships cycle through three phases – Harmony, disharmony, and repair. And the faster you repair, the stronger your connection grows with your spouse. Learn how to articulate your frustrations without resorting to blame or shutting down, and discover the power of 'clean' communication. And we'll delve into an equally crucial topic - how to respond when you're the one facing the heat of frustration. We'll explore argument and repair cycles in relationships, why this process is pivotal, and how you can effectively shorten the repair phase.
Ever wonder why you or your wife hold a grudge, or why last week's disagreement comes raging out at unexpected moments? Relationships cycle through three phases – Harmony, disharmony, and repair. And the faster you repair, the stronger your connection grows with your spouse. Learn how to articulate your frustrations without resorting to blame or shutting down, and discover the power of 'clean' communication. And we'll delve into an equally crucial topic - how to respond when you're the one facing the heat of frustration. We'll explore argument and repair cycles in relationships, why this process is pivotal, and how you can effectively shorten the repair phase.
This is the Durable Dad podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is going to give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up guys? Durable Dad, episode number 35. Here we go.
Speaker 1:
This is the third episode in a row about relationships, so three of three here. We'll be switching up the topic next week, and two episodes ago we talked about how to communicate clearly, effectively, our love, our care for our wife, and last episode we talked about seeing our wife, hearing our wife, before we solve and try to find a solution. So this is going to be the third episode, and the reason I think these episodes are really powerful or important is because we all want solid relationships. We want to support each other, we want to have some fun, smile, have great sex, we want to be able to rely on each other. Yeah, I was just talking to one of my buddies kind of the same age as me 40, 45,. Him and his wife are going through some medical stuff and it's the first time they've gone through some medical health issues and sometimes those get really personal. You're talking about going to the bathroom and what your poop looks like and how it's affecting the rest of your body and you're having these very vulnerable conversations and it could be kind of awkward, but how amazing is it to have someone in your life to go through that with. You can talk to the doctors about it all the time, but someone at home that you can connect with. That's the power of a relationship and a good, strong marriage. Play that out over years and it's going to correlate to our ease in life and our happiness in life when we have someone to go through the great stuff with and the not so great stuff with. So today I want to talk about our role in an argument, because arguments are going to happen. Marriages are not happily ever after and all of our relationships go through this cycle and the cycle is harmony, disharmony and repair and then, after we repair, we're back into harmony. The part of this relationship cycle that we want to focus on is the repair, because we're going to have the harmony, we're going to have the disharmony. The repair is what we can get really good at, because the repair could take weeks, could take days, or it could take hours or it could take minutes. We can shorten the repair time. So when we're in an argument, when there's disharmony, we're going to talk about how to shorten the repair time so we can get back into harmony. And there's two ways we're going to go about it.
Speaker 1:
One is when you feel disconnected and you feel out of harmony, and then the other is when your wife feels out of harmony. So first one, you're feeling disconnected, frustrated, pissed, hurt. Whatever You're in your head, you're not feeling connected, you're not feeling on the same team. So what do you do? One is you speak up. You don't shut down, you don't walk away, you don't do the silent treatment thing. You communicate your feelings cleanly.
Speaker 1:
Not clearly, but we communicate how we're thinking, how we're feeling, in a clean way. And by clean I mean using the word I and not you, not blaming our wife for our emotions. And this is a big one, because we can get caught up in thinking that our wife's words make us feel a certain way and our feelings come from our thoughts. And when we live in really tight relationships and we live in the same house and we're together all the time, it can feel like our emotions are enmeshed and we want to separate our emotions. And that's the way to cleanly communicate our feelings when we own our emotions.
Speaker 1:
So, example you are ready to kick back and watch some football and your wife asks you hey, can you help with this broken light switch or can you go grab the kids? It was right before you were about to just chill and you notice yourself starting to feel frustrated, starting to feel pissed. Instead of grunting and going off and mumbling under your voice and doing the task or getting into an argument with your wife, communicate your emotions the frustrated, the pissed and it could be as simple. As you know. She asked you to do that task and you're like, feel that frustration and like I was really hoping to just chill, I didn't want to do any more chores, I had a long week and when you said that you needed me to do this task, it felt like everything I do is never enough. And that might sound kind of deep, it might sound kind of soft, it might sound kind of whiny, but that's what happens in a guy's head, right? That's what pisses us off. When we're like I had a long week, how can you really be asking me to do something else? Like that causes frustration and we'll take our wife's request to do something as she wants us to do more. I haven't done enough. Like that hurts. There's a sadness in there. So explaining our experience without blaming her is the way to start to repair quickly. Right, we're not shutting down, we're not yelling or screaming. We're owning our emotions.
Speaker 1:
So notice what I didn't say in that example. I didn't go to the you statements. I didn't say you always do this. Whenever I try to chill, you always have something for me to do. You've been nagging me about this light switch for a week now. Or I was just out at the store. You knew I was there. Why couldn't you have asked me then? That's the blame that we wanna try to avoid, and we can do this. I don't know. I know you might be listening and be like that's a little much, but this is the stuff that connects us.
Speaker 1:
You guys are on the same team. You both want each other to feel happy, feel secure, feel relaxed and calm, so you guys can have a good relationship. But we gotta communicate this stuff For out of harmony, in order to repair. We gotta talk about our thoughts, talk about our feelings and not just shut down or not just avoid and push down our feelings. All right, that's the first way. When you feel disconnected.
Speaker 1:
What about when you're on the receiving end, when your wife's pissed, when your wife's upset about something? First thing is don't go into defense mode. Don't get defensive right away. Try and hear what she's actually saying. And we talked about this in the last episode, but that was more when your wife was having an issue that didn't have to do with you.
Speaker 1:
In this case, it's disharmony in your relationship and her problem is with you. So your wife says you've been yelling at the kids a lot. You're not helping around the house, you're always on your phone. You're just been a real asshole lately and that's intense. Right, that's a lot to unload on someone, but maybe it happens sometimes. Right, your wife has been holding a lot of this in and all of a sudden, something breaks the camel's back. I mean flip it. It can happen to husbands and men too, when we just flip out like this.
Speaker 1:
And the best thing you can do in this situation For ourselves, for our partners, is to find the truth in what they're saying. Right, how have I kind of been a dick lately. How have I been shutting down and Disconnected? It's hard to do, but in that moment it's going to be the best way to repair your relationship. There's disharmony. It's really helpful to get that repair done. Yeah, you're right. I have been looking at my phone a lot. I don't know if I've been a total asshole, but I get what you're saying Right.
Speaker 1:
When we go into the right and wrong, it never helps the situation. Defending our position and making it me versus you just creates more disharmony. And so those are two ways to shorten the repair. When you feel disconnected or frustrated, communicate your thoughts, your feelings in a clean way. Don't blame. And then, in the other case, when you're on the receiving end, look for the truth in it. Don't go into defense mode. And if you and your wife aren't on the same page and you Show up like this, the relationship will be better. She doesn't even have to change. She doesn't even have to Stop blaming you. She doesn't have to stop doing what she's doing. If you do these two things, or work on these two things, you're going to create a better relationship. You're gonna repair that Disharmony quicker than if you don't, if you just shut up or if you just go back and forth with the.
Speaker 1:
He said she said All right. So To wrap up, disharmony is going to happen. It's part of the cycle of a relationship and we want to get better at repairing. We don't want to let things sit. The longer we let things sit, the more disharmony there is. There's more separation in our marriage and, like I said in the last couple episodes, I use the terms husband and wife, but this goes for anybody that's listening and any type of Relationship you're in. These kinds of tips will create stronger relationships. All right, that's what I got for you guys. Have an awesome day and I'll catch you next week.