Life Uncut - Walk down memory lane - Talking conflict resolution styles

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

While Britt and Laura are on break we are revisiting the past today - with episode 86 Fight for your right, talking conflict resolution styles for those of you who have not listened yet.This is one of our favourite episodes, and with a whole lot of you in lock down we thought we better dust off the old conflict rule book so that we can fight smarter with our relationships and respect in tact.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 hereIf 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 xSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everyone, it is producer Keisha here and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. As some of you are already aware, Laura and Brit are on their mid-year break, except if If I'm being completely honest, I've actually started to feel quite bad because I've made Laura record just as much as normal and I've been messaging both of them like a hundred times a day. So Laura and Britt, if you are listening, I'm really, really sorry that I have not let you have a proper holiday. It has been so nice for me to catch up with some of you in our DMs.

You can still send through all of your accidentally unfiltered and your Ask Uncuts. I'm going to be banking them for when the girls are back. Just slide into our DMs on Instagram at Life Uncut Podcast. And yes, it has been me posting a whole bunch of memes. So I hope you've been enjoying those. Something super exciting that is going to be dropping in your podcast libraries this Thursday is that our favourite batchy couple, of course, Laura and Maddie J, are going to

be catching up with our brand new bachelor, Jimmy Nicholson. Pilot Jimmy, the one that you've seen the commercials with him pulling his little luggage through the airport, seeing all the people in love. That one. We did a call out to you guys to see what kind of things you would like to get to know about Jimmy and some of your questions have been absolutely hilarious and it would seem as though pilot Jimmy was a little bit of a bachelor before he was a bachelor so that will be dropping in your podcast libraries this Thursday but for today we're going to be taking a trip down memory lane

which means that we are revisiting some of our favorite episodes from the past and today the episode that we are jumping back to is episode 86 it is from December last year and it's called fight for your right talking conflict resolution styles we thought that this was a kind of good one particularly right now if you're in sydney a lot of you are going to be locked inside with your partners your family or your housemates so we thought it would be a nice time to go back and take a look at some conflict resolution styles and which one you kind of fit into i actually remember listening back to this episode and realizing that i had an avoidant style of conflict and it made a whole lot of sense as to how i kind of deal with conflict in my life

So I really hope you enjoy it. We'll see you back here on Thursday for a brand new episode of Laura and Maddie J catching up with our brand new batchie, Jimmy Nicholson. We hope you enjoy the episode. Let's get into it. 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, or we're going to break up. You know, 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, you know, 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 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 like I honestly before having kids before like 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 this thing is 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 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, the person had written in saying that there's 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 going to talk to him calmly. We're going to 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 way 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 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 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- God, talk about commitment. I know, right? That's a fucking long research study. He's got no commitment issues, does he? Well, it's actually him and his wife who do it and they're both psychologists. 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? 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 doesn't really sound like that should be positive yeah 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 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 me 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 of fighting with someone and talking about 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 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 avoidance 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's of conflict and it's like that's the beginning of the end so 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 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 going to 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 well you can't do that 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 stars 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 in in sports or in like trying to win the best podcast whatever no but I am but but I retreat completely with 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 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 fest is 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 cruise in 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 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 then 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 know, 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 that much anymore because they're not in a relationship with each other. 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'll 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 mum 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 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 need to 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 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

Ida 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 were 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. 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. 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 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 are 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 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 We'll be right back.