The conflicts, arguments, and fights that you have with your spouse can be some of the most emotionally discomforting and thoughtfully scary events in your marriage. This is all dependent upon how the other person reacts to the stress of the disagreement. Most fights that we have are just words. They are ideas that are thrown at each other. Sometimes we make words mean something very personal, and so the emotions get heightened, and emotional jabs are taken.
Depending on what type of attachment style you are using many of us break off the connection at some point and retreat. This is especially so with nice guys. When the emotions get too elevated, we start, avoiding or retreating from the discomfort.
However, at the end of the intense discussion, we often feel like there has not been any resolution. We feel as if we have wounded the other person or they have wounded us, and we haven’t repaired the damage. Without that repaired damage, we get a new behavior growing in place of the old connection.
Many times this behavior is just to ignore the problem at hand and pretend that it’s gone away. However, when you do this, you don’t get the resolution that will build a stronger connection. Because as you go through the discomfort of these fights and arguments, you can actually learn more about your spouse.
My recent experience experience
Here recently, my wife and I were having a discussion. And I ended up raising something that caused my wife to react. The more she talked the angry she got. The more I talked the angrier she got. For nice guys, this is a nightmare. The emotions were getting high. My anxiety was growing, but it was at the same time.
As the arguments continued. It was evident that my wife was deep in the thoughts that were creating some type of fear within her. I can only suspect from her comments that her thoughts were centered around that she didn’t matter. That her emotions were not important. That she was not important. which were the furthest from the truth. But it appeared that she was definitely in a fight or flight mode.
Now I didn’t get through this unscathed either. My normal reaction to my wife getting angry is to shut up go to the other room and basically hide till she acts like she is over it.
Back when I was a full-blown nice guy I was trying to control her emotions. I would try to dismiss what she was feeling. If she was upset and didn’t want to talk, I would hound her to get her to open up. Thinking that if she lanced that boil, she would feel better. I would try to get her to feel anything other than anger or resentment or whatever emotion she was feeling that I wasn’t comfortable with. I still go through anxious moments. I have thoughts of inadequacy when my wife criticizes my thoughts or actions or words. Knowing now that those are normal thoughts and why she states them the way she does is it something for me to run and hide from? I don’t try to run from those emotions. I just acknowledged that that is what I am feeling and moved on.
However this time I did not want to just shut down the conversation. I didn’t want to control the situation. Therefore, we continued having the argument until we both had enough, and we stepped back. We stopped talking for 15-20 minutes.
After we got home from the store and put away the groceries my wife went into the bedroom and I let her. After a while, she came back out and she explained why she acted the way she did. and that would not have happened if I had kept talking, I’ve kept pushing if I had kept being the nice guy. If I had tried to fix the problem, I would’ve never heard about how her stepdad treated her as an inconsequential inconvenience throughout her life. I got to learn something new and something powerful from my wife, which allowed us to be able to connect even deeper than before. All because I did stop and was present in mind to not go into a victim mindset. I did my darndest to not say 97% of the dumb things I wanted to say. And it was time for my wife to talk, she spoke volumes.
How do we have better more connecting discussions? There were nine things that I picked up from this recent emotion-filled discussion on the way home from the store.
Allow for the emotions to fly
We are emotional creatures. So when you’re having discussions, don’t tamp down your emotions. Don’t react to your emotions either. That is the important part. When we react to emotions, this is where so much damage is done to connections. So let me repeat that do not react to your emotions. Just acknowledge that you’re feeling those emotions. Another part is you don’t have to state them out loud. Acknowledge those emotions to yourself.
Would you acknowledge the emotions you allow those emotions to be? Are you scared? Maybe you’re anxious? Maybe you’re having thoughts that your wife will never talk to you ever again after this. Remember the thoughts that create your emotions are not true. They are just thoughts that your mind has put together.
So you can have your thoughts. You can also have your emotions. But you do not have to share those emotions with your wife. Mainly because in the heat of a discussion, she doesn’t care about your emotions. She wants her emotions to be validated. And that’s fine.
Be with your own discomfort
Many of the thoughts we have during arguments are those of us that are mind wants to give us to suggest whether we need to fight flight or Stonewall. It’s going to offer ideas like, “Your wife hates you” or “You are never getting laid ever again.”
And with those thoughts, you’re gonna have frustration, shame, hopelessness, fear, and other emotions flooding across. Be OK with those emotions. They don’t last long, only about a minute and a half to two minutes. If you can be with the discomfort of those emotions you will find, your wife wanting to connect after she has said her peace.
Remember that discomfort is the currency of your dreams. That means to also pay attention to the discomfort you’re going through in these arguments.
Allow her to have her own emotions
Whatever you do, don’t try to fix your wife’s emotions. It’s never a winner. She doesn’t want her emotions fixed. She doesn’t even want to change her emotions. She wants you to acknowledge that she is feeling those emotions she wants you to validate that she has emotions. That’s how her girlfriends and her communicate through talking.
Let her process her emotions
Now many times you may start getting some really big emotions bubbling into the top as you and your wife are heatedly talking to each other. Again, you don’t try to fix her emotions you let her have her emotions and she’s gonna process them. She may even use you as the sounding wall as she is processing these emotions.
This is where stoicism comes into play. You can let her have her emotions, and you don’t have to fix them. You don’t have to make her feel better. One because you can’t make her feel better. She doesn’t want you to make her feel better.
Try coming together and see what happens
If y’all have needed to step back and take a breather after 15 or 20 minutes, you can try reconnecting again to see if you can finish coming to a resolution over whatever the topic was. If at that time, the emotions start bubbling back up again then OK you can again step back for another 1520 minutes or longer if needed, and let the emotions simmer down again.
If you’re able to talk without the emotions, or getting too heated great y’all are going to be able to get to a resolution faster if there are still a lot of hurt feelings and people running to a victim mindset then you’re gonna have to stop step back and try again until you finally get through to the resolution.
Now this will be harder if you have conflict avoidance. If you run or hide or act like there’s nothing happening you’re not going to fix the problem. The problem will continue to simmer under the surface and nothing will ever be resolved. In fact, it’ll be like a volcano and it’ll build for a bit and then it’ll explode. Everyone will run for the hills and it’ll die back down. Eventually, everyone will move back and act like nothing happened and you’re never going to fix the problem. You have to find a resolution to the problem.
If the fight kicks back up?
If the topic comes back up, there’s more resolution that needs to be had. One of the key parts chew finding resolution is to ask questions. Be curious as to why your spouse feels the way they do. If you close your mind to the answers you’re never going to get, good full resolution.
Don’t let your emotions boil
Their times yes you’re going to get heated also. You’re going to get angry. You’re going to get frustrated again. You might feel ashamed even. As before you don’t react to your emotions respond to them acknowledge that you have them and the thought is that creates them. Then when you have a chance, talk to the guys in your band of Brothers. These guys can help you process the events that happened and give you some better insight.
She will tell you what she was thinking.
At the healing stage of the conflict. You will start to understand why your wife reacted, the way she did. She will share the root of the problem. She will share the fears that she was experiencing.
Don’t dismiss her emotions. Those were her emotions, so understand why she felt those emotions. Understand the thoughts behind why those emotions crept up. Acknowledged that she did feel those emotions. When you do, you will have a better understanding of your wife and where she is coming from.
Pay attention this is where she is opening her heart
When she starts opening up and sharing what she is thinking, this is when you want to be fully present with what she is saying. Don’t worry about what you’re going to say next. It’s not important. What your wife is saying at this moment will allow you to have a better understanding of where she’s coming from. Your chance to speak will come about after she has had her say.
This isn’t a matter of who got wrong gets to speak first. It is a matter of you, allowing the connection to start forming again. And to do that a good deal of the time it is better for us guys to just let the wife talk. Let her have her say. It’s not dismissing your feelings or your thoughts because again you get to have those when she has had her say.
Quick warning
No, I do want to say when I’m talking about fights and arguments and disagreements. I am talking about two grown adults who are not seeing eye to eye. This is what a conflict is. This is what a disagreement is. We don’t agree with something that was said or something that was done, and we feel that there was a huge grievance taken. So we want to correct that problem.
That’s why this conflict is being met. If there is a situation where one side or the other is belittling the other person by being physical with the other person, while in a state of heightened emotion, this is a state where you want to leave. You leave the environment because abuse does not build trust. That is why abuse is one of the three A’s where a divorce is perfectly acceptable.
So if there is verbal, emotional or physical abuse, going on in the relationship, no matter how much talking and opening up the person has if they’re willing to fly into that state of being sadly, the relationship isn’t worth keeping. Because eventually that person will likely lose control and cause serious harm to the other person so abuse isn’t where this is applied this is for, just normal disagreements in day-to-day life.
If you would like help in having stronger relationships, then I recommend taking the next step.
