Life Uncut - FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT - Talking conflict resolution styles

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

Happppy Thursday lifers! Holy smokes it comes around quickly dunnit!Starting with some cracker accidentally unfiltered’s and ‘can’t believe they said that’s’ before jumping into a meaty and ever so insightful topic, conflict styles.We’ve spoken about love languages and attachment styles in the past and we think this is a really great way to complete the conversation and tie them all in together.  The 5 conflict styles we discuss are -Conflict avoiders -volatile couples -validating couples-hostile couples-hostile-detached couples.These are so important to understand about yourself and your partner so you can work towards a happier, healthier relationship. So, which one are you!? You can do your own conflict style test here If you love the episode please hit subscribe, 5 starts, leave a review and share the love, because, well, we love love xOh, and join our Instagram and fb discussion group lifers, it’s where the magic (and lols) happen! @lifeuncutpodcastPeace x-- See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura and I'm Brittany and you guys already know but today we've mixed it up a little bit. This is not Ask Uncut like you come here for on a Thursday. This is our Tuesday episode just to really throw a spanner in the works. I think they're really used to the little mix-up now. We've had to do it like it's not like a surprise we're mixing it up. It's like this is just standard last month.

They're like, fuck, we don't know what these girls are going to pull out of the hat this week. Every week something new. No, we did have to mix it up this week. If you listen to Tuesday's episode, you'll know that we were fully prepped and ready to go with our juicy episode. And another, I guess, competing podcast did the same episode. they obviously bugged the studio and got in first so we had to change our style for the week it's actually really interesting we have now like this this topic that we were going to do for

this week's episode we were originally going to talk about busy and like the psychology of being busy and like how it's something that we shouldn't be glorifying but now it's everywhere yeah literally like I even sent Britt another article that was written by a completely different publication yesterday and I was like why is everyone talking about being busy now on the same week we wanted to drop it but I also think it's because it's that time of year where like there's so much going on and everyone feels like they just stretched their absolute limits when they should be enjoying themselves so I think it was very relatable anyway we decided to scrap it put it on hold we'll do it at another point in time and we'll kind of flesh it out a bit differently

but like we mentioned on Tuesday's episode today's episode is going to be all about conflict resolution. It's really sexy guys. It's a sexy, sexy topic. I did have to do some quizzes and did a lot of research where it was like, what's your conflict style in a relationship? And I was like, can you just ask me what my conflict style is full stop? I just have to be in a relationship because I haven't done that for a long time. Yeah. I read over the notes that Brit made for this today's episode and it was all about at work. And I'm like, Brit, it's got to be about relationships. And she was like, well, I don't fucking know. I was like, can't we relate it to like work and love like some people just have work no but the thing is with the conflict resolution

and what we will speak about it's relevant to all aspects of your life it is your relationships it is your friends it is your work colleagues it's your family it's all situations it's how you just deal with the stress but it doesn't matter it's not just relationships so we want to make that really clear it's for everybody in every aspect of life let's talk about that later before we get into the episode i did see something on the facebook group which i want to bring up with you guys. Cause it was so wholesome and it is so funny. And I know that Brit hasn't seen it yet. So I really want to share it with you. Okay. One of our listeners had posted her Tinder text chat with this guy. So he started off the Tinder chat with two truths, one lie. And I don't know what

the first one was. Cause it kind of like starts a little bit down, like where she screenshot the chat from starts a little bit further down the list, but she's like, I think you're not related to Keith Urban. So that was obviously the one that was a lie. And he's like, ha ha good guess you get today's mystery prize. You can choose between a wheelbarrow ride around Adelaide to see all the wonderful sights and all the wonderful people or a bowl of cornflakes with yesterday's milk in it. And she writes back and says, well, that's easy. I'll take the wheelbarrow ride. And he's like, good choice. Cause I already ate the cornflakes for breakfast. So it would have been awkward if you chose that. Anyway, the reason why this is so funny is because she showed up for

the date and the guy brought a wheelbarrow and wheelbarrowed her around Adelaide oh my god yes her name is Tegan she's posted this on the Facebook group and she has like kept us updated along the date as well so there's like videos of her sitting in the wheelbarrow and having a ride around I love that we're at the point that not only do you guys as they're happening send us your accidentally unfiltered like whilst your most embarrassing moments happening you're like writing to us I love that now you are live streaming your dates to our Facebook group Tegan if you're listening to this I want to be updated constantly about this relationship where's it going I know you're having a second date coming up but I'm fully emotionally invested in this now

and I need to be kept along the journey yeah any of this stuff we need to know how it ends guys and also you are aware that if you get married you're gonna have to go down the aisle in a wheelbarrow and you're also gonna have to invite us oh dear anyway tell me what's been happening with you Brett I like that somebody else's story is the highlight of my week like that's what I brought to the table for like what's been happening in my world so uh let's talk about last week because we didn't talk about it on Tuesday because we saved it for this week last week I took the few days off you guys know that that's why Maddie and Laura did the episode together and I was like I'm gonna take three days off I'm going up to the Gold Coast to see my brother and my nephew and my niece who

I haven't seen in a year I'd lined up a date on the gold coast I was like I was going to get you the stories I was going to live my best life and then day one boom I got appendicitis and I was like fuck you universe give me a fucking break anyway so I got appendicitis I had to cancel my day I couldn't I didn't even write back to him and he was like uh so like we still doing this and I was like oh soz I've had appendicitis like no I can't see you and he would have absolutely thought that you made that up that's such an unbelievable excuse hey sorry I couldn't get back to you I hadn't I had an appendicitis I'm a 30 year old with an appendicitis the funny thing is it's true I know it sounds like the most made-up excuse ever but I was like

curl if anyone's had appendicitis you like curl over in pain it is it's like someone's stabbing you in the stomach so when appendicitis hits it's not necessarily doesn't come in at 100% it comes in slowly like you start to get the pains then the next days after is when it gets worse so day one I was in bed curled up it hit me at night time and I was like oh my god I've had appendicitis before three years ago so I I was like this is going to be appendicitis I can tell and Sherry and Jay came in and they're like we're going all of us like we're going to wet and wild today Jay's never been and I was like oh I've got appendicitis I can't go they're like oh will you just stay home and I was like no I had so much FOMO so I went to wet and wild with appendicitis I was going down

the slide like holding my groin rolling around then that was the one thing i got to do then it got too bad and i just had to sit around at home that was my week guys i wish i could come back and tell you about hot sexy dates etc but your appendicitis did you dirty my appendicitis would be bloody dirty if it happens again so i didn't have to take it out this is the reason why you're single that's it the only reason it's blaming yes it's your appendix you should just get that shit removed and get on with your dating life yeah fully but that's it just so you guys know Brittany's just taken her top off and she's sitting here in her undies and her bra recording this episode she just was like I'm so hot I hope that you're okay with this I'm just gonna take

this off she's literally nude and I'm just here pregnant with my hairy belly flopping around on the floor like a whale I was like sweating I'm so hot I think we're at that stage now where we can record nude yeah okay great perfect I'm gonna not record nude you don't want to see this no one does but anyway i had something really funny happen to me yesterday so have you heard of the instagram celeb spellcheck correct okay if you guys if you haven't heard of celeb spellcheck go and follow him it's a private account so you have to request it but it's very funny basically celeb spellcheck is um they just take the piss of celebs they absolutely take the piss out of celebs or dealer celebs you know i don't think that we could um i don't think brit and i can

claim celebs so basically they they hold people's terrible spelling accountable which is pretty funny but also like when celebrities do things which are a little bit like questionable they also seem to post and they're just so on the ball it's really really funny so much to my surprise yesterday when I get tagged in a post that's been put on celeb spellcheck oh god what okay so I get tagged in this post and it is a photo of a vinnies like a salvation army or vinnies and there are two christmas stockings hanging up in this vinnies with like four dollar price tags on them one says buster on it and one says marley may on it and celeb spellcheck has fully fucking busted me so basically the the post says if you also have a child named marley may and a dog named buster

it's your lucky day get your hands on unwanted christmas freebies kindly donated by at lady and a cat to the local vinnies and then it is just so many people trolling me in the comment section but i just want to say i have literally never seen these stockings before who is going to want your stocking you think that someone's going to want your stocking that's imported with your family's names what i think has happened is that my shop tony may is directly next door to a Vinny's. So I think that a delivery that was supposed to be sent to me at Tony May has accidentally been given to the Vinny's next door and they've just unpacked it and put it on the shelves because I've literally never seen these stockings before. And also I'm not dumb enough to

put stuff that has my kid's name on it in the Vinny's that's next door to my shop. I would just put it in the bin guys. That reminds me of last week when I accidentally gave a Christmas present to my cousin that was embroidered with Britney. This is just makes me seem like such an ungrateful influencer like some brand has sent me this and there's certain things that you just don't give to vinnies in life and they're things that are embroidered with your family's name there's also now a daily mail article that's come out about it which just makes me sound like i'm such a pov person anyway at least it didn't end up in a landfill here i am just trying to do the right thing by the environment re-gift my gifts and i'm getting flack for it so this actually reminds me

have you seen and i feel really sorry for what's going around the media at the moment at least knowles have you seen the poor girl who's being trolled and i do feel really sorry for her long story short i love her she's not the greatest speller and she often makes spelling mistakes which is fine like who cares but there are so many celebrity sites like this spell check and there is one person in particular called the fat jewish who has like 20 million followers he got a hold of one of elisa's posts so basically has taken a photo of herself on the bed and she's gone to write the french word voila which we all know starts with well we don't all know but well clearly we don't all know that's the whole point of the story it starts with a v

voila elise obviously doesn't know that and she's written it w-a-l-l-i-h voila cute fine like who knows how to spell that it's the hardest word to spell anyway like would you be able to spell it laura celeb spell check screenshotted it and then it ended up on the fat jewish and then it just went viral and so here's this photo of poor elise knolls with the caption voila which apparently actually does mean something in arabic or something but i feel really sorry for her because she's being trolled over it and guys like if someone makes a spelling mistake who cares i don't think it means we need to drag them through the mud also shout out to all these people overseas there are so many people overseas writing oh what more could you expect from

Australians they're all uneducated I think it's so interesting to see how the world looks at Australia I watched something else oh I'm on a roll now I watched something last week where there was a quiz show in America America and the question was what and you got eliminated if you didn't get the question right the question was what language do they speak in Australia and everyone was like oh great why does he get the easy question because now he can stay in the competition and he goes oh easy dutch wow i remember when i had a exchange student come and stay with me when i was like maybe 15 or 14 and she was from america and she we were on the train we were going down to kayama to have a beautiful day and she was like you know it's so funny how like english and

australian are so close together and i was like what do you mean and she's like well obviously like you speak australian but then like english people speak english but the language is so similar and i was like bitch are you a crack like what are you talking about i was like we speak english here and she was like no you speak australian didn't couldn't convince her could not convince also really common but also okay will you say that like people stereotype australians as being dumb because we have that whole like outback country kickville thing going on but we're now also stereotyping other people to say well that they think that australians are dumb as well i don't think that it's like a blanket rule i just think that there's always some outliers

from all over the place but going back to Elise Knowles I mean I think we care too much about grammar there's always the grammar police on Instagram there's always the grammar police who are on Facebook I think that we're so quick to like judge and pick and like when somebody comes up with like a really good rebuttal up to it to an argument but then they've written they're wrong they've written like t-h-e-i-r instead of t-h-e-r-e and the other person's response is like well maybe you could learn to spell first it's just such a pathetic way of undercutting someone and and like minimizing their argument to say like well because you got one spelling mistake in your response your complete argument is invalid so i mean i it is my favorite thing to do in like a text fight

you're like if like when they write something like this big argument like i'm talking privately not like to cut them down like if you're with a boyfriend or something imagine that if if you're having that text fight with someone though and they write like they're instead of they are or something like that the best thing that you can do back is you like ignore everything else in the text and you just do it where you've recorrected it with the asterisks it's like you just don't even need to write anything else there's so much strength to it it's such a power move is it though yeah I fucking love it but I wouldn't do it like I wouldn't do it publicly to someone to cut them down I don't think like we all make spelling mistakes I just think Elise doesn't

deserve this so the moral of the story is don't add us you think that Elise doesn't deserve this I don't think it's a big deal like I think it's funny I think it's a funny spelling mistake if if i ended up on the fat jewish because i had written voila instead of voila i would laugh at it i don't think i would take that to offense that that's fine that is the funny thing the thing that's bad is the hundreds of thousands of people trolling her like it's everywhere and they're being nasty like it's everywhere that's the bit i'm not cool with if i ended up on fat jewish for a spelling mistake lol k no like it would be so funny it's what comes after that it's like he sends an army of 20 million people to go and write her off you would end up on fat jewish for saying

shit like volcano let's be real pick that up fat jewish anyway let's get into some accidentally unfiltered okay i know that you have and i can't believe they said that so you can kick it off brett okay this is actually pretty cute and funny last week this happened to someone i know last week on the gold coast when i was seeing my brother my best friend of 28 years lives up there and she's got a little boy and a little girl and I haven't seen them in a long time anyway we went up and he's her son is about four she was going to the supermarket with him and at the local supermarket there is someone that works there that is well I'm going to actually say that he's a dwarf but politically we don't say dwarf anymore I'm just going to tell you that they're called

little people anyway there was a little person that worked there and he's like everyone knows him my best friend knows him she's always like hey says hello and stuff anyway this particular day she's like i don't know why my son walked straight up to him looked at him in the eyes looked at me and goes mom why is the baby wearing a watch and then he goes she was like lawson she's lawson that's enough let's go she's like also why has the baby got a mustache it's so insane and insensitive to his face and i was like i'm dying for you what did you do and she's like to be fair in his defense she's like i was mortified like i wanted to die but he was like it's fine he's like that's the best thing i've had said to

me in a long time but you know what i think we need to be more comfortable with kids saying things that are uncomfortable because like the kids are going to do it they don't have a filter right whereas like i think it's the the parents response to that situation that makes it better or worse. So like, I think in that situation, if that was me, I would have said, actually, do you know what? He's not a baby. This is something, you know, there's lots of different types of people in the world. And some people, you know, they're not as tall as other people. And some people have different types of abilities and disabilities. And I would try and explain it to make it inclusive. I only know this from my own experience where I've worked

with people who have disabilities, where it's like the embarrassment of the mom or the embarrassment of the parent is actually what amplifies the whole situation instead of saying the reason why that person is sitting in a chair with wheels is because they can't walk and there are lots of people who can't walk and explaining that situation to a child so that they can grasp like what disability is is so important the thing that bothers you in this situation is how they're going to feel at the time she's like I had this moment of panic where I was like my son has just hurt this man's feelings but he laughed he was like he's he's like I've grown up with my whole life like this she's like I think it's funny it makes my day she said she's like that was my

saving grace how great he was she's like I just can't believe the things that come out of kids mouths but I think that's the thing right like the people who have these disabilities have grown up with it their whole lives they're not embarrassed by it so the only person who feels that embarrassment is the mum because it's an uncomfortable situation but you can diffuse that I'm not saying that it's easy to do but it's definitely something that you can take agency over I love how shit kids are so the other day my niece so like my niece and my nephew they all know that I'm pregnant but I don't think that they've they've only ever seen me like wearing t-shirts and stuff so they've not really seen my belly then the other day I was at home and I took my I took my top off I was wearing

a bikini and my niece comes over and she goes why is your belly so fat like she was repulsed by it and I was like please just don't I was like well this is what we're dealing with for a while now darling thank you this is where the baby lives they just have absolutely no filter I mean don't take offense kids have no idea they're dum-dums okay I'm gonna bring an accidentally unfiltered ladies this is this is actually something I feel like you would do I don't know why ladies I don't know if I'm gonna be offended by this or not ladies please come dig my grave for me yesterday I had to go to the physio for my dodgy hip and for this appointment i got one of the new physios now let me tell you he was gorgeous i'm literally

talking an 11 out of 10 and he was so lovely as well anyway i'm lying face down on my stomach and he's kind of like digging around my upper hip flexor butt region doing some massaging we're having a really nice chat while he's doing this and suddenly out of nowhere i let off the most unsubtle biggest stinkiest fart i have ever done he must have just he must have just poked the perfect spot to push it out i couldn't even play it off as being any other noise either i safe to say i won't be showing my face again now hang on this is all she wrote i needed to know more so i wrote i was like hang on girl you can't just come and say you farted on the hottest guy ever in a silent room and not tell me what happened but also like you can't downplay that

like any other situation like if i fart in a supermarket i can blame it on my kid you can't downplay farting in an in your underwear getting your ass massaged by like a physio it's there's nowhere to hide like you have to just you have to just look up and laugh and be like i'm so sorry like you have to and i was like whoa girl you can't drop that you farted on a hot guy and didn't say anything what did you do what did he do like what was the situation i'm on the edge of my seat she's like literally you could have heard a pin drop everything just went quiet for three seconds he stopped massaging for a second and then we just paused then we just went on our day again he's like he just kept massaging and we kept talking like nothing happened you you something

happened yeah I feel like you need to address the elephant in the room because that is gonna linger as well I will never forget the day but also you can't go back no yeah you're done yeah the 11 hottie is out I'll never forget the day that one of my really close friends told me about how so she she'd met this guy and they were dating and like she was really into him and anyway they had gotten intimate for like the first time and he had gone down on her and she was like it was the best I had the best orgasm I've ever had in my life he was amazing and I was so relaxed and all of a sudden I accidentally farted in his face whilst he was going down on her like it like a no not a queen off as a fan not a queen I don't think you can play them off they smell particularly

different when it's up your nostril fully farted in his face whilst he was going down on her and she was like i have no idea how it happened i was just so relaxed it fell out i'm so mortified they don't i'm sorry girl they don't fall out they don't just like fall out your butt they can everyone's done a surprise bar before you've never done a surprise bar where'd that come from no i have not i don't think it just falls out you know it's coming i think what happens sometimes is people think that they're going to be like small and cute and like nobody thinks it's going to be small and cute when someone's face is between your legs like you don't take that risk girlfriend that was an accidental fart how many people drop farts without knowing not that they don't know

it just like can sometimes happen and then you're like oh i wasn't expecting that i was with a few friends the other day i'm not gonna name the name because i would never do that it was so funny though a few friends were all in the lounge room sitting around just like having a chat and one of my friends just bent she dropped something she bent down to pick it up and just flipped the biggest fart room she's like oh she's like didn't know that was coming i'm like what the hell like these what is wrong with all you people they don't just come out without you knowing you haven't had children yet stuff just happens I sneeze and I pee I cough and I pee I laugh and I pee I leave this room after recording and I'm my pants are full of pee things just happen to

my body that I have no control over I'm gonna put that up on our Instagram poll how many times have you accidentally farted without realizing until it happened yeah there are so many of you out there don't leave me out here in a limb you need to phrase it how many people let their farts slip out I'm gonna just follow up with this story they ended up dating for like five years Well, he was like, I'm actually so happy that you feel so comfortable and relaxed around me. It was like the weirdest, most beautiful response that made me feel strange. But anyway, okay. This morning, in my half-awake state, I could hear some strange sounds.

At first, I thought maybe it was coming from the TV downstairs. But I soon realized the noise was actually coming from my husband's bedside table. My husband had been watching YouTube the night before on his wireless headphones in bed. so I reach over I grab the headphones and I hold them up to my ear oh my god it's this man moaning wait no it's also a woman moaning oh my god it's a man and a woman going at it over my husband's headphones you guys I realized my husband was downstairs in the shower watching porn and he had no idea that I knew he thought he was doing it silently but that's exactly true what makes this so funny is that he thought he was being super stealth by

watching it with no sound on but it was actually on full fucking blast so loud that it woke me up I'm sorry but also this is like I can't get my head around it yet because I'm not in a relationship anymore why would he leave his wife in bed and go downstairs listen to porn like wouldn't you just roll over and have sex with your wife no sometimes you can't be bothered she has written here I can't stop laughing thinking about it you know what it's like sometimes you just want to tickle the pickle all by yourself you know okay she answered my question but I think okay I love this I I laughed so hard when this came through but I love it so much because I think every time we receive conversations around porn and we receive conversations around like oh I saw my

partner watching porn or I discovered my partner watching porn it's always in such a negative light it's always like the person feels betrayed that they didn't know that their partner was watching porn and I just love that this woman has written in and she can see the hilarity in it she does she's not like offended or threatened by him going and doing it and she's like you know what every so often you just gotta go and rub one out yourself and that's okay I don't think there's anything wrong with porn occasionally like I mean I don't watch it personally but I don't think you don't watch it ever no I'm not I'm personally not into it I never have been I've watched it before with like old partners but it's I've done it more for them like it just doesn't do anything for me

i would rather think back and imagine something like a real situation i'm too lazy i prefer porn but i think when we do get all these questions in about like people really offended that their partner's watching porn i don't think there's anything wrong with it if it's once in a blue moon the problem comes when it's all the time in replacement of you every day and there's a proper addiction when they're starting to think that normal sex isn't enough that's when the problem comes anyway we're not going to talk about that now it's a whole nother episode that is actually a whole other episode we've never done an episode on porn i mean let's unpack it through but i think that that's a good conversation because i do think that there's a lot of negative

connotations around it there's a lot of threat around it but yeah like you said let's not get into it now just let laura watch her porn in peace that's what she wants that's the message for her episode sometimes you gotta tickle your pickle guys i do like pickles though i have been really really looking forward to doing this episode because we did we do what we did attachment styles and we've done love languages in the past. And I feel like this conversation around conflict resolution and our conflict styles is kind of like the third phase in those conversations. Well, they all intertwine, don't they? Like they all have something to do with each other. I think that we're so quick to talk about how our love languages define our relationship

or how our attachment styles define our relationship. But I actually think genuinely what results in like a long-term happy relationship is our ability to resolve conflict. Like I think conflict and our conflict resolution is so important in actually being able to maintain a long-term happy relationship. And Britt and I have done so much research and unpacking this, and we've looked at a couple of different studies. We've also kind of broken down for this episode, what are the five different conflict styles? And then also like, what are the different types of fighting that we get into? Like, you know, whether it's like passive aggressive, whether it's defensiveness, all these different character traits of how we deal with conflict and how we act in

like a real nitty gritty way, we want to unpack all of that in this episode. So, I mean, it sounds like a heavy one, but I'm sure we'll bring the last. And arguments are a completely unavoidable part of every relationship. I think if you try and completely avoid them, you're never going to resolve things that come up and you're never going to be able to work together as a team to actually find that deeper level of love and respect for each other. And there's this fear about arguments and this fear about fighting that it's always going to end up in, oh, we're going to break up. I think that there's definitely some relationships that are so volatile where you feel like every time you have a fight, it's going to mean the end of the relationship.

But I think fights can be a really, really great way of galvanizing you. Conflict can be an amazing way of making you work together as a team. And it really kind of separates the people who are going to make it for the long haul and the relationships that are going to fucking fizzle. The thing is, like Laura just said, conflicts, arguments, fighting, it's all inevitable. there is absolutely no way you can have a long-term healthy relationship without the fighting in fact they actually say that couples that don't argue and disagree and fight at all that there's something wrong in that relationship because it means that someone's probably suppressing their feelings

the thing that they say is it's not actually the fighting that's the problem couples have a really hard time coming to terms with the fact that it's not the fighting and it's not what it's about the thing that's important is how you deal with the fight and that's why we wanted to go into this So that's why we thought it was so important to go into this because how you deal with a fight is literally what will determine your relationship. Maybe you are in a relationship where you're like, oh my God, me and my boyfriend, we never fight. We love each other so much.

Well, no, I don't think you're necessarily lying. I just don't think you've necessarily done the full spectrum of your relationship yet. Matt and I, we never ever used to fight. I honestly, before having kids, before living together, when we were in our honeymoon phase, we never fought. And I was like, this relationship is bliss. this is how relationships are supposed to be and now that we have more responsibilities now that there's more stress now that there's more pressure now that we have to deal with money like all of

these different aspects of a really serious committed relationship that are going through the full journey of of life yeah of course we argue we don't fight like matt and i never we never fight in a way that's like toxic to our relationship but we argue and then we resolve it and i think that you know us being able to argue and respect each other has been really really beneficial in us actually forming a deeper connection and i would say even though now we argue in our relationship very sporadically and from time to time we're way closer now than what we were when we were in our honeymoon phase when we were like everything is awesome everything is cool when you're part of the team the thing is it's been a while since i sung that song you're

welcome you sing that to me all the time you sing it to molly too you're just ignoring me it's got like um no the thing is of everything that i've read for every relationship therapist every psychologist and even like it does it is just how i feel about the situation as well couples that absolutely say that they never ever fight they never argue and never disagree it's it's almost impossible someone is just suppressing their feelings and their opinions and their thoughts too much because it is impossible to find two people in the world that can a find each other and then totally 100% agree with every single thing in life. Like it's impossible.

What it just means is maybe there's a part of you and we're going to go into this that has a bit of an avoidance style which is where like you just want to please, you just, you can't be bothered to have the argument. So you're like, yeah, babe, like that's fine, whatever. I'm sorry, let's not talk about it. So we're going to break them all down now

but we think the really important thing is once you know your style and once you know your partner's style, it's important to know how to use that, how to change that and how to work together to continue your relationship and progress in a really healthy way totally because exactly what we talked about when we did the love languages episode you might have a different conflict style to your partner and that's where things can become really tricky like if and we talked about this on

the last ask uncut episode where i did it with matt um the person had written in saying that they're somebody who requires a lot of reassurance and their partner is more of an avoider and that leaves them feeling really invalidated in their relationship and in their fights and it makes them really frantic and really upset because they want their partner to tell them you know to love them and reassure them but really when they're having a fight their partner just wants to kind of go away and have a little bit of time to themselves so I think it's really important and we actually did our own conflict resolution style test so there's a test that you can do that tells you how you deal with conflict and you can sit down and do that with your partner as well and

that gives you a better understanding of who they are as a person and you know relationships are all about compromise and compromising on your conflict styles and not expecting someone to fight in the exact same way that you fight because that's unfair as well you know we expect to compromise in our love languages we expect to compromise in our attachment styles we expect this level of understanding in all other aspects of our life but sometimes when it comes to fighting we can be so fucking stubborn because what happens when you are angry about something Well, you want to win. Yeah, I want to win. But what happens is like, we have a rational mind and we have an emotional mind and the emotional mind when it is angry is much more powerful than

the rational mind. And we don't have the capacity to use both simultaneously at the same time very well. Even though we are a very advanced species, there's some things that we still haven't got our shit together on. You might even recognize this in yourself, but when you feel angry at your partner, if you're in a relationship and I know I do this when I'm angry at Matt for something my rational mind completely goes out the window I'm not angry and thinking at the same time oh I love this man so much you know I'm gonna talk to him calmly we're gonna have a lovely conversation I'm like I don't even care if he walks out the door right now I want to strangle you of course I care like of course my rational mind would be devastated if he actually walked out the door you'd be like no

wait I was joking come back totally but in that moment of anger that overpowers any feelings of love any feelings of adoration of any feelings of of you know all of this hard work that you've put together as a couple anger is so powerful that it can override all of those other emotions and it can make you feel very irrational and well that's why it's important all the time to not necessarily have conversations around arguments when you're feeling angry sometimes it's really important to step away from it, have that time to cool down and then have the conversation about whatever it is that's made you upset when you're able to actually use your rational mind so that you don't say things or do things or act passive aggressively, or just behave in a way that's

going to damage the relationship further, or it's going to create more of a problem. You end up finding not even about the thing that happened, but about the way that you're speaking to each other or the way that you're treating each other. Well, the thing is we've all, I all want you to think back. We've all sent a message or said something in the heat of a moment that you immediately regret and you're like fuck why did I say that that's because you should never ever ever fight or send a message or send an email or do anything when you are mad like please don't step away from your computer turn it off throw it out the window whatever you have to do do some deep breathing and go for a walk 100% nothing good ever comes from sending a message when you're

really mad because then what happens is you know that you might not have meant it and you will apologize for it down the track you'll be like look I'm sorry I said that I didn't mean to I was angry. The damage is done that you've said it and your partner or your friend or whoever knows that that is somewhere lying inside of you. And that's sometimes can be irreparable. Okay. So let's actually get into what the argument styles are. So there is a researcher named Dr. John Gottman and Dr. John Gottman is, he's kind of the founder for this research. He spent 30, 40 years. I mean, there's 40 years, let's go with 40 years. Sure. He spent the last 40 years researching why some couples manage to like stay together and how they deal with conflict versus why some couples

their relationships disintegrate so there's been two massive studies that have been done one of them was this longitudinal study that went over the space of 30 years where he observed newlyweds and then years and years later figured out which ones stayed together which ones didn't and he thinks and believes about commitment i know right that's a fucking long research issues does he well it's actually him and his wife who do it and they're both psychologists and and there they have so basically what happened is in the 70s there was this huge influx in divorce rates and as a sort of knee-jerk response to this a lot of psychologists and philosophers started doing research studies around why were people getting divorced like

and what impact was this going to have on children and on couples and their ability to live long and happy lives now that divorce rates were going up exponentially and then David Gottman sort of jumped on the bandwagon in 1970 but he did some really profound research around 1986 and that's when he did this newlywed research study. And basically the results of this have come out to say that it's a 90% predictor of couples that are going to stay together and couples that will divorce because he believes that conflict style comes down to everything in a relationship. And so five conflict styles that there are, three of them are healthy and can be used in different ways. Two of them are incredibly unhealthy. So the three healthy ones are conflict avoiders,

volatile couples. It doesn't really sound like that should be positive, but it is. volatile couples validating couples they're the three positives the two negatives are hostile couples and hostile detached couples now brit and i both did our own tests and before we unpack what each one is what are you britney so mine was actually really surprising i did oprah's test because i love oprah but then we did the same test so i yeah i thought i'd be avoidant but i actually got a validating style of conflict which i can see as well but it was surprising because i I thought in my mind that I was just a complete avoider of conflict, but turns out I'm not.

I do avoid conflict at all times. I mean, you can even look back on my Bachelor, Bachelor in Paradise. I just, I wasn't even on the show because I was like, meh. I just got so awkward whenever there was a fight. I was just like, I don't, I just naturally, it makes me really anxious. Like I not that long ago got into an argument with a friend, which I have never done in my life. Like I've never argued with a friend and I was almost physically sick

at the thought of fighting with someone and talking about it. and I literally avoided it. I was literally saying, let's forget it. I don't want to talk about anything about it. Let's move on with our friendship. But she, her style of conflict was quite like aggressive and quite, let's, we're talking about this now. We're dealing with this now. This is what, and I was like, meh, don't want to. Let's pretend it didn't happen. Even though I was not in the wrong at all. I was just like, look, I'm apologizing that you felt that way, but let's move on because I'm done with it. I will avoid it at all costs. But validating just means that I don't want to be in it but when I am in it I won't avoid it so when you're avoiding and

you're in a fight proper proper couples that are avoiding or you're a proper person that has avoidant argument style will literally shut down they won't even engage in the conversation at all they won't hear anything they won't contribute they'll literally just walk away or sit there in silence that is what it means when I get to that point I will happily have the conversation if I'm in the room and it's happening I will go at it I will prove my points and I won't avoid it once it's there I'll just avoid the situation happening avoidant conflict style doesn't mean it doesn't mean stonewalling and it doesn't mean silent treatment and I think that that's the really important I think the language in this can be a bit confusing so that's what I would just

want to like separate out avoidant styles just mean that when there's conflict you need a little bit of time to go away to process and then you'll have a conversation about it it doesn't mean that you avoid it completely people who avoid completely and we'll get into this later people who avoid completely by giving someone the silent treatment that's actually one of what they call the four horsemen of conflict and it's like that's the beginning of the end well that's the frustrating bit where you're in the fight and you're like say something anything because they're just sitting there in silence yeah and I think sometimes when people do that like silence like silence is more powerful than anything else and it can be more hurtful than anything else we'll get into what

that is and break down avoidant a little bit further but I was really surprised by mine actually no I take that back I wasn't surprised by mine at all so I'm just aggressive I'm not No, I'm not a hostile fighter. No, mine was still a positive conflict style. I'm a volatile, volatile conflict style, which basically just means that like, I'm very passionate. I am very opinionated and I don't hold back, but also I make up very quickly.

So, and Matt is exactly the same. And I would have thought that we were like a bit more collaborative, but then reading about how we fight. And this is really interesting. One of the things that was like one of the key questions in in our um little questionnaire was like what do you do when somebody is trying to bring up conflict with you and like for me in the heat of the moment if Matt is angry at me and he's telling me what I've done wrong in my mind I'm formulating my rebuttal like that's what I'm

doing I'm not listening to what he's saying I'm like I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you what you did wrong actually that is totally you totally and it's like a defensive thing and I've spoken about a little bit on past episodes for me it's not like I am really really conscious of it now and I try not to do it um because I understand that it's not helpful and it doesn't actually progress the conversation to a point where we're you know making up but the reason why I do it is because I don't want to believe that I have hurt his feelings so instead of actually accepting and saying I'm really sorry that I've done that I'm really sorry that I've hurt your feelings straight away I continue to hurt his feelings no what I do is that I invalidate those feelings by saying like

well that didn't happen or like you're overreacting which yeah fully but we do it to each other because Matt and I are exactly the same in the way that we fight and we've talked about this now and like we recognize that in each other and as soon as someone is doing it we can easily say like hey you're not listening to me you're deflecting this isn't helpful let's talk about this in 10 minutes and you're both very strong personalities and I've seen you have little arguments like nothing serious but I've seen it and I can tell you it's definitely not collaborative style it's like you're both strong and you're both stubborn and you both want to be right and you both don't want to be wrong but that's completely normal as well yeah and I think

that there's a lot of people who like default is defensiveness in relationships and in fighting but like the other thing with volatile conflict styles is that you also make up really quickly and you also make up in a very passionate way so like makeup sex well I mean we can not anymore the old pregnant bird over here but more so just like our fights are very short-lived like any argument or conflict that we have in our relationship I give it an hour before one of us is like I'm baby I'm so sorry like you know we we always see things from each other's perspective it's just we deal with things as soon as they happen and we usually are dealing with things when we're both still a bit mad and that's the problem is like when you're a bit mad

like i said your emotional mind overcrowds your rational mind so that was our conflict styles and we thought that we would just kind of bring that to the table because when we did love languages we unpacked what ours were um and brit and i are so different but also we get along so well so it's like just shows that you can have different ways of well different personalities you can have different ways of dealing with things and you can still be really great together what's funny because i'm so i was just thinking of when you were talking about that how opposite i am i'm so competitive in every other aspect of my life like you know in sports or in trying to win the best podcast whatever no but I am but but I retreat completely with the with conflict I don't know

what it is I don't care to win in a fight I don't need to win in a in like a verbal fight like if you put me in a competition where it was like a wrestling match I'll wrestle to the death but in a fight when you say that you're sitting there and you're like thinking of your rebuttal and you're thinking how you can and you'll never be wrong because you don't want to be wrong i in a fight would rather even though i know i'm right i would rather just say you know what you're right i'm sorry i won't do it again there might be like an undertone that's passive aggressive which i would hope wasn't you know it's like me being like yep you're right i do everything wrong i don't mean it really like that but it's probably there but it's just because i would rather get the

argument over i hate nothing more than i would rather admit defeat and just be like fuck you know what like okay i did this wrong let's move on let's get over it i think i would rather have open dialogue where I'm mad at a partner it's all out on the table then have someone be passive aggressive to me because I'm like well I know that those feelings are there I know that that's what you think of me and I know that that's how you're feeling towards me but you're not actually verbalizing it you're just going to have cheap digs at me like that that to me is more hurtful than sitting down and being like hey I don't like this and it being a very frank conversation let's like fully unpack what the five styles of conflict is number one we've already done

volatile couples that was what I am so like we can kind of like tick that one off number two conflict avoiders we did kind of touch on conflict avoiders you know that's the people who need to take some time out to process their feelings to really think about the situation usually they're the ones that want to have nice conversations once they've calmed down and don't want to have conversations about conflict when when the conflict is in the heat of the moment it's a really smart way of dealing with conflict there's only so long you can actually avoid a conflict anyway even if you are an avoider you can't do it forever it's and all that's going to do is perpetuate and grow and turn into something 10 times bigger than it ever was it's something that I have tried

I have to start to work on as well is not put it off so long because it just implodes and it festers festers such a great word for it if there's something in you that needs to be dealt with and something in your partner that needs to be dealt with and you're pushing it away it's not going to disappear it's going to fester and brew and implode even though you may not be getting that instantaneous reassurance from someone who's an avoider they're not avoiding you because they don't love you and they're not happy they just need a little bit more time to process than what you do and I think like from the question that we had last week where this person was much more reactive and they needed to have that reassurance from their partner straight away I think that

that's when you have to have that greater level of understanding of who your partner is as a person and respect the fact that like some people need to retreat after an argument and that's okay doesn't mean that they're going to dump you just means that they need to process what the fuck is going on absolutely and then what Brittany is which is a validating couple did you want to unpack that a little bit more yeah I mean like we unpacked what it is for me but basically you're characterized by being easy and calm and and you're cruising a relationship you don't want the fighting but you still need to come to the table you still need to contribute to an argument and even though you don't want to you need to sort of step up to the plate

then there are the two really negative conflict styles now the first one is hostile couples and I think like you know if you're in a relationship where you have a really really toxic conflict style because you feel like you're in this perpetual fighting cycle so hostile couples they have a high level of defensiveness on the part of both parties and then neither of them ever going to give in yeah they're right it's their way or the highway they don't want to see it from the other person's view and they're adamant in being right now the thing with hostile couples is that often hostile couples will stay together but they'll stay together in very unhappy marriages and this will be like you know they're committed to each other but there is not happiness

or positivity in their marriage because there's this like fine ratio that Dr John Gottman talks about and he says like to have a great marriage or to have a great long-term relationship it doesn't have to be marriage I don't know why I keep referring to that but you know to have a great long-term relationship it needs to be this five to one ratio five times positive one times negative than people who are in hostile relationships the ratio is fully out of whack and they have way more hostile engagements than what they do positive and there's a lot of criticism in these relationships and a lot of like the terminology they use is you always and you never and you don't and you won't and it's very aggressive and it's very in your partner's face

there's no listening there's no listening to what your partner is saying and changing your point of view it's like you've said it this is right and and you're not going to budge on that fact and that is where it really unravels because there's no coming full circle and being like oh my god you know what like what you just said is right i didn't realize i do that that's non-existent it's like i'm right you're wrong and this is never going to end and when two couples are like that it is explosive and neither of them are ever going to admit defeat and this is where the relationship unravels and like brit said this idea of like you never so for example if you're upset about your partner not doing enough housework instead of having conversation which is like you

I don't really feel supported. I would love it if you did this more coming into that conversation saying you never helped me. You never do anything because you're lazy. Well, yeah, you get on the back foot straight away. Absolutely. It doesn't open up a dialogue for any sort of constructive conversation. And that is a real like keynote of being a hostile couple. But like we said, hostile couples often stay together. They're just really fucking unhappy. Sounds great. Anyway, number five is hostile, detached couples and hostile, detached couples. They will not work out that is like this is doom gloom and you're going to break up town well there's never a resolution there's never ever a clear victor it's always just like a stalemate and let's

kick this back up again next week there's highly emotional highly aggressive style of of fighting and that is 100 my way of the highway 100 toxic and often more than not will not work out yeah so it says that the hostile detached couples these couples are like two armies engaged in mutually frustrating and lonely standoff with no clear victory only a constant stalemate they snipe at one another during conflict and the air is full of emotional detachment and resignation so this is like the this is the worst one and this is when things will really come to an end in a relationship you can't stay in a hostile detached relationship and have any sort of happiness you just feel completely invalidated and unloved when I think about you know my past

relationships and the fighting and the arguments and how that all went down I think one thing that I really struggled with was my partner was very aggressive and very defensive he the defensiveness was probably the biggest characteristic of our relationship that was obviously because he was a sociopath he was marrying someone else at the same time he had this double life and it's very common in that situation to have defensiveness and to deflect and put that back on you so I struggled with that for a long time and maybe that's why I became a little bit more suppressed in my fighting style and I was just a bit like accepting more accepting than I should be because I was always made to feel like I was the one starting the problem and I was the one in the wrong and

he did this because of me and everything he did and he cheated because of me and he was marrying someone else because of me it got to the point where he was so defensive on everything that I was always like I'm so sorry that I made you do that and that was something I really struggled in with my relationship so I think defensiveness and that is actually something we're going to talk about there's one of the characteristics of something called the four horsemen which is really interesting Laura talked about it at the start but we will go through that but that was something that I really really struggled with and it's the main characteristic that I've ever had in any relationship I think it's interesting as well right like you you like you don't just acquire a

fighting style it comes from like your childhood as well so like the way that you react to conflict when you're a kid or the way that you react to conflict with your parents or the way you see your parents react to conflict how they fight with each other all of that influences the way that you are able to relate to your partner as you get older and I think like when you actually unpack the way your parents behave and your parents have conversation versus then the way that you do it there is always these parallels where you have these similarities because like we are we're taught this is learned behavior and it's learned behavior over so many years so when I think about myself sometimes I've definitely dealt with defensiveness in relationships but

like for me the one thing that I had to like really curve and be super aware of is passive aggressiveness and because I think that I don't see my parents doing it that much anymore because they're not in a relationship with each other um they've been divorced since I was three but the way that they communicated my whole childhood was so passive aggressive and I was really really attuned to it like you know you think that sometimes these things fly under the radar for children, but it really doesn't. So the four horsemen, they're four different personality traits. And I don't know if you ever heard the four horsemen expression before, but basically it's an apocalyptic metaphor, which depicts the end of times in the Bible. So it's saying,

if you have these four traits in your relationship, then it's doom, gloom, and break up town for you. So the number one is something that I think we can all relate to. And that's criticism. Like there's nothing worse than being in a relationship where you feel like you're constantly being criticized by your partner and whether it's small things or big things, but feeling like what you're doing is not good enough really leaves you feeling deflated and really leaves you feeling like you're not valued I know like for Matt criticism is the one that he struggles with the absolute worst and I have to be really careful about how I deliver my critiquing of things that he's done wrong because it has to be constructive criticism and it makes such a big

difference totally because I know that like he will become defensive if he feels like he's being criticized and it makes him feel useless you know and I think that it makes everyone feel useless criticism makes you feel like you're not good enough or you haven't done a good enough job or you've let someone down and no one wants to feel like that especially not constantly in a relationship no and you have they do say you have to learn to differentiate between a complaint and a criticism so I'm going to give you a little example complaint I was scared when you were running late and didn't call me I thought we had agreed that we would do that for each other that's the complaint that's a nice way to do it criticism you never think about how your behavior is affecting other people i

don't believe you are that forgetful you're just selfish you never think of others they're literally saying the same thing but one is so aggressive and is not going to get you anywhere and one is constructive criticism where it's like you know i was worried so you need to call me because i want to feel safe in the relationship not like you're a selfish pig and yeah sometimes it's frustrating to have the same conversations about the same thing over and over and over again but one of the things that's important to take away from this conversation is that in every single relationship, you are going to have a couple of key things that you argue about that probably will never go away. You know, like you're never going to resolve every fight that

happens in your relationship. Maybe you guys argue about money. Maybe you will argue about money until the day you die. Maybe you argue about the fact that your partner doesn't quite do enough washing. Maybe you will argue about that for the, till the day you die. I think that there are things in relationships where sometimes you will never resolve them completely they're always going to be there but that's okay you just have to like pick your battles and live with which which things are acceptable and which things aren't which kind of leads us into the next horseman which is number two contempt the worst one yeah like okay you cannot treat your partner with contempt and expect the relationship to ever work out and I think we see this a lot

in relationships after children are born and this feeling of like you don't do anything to help me or the other way around maybe it's from the husband to the wife where it's this conversation of like well I work hard and you're just home with the kids all day and you don't do anything and it's this like lack of recognition for the unpaid labor and I've seen it with my friends I've seen it in relationships where the husband who goes to work who doesn't see the amount of work that the mom is doing doesn't respect the amount of work that the mom is doing and there's this real lack of appreciation between the two parties and this feeling of contempt of like well you're just spending the money you're not trying hard enough and I think that that's like

a really dangerous place to be in and there needs to be this open conversation and this real acceptance that actually you know both people are trying really hard and like just because you work hard doesn't mean that you own busy like you don't get to be the person who says oh I'm the busiest like you're allowed to both be the busiest that's that's totally acceptable and one person feeling stressed out doesn't invalidate the other person feeling stressed out body language if you think of things like eye rolling yeah turning your back on them waving your hand in their face like it's very dismissive and it's definitely the worst one there's never ever going to be a positive outcome with contempt there was actually some really um interesting research that did show

that couples that are contemptuous of each other are more likely to suffer from illnesses like just like the common cold and things like that because their immune system's weaker i think that's amazing it's very powerful how you feel and how you speak and the stresses in your life what it can do to your body like harboring hate yeah like just so much negativity and so much stress that your body just goes into a meltdown it's well i'm gonna get that i guess the thing like you know we actually touched on this a little bit in the positivity episode how you can't just will yourself healthy so i don't think that you can will yourself sick either but i think the interesting thing that actually is and came from these research studies is that it's having higher

cortisol in your system so that stress hormone which is what makes you sick so constantly living in this fight or flight stage of a relationship where you feel that anxiety and you're on constantly on edge never get to settle into being happy because you're always fighting it's the heightened cortisol in your body that actually makes you sick yeah well it just lowers your immune system there you go okay number three let's move on shut up the third one is defensiveness we've already touched on that i just spoke about it it's just where you're going to constantly feel invalidated unjustified um i don't think we need to go into it too much we've all been defensive in a relationship we've all been with someone that's very defensive we know what that's

like yeah and i guess like with defensiveness like the thing is is that they're invalidating your feelings because they're too busy trying to figure out a rebuttal to tell you why they're right or why you're wrong. So like, that's definitely like the hallmark of defensiveness. The last one on the list as well is stonewalling. And we touched on that at the beginning when we were talking about avoidant personality types and how being an avoidant personality types is different to like being someone who's stonewalls. So I have been in a relationship before. It's the relationship I've touched on a couple of times in this podcast where, you know, we're together for two years and he had a lot of narcissistic personality tendencies and a lot of cheating

went on and the way that he would punish me for an argument or the way he would punish me even if he had been the one who had had the bad behavior but the way he would punish me would be to completely ignore me turn his phone off ignore me not give me any validation I wouldn't hear from him for two three days um and it put me into such a state of distress because I felt like I didn't know if we were together or we weren't together um but I think that like giving someone the silent treatment is such a cruel form of torture worse and it takes such control away from the other person and it really just invalidates everything that they're feeling and I feel like it's a very immature form of fighting stonewalling I feel like it's what you do when

you're a teenager in your early 20s where you're literally I remember being in a relationship and they were stonewalling me and they wouldn't respond to me for days we were still together and it was fine then four days later they come back and it's like it's just what was normally done that just wouldn't fly now even even the worst of people usually say I can't talk to you right now usually they give you a message but don't complete stonewalling and complete like shutting down and silent treatment I find it a very immature form of fighting yeah and I guess like some people can use it as a really like purposeful and manipulative tool like I know in my relationship like he used it as a way of punishing me like that's what that was whereas

I think other people use it as almost like a I physically cannot fucking fathom having this conversation right now like I'm so emotionally flooded I just need to remove myself but they're not thinking about how that makes their other partner feel at all and you know removing yourself from a situation for days and torturing your partner is not acceptable either so I think it's important to kind of figure out is your partner doing it intentionally to punish you or are they doing it as a reaction to something either way neither of them are great but one of them is slightly better than the other the best thing that you can do in this situation is okay you don't want to talk to them you don't want to deal with it you walk away go for a walk go into another

the room, read a book, do a meditation, go to the gym, do anything for a few hours to get your thoughts together, to calm down, to lower your heart rate, to think the process through, to be like, maybe I am wrong, maybe I'm not wrong. And then go back and approach the situation in a mature, respectful and calm way. And the key word here is calm. But anyway, guys, like they're the main key areas. So they're the five conflict stars and they're the four characteristics that really really characterize what creates a destructive relationship or what creates a positive relationship and just to tie it up at the end guys just some things to remember and take away from this is accept that conflict is inevitable it's going to happen it's fine it's

not the end of the world remember that conflict can in fact be beneficial we all need it at some point and we can all learn a lot from it and that is a big one just remember to listen and and be accepting that maybe you're wrong and you can learn from that always use neutral language don't come at them aggressively. It's not you do this. You never do this. You're an asshole. Don't do that. So really think about the way you're talking, especially when you're upset. And one of the most important ones is agree to disagree. It's okay to, in the end, have different opinions and different feelings about something, but you need to get to the point where you're like, okay, I see why you feel this. I don't agree with it, but I'm validating it and I'm okay with it. And let's move on. So

agree to disagree is the biggest one. I think like the last thing I want to say in regards like to wrap this all up you know it's easy to talk about all the different conflict styles it's easy to talk about all the things that you do wrong in a relationship or all the way that we like negatively communicate but I just think like one of the most important take-homes is kindness like you can become so close to your partner that you treat them in a really unkind way like you might even treat them in a way that you wouldn't treat your friends or your family you know you can say things and behave in a way because you are so close to them that's actually your worst reflection of yourself so I think it's really important to remember that like relationships that are happy

and relationships that will last like a lifetime or you know will be fulfilling and positive are relationships where there's a lot of kindness and a lot of mutual respect for each other and you treat them how you want to be treated absolutely I know that's like the most simple and sometimes like benign thing to say like treat people the way you want to be treated but it's not it's one of my favorite sayings just fucking be a good person but it's true like you know I think we can forget to be kind to the people that we love and that's something that makes them feel appreciated it makes them feel validated and it makes them feel safe in the relationship so you know go text your partner if you're in a relationship and be like I appreciate you

like those things are really important and you need to show that every day all right guys you know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet our highlight and our low light of each and every week do you know what I love I love that we've had so many people write in to say that now they do suck and sweet with like their partner or with their kids yeah it's the best that's how it happened we grew up my family grew up doing around the dinner table at night we would eat dinner and we'd do our suck and sweet so i love that you guys are doing that now just that makes you appreciate the little good bits and also some of the bad bits but anyway my suck straight up would be just that i got appendicitis on my

little getaway because it just really threw a spanner in the works really ruined it and i just feel like I didn't even get what I wanted um but looking on the bright side my sweet is okay I have got two one is that I just got to finally see my little nephew and I was really worried he's only about to turn three and I was really worried that after a year at that age he wouldn't remember me as much and because I don't get to see him often but it was really nice to see him he was beautiful he remembered me it was nice to see my brother for the first time in a year so that was great but I had one other sweet I just have one more that I just think is funny um it's not really sweet I was just going to tell you anyway I was at work last week and this guy was wheeled in a

patient was wheeled in and he I had a mask on and everything because you have to I think I had a hairnet too and he was about 33 I was a couple of meters away through a glass window because I was setting up the computer I hadn't gone in yet and he look he's like looking at me and then he turns to the wardsman and he goes is that Brittany Hockley this is a rough looking big beard covered in tats earrings in his ear he looked rough and the ward was like oh yeah it is and he looks up at me and he's like you're Brittany Hockley and I was like it's like big and I was like yes I'm a celebrity and I thought he was gonna be like oh you know I love football watched you on the bachelor with Nick Cummins whatever now this is the roughest 35 year old guy and he goes I fucking

love your podcast and I was like what I was like you listen to my podcast you like the podcast that we made for like 24 year old women what are you talking about yeah he was like I love it so much I'm the biggest fan and I was like I don't know if you're taking the piss or not and he's like no I'm not he's like that's what I know you from like he's like I genuinely froth your podcast and I was like I was not expecting you to say that but I can't wait to tell Laura I freaking love like the age demographic of people that we get messaging us who listen to this podcast like you know we have girls who are 17 years old and we have women who are 60 years old like it is such and we have 35 year old middle-aged men too and we have 35 year old middle-aged like chukkies like it's just

like such an amazing and diverse listenership and i guess like the thing is you know we can all learn stuff guys can learn stuff from a female's perspective really more men should probably be listening to this and we can all learn stuff about like how to better navigate our relationships I mean, obviously we don't just talk about relationships to this episode has been a really heavy relationship one, but I love it. Like I feel so privileged that we get to make this podcast. It's the freaking best. Okay. What's yours? Okay. So my suck and my sweet are both child related. So sorry to everyone who finds children boring. That would have been me five years ago, but now my entire life is just babies, babies, babies. Okay. So my suck for this week is

that we found out, you know how I've been saying Molly's been sick and I've been talking about her being sick since september so i found out why she's sick uh my child is lactose intolerant that would explain diarrhea it explains a lot of things so basically what can happen which i had no idea about is that when a child gets sick with something like gastro or a really bad virus they can have a response like an inflammatory response reaction where they get an allergy all of a sudden so she never used to be allergic to lactose but she got so sick but she was so sick that now she does so we're waiting to actually find out whether it's a proper allergy or whether it's just lactose intolerant but she's been started on this lactose intolerance diet and like

she's a completely different child she was doing three explosive diarrhea shits a night usually one in the bath and i'm talking like all over the cot all over the sheets green frothy like next level exorcist style diarrhea for three weeks plus also just coughing coughing coughing constantly coughing coughing a lot coughing so much like when we couldn't figure out what was going on with her so we thought that she still had the flu from September we thought she had like this gastro bug anyway it turns out I've been poisoning my child well I mean at least you know now I know right anyway it's so hard with kids because they can't tell you what's wrong and then you just have to do this like weird process of elimination you're sweet my sweet my sweet for the week

is that we got marley's daycare photos back my child has just got so much sass i i've spent so much time laughing about these daycare photos like every other person's kid is just sitting there being like adorable and cute and normal and three and like one and a half year old and then there's my daughter with like her dress sultrally put over the side of her shoulder and she's like pulling this little face like my mommy's on instagram it's just outrageous she's you have to go and look at the photo on laura's page she's every kid is like literally just being a dirty little kid she's turned she's smack bang in the middle she's turned side on she's doing like the influencer skinny arm pose the dress has gone off her shoulder and she's eyeing down

the barrel of the camera with the most like i don't know if 18 year old month old can have a seductive look but she's like she looks like smizing she's like smiling with my eyes but not smiling it's so i know how to do this it's so funny i loved it so much she's literally one and a half going on 17 it's my favorite photo ever if you haven't seen it go and have a look it's very very funny um yeah I was someone who thought I was like oh daycare photos do we even want to pay for that I don't think we need daycare photos your best photo and I am now like like my kids school photos are gonna be my pride and joy so send them out to all the family fuck it's so weird I never thought I was gonna be this sort of mom I always just thought I'd be like a little

bit of like yeah whatever like a bit aloof they're just like yeah cool get your photos done I don't know we need them who needs photos but I am so obsessed it's just really funny how you turn out to be a very different type of mum to what you think and I think there's people out there who probably thought they'd be way more chilled and relaxed but they actually end up like helicopter parents yeah super anal and and like you know you know sugar but I'm definitely not the type of parent I thought I was going to be that's for sure I'm obsessed with my child well guys that is it for today's episode we hope you learned something we hope you enjoyed it there was a lot of info in this one but I think it's really important and I hope you guys all go and do

an argument style quiz to see what you are because it might actually surprise yourself I think it's really interesting to unpack some of the more serious parts of relationships and obviously like conflict is something that it's unavoidable we like to try and avoid it we like to not talk about it but I think it's really interesting to unpack that and we hope you guys learned something from it and if you love the episode you know all the drills please go and leave us a review on apple podcast if you haven't already done that we love that so much because we need the ego boost guys that's what helps us grow guys so if you are one of the little scoundrels that haven't left us a review yet where you at also if you haven't subscribed to the podcast

as well like i know that these things just seem like boring housekeeping things but if you do love the pod it's actually one it means you get the episodes first so it drops into your inbox first and you'll be notified each week when the new app comes out but it also is yeah like brit said it's really important for us to be able to like help grow this little community and for people to be able to find us and yeah it's just you know supporting the free content that you love and I on that note have to run because I have to get to work all right guys you know the drill tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell everybody because share the love one job and share the love because we love love I wonder what my name is thinking here

We'll be right back.