Stop the Fighting – Relationship Advice

I can’t even begin to tell you how often I hear this question:

My husband and I argue all the time and it’s a miserable experience. I can’t even remember what we’re fighting about most of the time.  It’s become the only way we know how to communicate.  How can I calm us down when a fight starts so we can actually speak to each other instead of yell at each other?

Conflict is a very common experience in an intimate relationship and how you handle it will determine what happens next. If you turn away from each other when a conflict arises you will learn to disaffect, that means the love you once had will erode. You’ll want to separate and possibly even divorce. But, there are ways you can use conflict to further the growth and healing between the two of you. If you’re yelling at each other, it’s because you’re not in the mature part of your brain. Literally, when you are yelling you’re in a reactive state, you’re having an emotional trigger in the limbic area of the brain.  This happens very quickly when we feel emotionally threatened or unsafe. The part of your brain, the neo-cortex, that you need to solve the problem is not even available when you are in this state. It’s as though the reactive brain has “hijacked” the more adult, mature brain.  So for that reason, stop yelling. Take a time out, take a break. Each of you needs to go to your corners and do whatever it is that helps you individually to calm down. When you come back together, do something I call “the bridge”.

The bridge is simply this: between two people there is a space and that is the relational space. You need a way to get from yourself over to your partner’s world. Imagine the metaphor of a bridge arching between the two of you over the space between. Going over this bridge to your partner’s side with no judgment, nothing but big eyes and a curiosity about what’s going on over there, will really help you to stop the yelling and start communicating in a deeper way. Take turns talking. Decide who’s going to be first. That person is the only one to talk. The other listens with their full presence. He reflects back what he has heard, validates the other’s position, and allows himself to empathize with the feelings being expressed on the other side of the bridge.

If you feel like interrupting, just WAIT. Do you know what it stands for? It stands for “Why Am I Talking?” If you’re talking in order to interrupt, to make your partner wrong, to prove a point, that’s not a good reason to talk. Because in those instances you’re going to rekindle the original fight and before long you’ll be yelling at each other again. So just WAIT.

And remember, John Gottman has told us, in his research on what makes marriages succeed or fail, that there are Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. If any one of those things (not alone the cocktail we usually serve up!) end up in your relationship, statistics show you’re in trouble. What are the Four Horsemen? They are: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. You have to keep those out of your relationship if you want to survive and thrive.  We also know it takes a whole lot to recover from even one negative interaction. Again, Dr. Gottman tells us that it takes five positive interactions to make up for even one negative one. So I recommend that you develop a zero negativity policy. Work hard to keep negativity, in all its forms, out of your relationship.  Use the simple bridging exercise to calm the reactive brain, develop deep listening skills, create safety and connect. You’ll be surprised how, with a conscious commitment to this tool, you will be able to stop the fighting!