Let’s break down why disagreeing effectively is so important and how you can prevent misinterpretations!

Transcript:

Welcome back to video number three. In this second section, I am so impressed with you. Look at you, go to make sure that your relationship can thrive a little bit more, take like the training wheels off the injury cycle, so that you're going at the fastest speed possible rather than at the very controlled, very slow moving inch by inch speed. You've been going before as a relationship. So there is more time for not just literal vacations, but like vacations of connection. So like with her going away to an Island, or you're having those vacations of connection at home, hopefully the reduction of fights and being able to bring them down to zero.

So, Oh, we are going to break down this next section. Why do we argue? Right. We talked about it a little bit of this in the intro video. I know it doesn't make sense sometimes. You know, we usually pick our partner because we like them on some level. There's some reason why we found them attractive or engaging or amazing, or like our best friend or someone we wanted to spend our life with. And it's really confusing why we ended up in these places where we have some not so great feelings, like hurt feelings, not feeling seen, heard, or understood, and all of this can lead to arguments, right? Because we can get to a place where we're not getting what we're looking for. And we get to a space where we start to kind of get in defense mode and then sometimes oftens mode.

So let's break this down a little bit more. Why do we argue? Well, when we have hurt feelings, sometimes it can spark an argument rather than a disagreement, right? Again, we can get to a place where like, if we were, I don't know if this is scientifically correct. So don't don't fact check me on this, but like a porcupine, like we're all of our like needles pop up. We might get to a place where we feel like all renewals, each pop up where we are feeling really on edge. And therefore the argument that rigidity that shutting down that criticism might come because we're feeling in pain. And I know this seems counterintuitive because when we think pain, we often think like sadness, but a lot of us have different ways. We express our sadness or have been taught to express our sadness. And some of this can look like defensive strategies, right? So when we start to have hurt feelings, we can then get to a place of argument. Okay.

The next one that we have down here is not feeling seen, heard, or understood. Now, this is such a big one, like a highlight this one, big red stars, you know, circle, circle, underline, this is a biggie. And this one is the one that gets skipped so much by couples. And we see this all the time. A couple comes in, they have a fight and one person's expressing like what they're upset about. They're really frustrated with X, Y, and Z. They're really heard about X, Y, and Z, and their partner turns to them and tells them why their perspective is different or why their feelings are inaccurate. Now, obviously the attempt is not a negative one. Typically in that moment, the attempt is to share the alternative perspective. However, person number one, who expressed their feelings of feeling frustrated and hurt often ends up feeling this second bullet point here, not feeling seen, heard, or understood again, can get us back into that defense mode. And sometimes all fence mode where we really just want to be understood, loved and appreciated by our partner. 

We talked about how the commonality between disagreements and arguments actually is having a difference in opinion. So we don't need to have the same opinion at the end of a fight, believe it or not. And I think this is sometimes where couples get really, really confused. The idea is actually to have both people feel seen, heard and understood. And obviously there's more complexity with that. Like sometimes there's a desire for compromise or sometimes there needs to be a mutual decision that's made. But the ultimate goal is to really make sure both people feel recognized in a difficult discussion.

Another example of why we argue we're in the reason I should say is having perpetual problems. We're gonna get into that in just a second, but a perpetual problem is something like an ongoing repetitive fight. For example, if you feel like you and your partner have different ideas about what the holiday season should look like, whose in-laws or parents you should be staying with and for how much time and in what location, this might be a perpetual problem. You may have the same discussion each holiday season. Maybe you found a compromise, which is awesome, but this might be a little bit of a point of contention where both of you just want something a little bit differently and argument easily can occur as a result of having this difference in opinion, and these perpetual problems.

Another reason why we can argue is triggers. So let's break down what this is for just a second. A trigger basically is we can have this like strong reaction to something that often is based in our own personal story. So whether that's our history or recent events, when we have a trigger, we often become reactive. So this can look again like a defensive or offensive response. So let's break down what this means in case you're not familiar with the concept. So let's imagine that when you were growing up, you had a pretty critical parent and every time you did a chore, there was really feedback that you were basically doing it wrong, whether it was washing the dishes or putting the trash away, there was something that you were told that you were failing about each time. 

So when your partner picks up a plate and notices that I don't know, after you've hand washed it, you've missed a little piece. Like there's some food stall and a plate and remarks, Hey, there's food on this plate. Will you wash it again? You might feel a sense of a trigger. You might get brought back to the place where your parent was kind of critical and you might start to feel like you're being criticized and on the defense. Now, maybe that is what your partner's doing. But sometimes this trigger is more based on our history than when our partner intense. So in that moment, your partner may have just intended to let you know, Hey, do you mind if you're watching this, I noticed some food and you instead, might've heard you've failed this task and you go back to like a place of not feeling great. And all of a sudden your partner, who seems like your best friend feels kind of like the enemy and this can lead to an argument really quickly. Okay?

The next one, so common, especially for parents or you have a high powered job, um, or you work multiple jobs, you know, or you're dealing with illness or you're training for a marathon. There's so many reasons it's going to happen, but exhaustion can lead to arguments when we are exhausted, we are not mentally in our best space. So that means that we may not be putting our best foot forward when we're really feeling kind of tired and loopy. It's the same idea of like, we don't want to do our most mentally engaging work at work when we're fatigued, right? We're like kind of in autopilot mode and you're not going to get the best version of us. 

It's the same thing in your relationship. When you are fatigued, it's going to be really easy to go into autopilot mode. Your partner may not feel, feel seen, heard, or understood, or you do. And it can be really easy to kind of go back to argument mode rather than disagreeing. So if you're feeling exhausted side note, this is a really great time to take stock of how am I feeling? What do I need? Is this the best time to have a really difficult discussion? How can I express to my partner, how I might need some rest right now, slow it down right now, et cetera, so that we can actually have this really effective, connected discussion around our relationship rather than another argument. Alright. And lastly, although I'm sure there's many other reasons here, but we tried to boil it down to make it nice, simple, short and sweet. 

Again, is the difference in value, morals or opinion. So this can easily lead to arguments. If you feel differently politically, or about religion or about any kind of really strong, important topic to you, it can be really difficult to figure out how to find a place of commonality. And also how to speak about this difference in perspective or opinion, depending on what the topic is without that list, that first argument list, those words like rigid and close minded and critical. How do we not put that on table? When we feel really passionate about the topic, right? We're not just really going after a partner because they said their own thoughts. It's often because we feel really strongly too. So that can be a little bit of a tricky piece here. Now you've done such a good job tuning in. I'm going to give you just a little bite size more, and then we're gonna do a little celebration dance for all of the learning that you've done. 

Okay. This is the last little bite sized piece of this section. And then we're going to go to the last video in this section, in this module. So this is a really important step that I want you to take away at the end of this video, which is 69%. That's right. 69. It's a high number percent of problems within a long term relationship are actually perpetual problems. If you don't know John and Julie Gottman, check them out, they're great couples therapy, researchers. We've trained with them. We love their work. And we know that this fact is really helpful for couples to remember that a lot of what comes up in your relationship is going to be perpetual. So the question starts to become, how do you not have arguments about it, but learn how to disagree effectively. Can you imagine if you could learn how to disagree effectively 69% of the moments that you have problems in your relationship could start to feel a lot less draining. 

I mean, that feels like a wind, right? So your short little homework today after you shoulder shrug and celebratory dance, which I hope you're doing always at the end of each video is to write down one thing from the previous list. Let's go back for a second. That feels like happens in your relationship. What are these things that happen that leads to arguments, not to disagreements if you're already doing disagreements on these sections. Awesome. But I want you to think of one of these things that leads to arguments. Remember that's not just the difference in opinion, but that that's also inclusive of criticism or of shutting down or of there being kind of this like hot hostility in language, around having a difference in opinion. So figure out which one of these things, and maybe it's all of them, but which one of these things happen really frequently and which one you want to try and dive into and spend some attention dissipating like ASAP. So see in the next video, let's make it happen!