How To Win A Fight With The Person You Love Every Time

[Sandra]

I need your help! I love my boyfriend and I think he loves me but I feel like my relationship is DYING. We used to get along SO WELL all the time and have SO MUCH fun but for the last couple months I feel like we just FIGHT and FIGHT and FIGHT and it’s over STUPID things like how to load the dishwasher or what to watch on TV. What do I do?

[Scot]

Ahh, fighting over “stupid stuff,” the vicious, infuriating combat that only comes with thinking someone is supposed to be your perfect, fabulous soul mate and better half.

OK, in the next few minutes I’m going to give you a little “trick” I only recently figured out myself to stop almost any fight DEAD in its tracks and have you both giggling, hugging, making out like teenagers and realizing you were both being incredibly SILLY in the first place . . .

First though, there’s TWO BIG THINGS you need to understand about FIGHTING in a love relationship, WHY we’re so incredibly CRUEL to the people we love the most and what’s REALLY going on in both your and your partner’s most secret of hearts when you’re yelling and screaming and going to WAR over which way the silverware is supposed to be placed (Prongs up or prongs down? It’s the eternal debate.)

Important Thing 1: You Never Actually “Win” A Fight With Your Partner

Let’s just get this one out of the way:

No man or woman in the history of men and women has ever “won” a fight with their partner. None. I mean, how would you “win” exactly? If you think about a fist fight you “win” by beating the crap out of the other person until they’re bloody and battered and have to have a bunch of dental surgery like Rhonda Rousey.

But uhh . . . in a love relationship? It’s not exactly productive to “beat” your partner because even if they admit that you’re right, fall on their sword, apologize profusely and roll over and show their belly like a humbled dog . . .

All you’ve really done is create bitterness, resentment and PAIN in your relationship where there should be affection and love . . .

And created a massive amount of ANXIETY in your partner’s heart that the next time they “mess up” you’re going to drag them over the coals again.

What’s important to understand here is that digging your heels in and even trying to “win” a fight is . . . dumb.

Really dumb.

Toxically dumb.

Love-killingly dumb.

Important Thing 2: You Almost Never Fight About What You THINK You’re Fighting About (Or What You SAY You’re Fighting About.)

If you do a quick search on the interwebs you can pretty easily find charming little lists of the most common things couples supposed fight about.

And the lists are pretty much always the same and more or less agree. In fact, according to Dr. John Gottman (who I love and is brilliant) the top 5 things couples fight about AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN (And again - I mean, most couples really do have the exact same fights over and over, don’t they?) are . . .

• Free Time
• Money
• Housework
• Physical Intimacy (Otherwise known as SEX) and . . .
• Extended Family

But you know what?

Even though article after article says these 5 things are the BIG ISSUES that couples fight about . . .

They’re kind of absolutely wrong.

Why?

Because even though you might THINK you’re fighting about money or your husband’s busy-body mom or how often you have sex (and who gets to wear the sexy velociraptor costume tonight) in reality what couples REALLY fight about . . .

Is our FEELINGS and our VALUES.

Our FEELINGS is pretty self explanatory . . . it’s the sea of emotions we have swimming right beneath the surface that make us feel vulnerable and that we secretly think we aren’t “Supposed” to feel.

Our VALUES are the things in our life that are IMPORTANT to us. And the thing is, no matter how compatible you are with that man or woman in your life your values are NEVER going to be exactly the same . . . and that “gap” between your values and your man’s (or woman’s) values is where fights breed like nasty, flesh-eating rabbits.

For instance, let’s take the classic “You don’t load the dishwasher the way I want you to” fight (one my ex and I used to have CONSTANTLY.)

Say we’ve got Bill and Melissa, a couple who’s been together for about 5 years. And every couple of weeks for those FIVE YEARS they’ve gotten into a vicious and horrible fight over HOW TO LOAD THE DISHWASHER.

To Bill, this fight is kind of “stupid.” He doesn’t think Melissa is stupid (he loves her), but with his background and his VALUES (the things that are truly important to him on a day to day basis) how the dishwasher is loaded (which way the forks go, whether glasses are allowed to go on the bottom rack, whether he should actually scrub the Fettuccini off the plate or not) just isn’t that important and he’s able to relax at home no problem even if there are a few dishes in the sink to get to later.

He really just doesn’t care (and that’s fine. There’s no reason he has to care about something he doesn’t care about and telling someone they “should” care about something they simply don’t is . . . dumb. Because it doesn’t work. Ever.)

Now, to Melissa . . . well, it’s more than a little bit DIFFERENT. To Melissa keeping a clean house is EXTREMELY important. She takes a lot of pride in her skills in this arena and gets a great sense of satisfaction out of seeing a spotless kitchen and all the glasses and cups and forks lined up JUST RIGHT in EXACTLY the way she likes and that she is pretty sure gets everything the absolute CLEANEST.

So they fight.

A lot.

About this thing with the dishwasher and the kitchen and how clean the house SHOULD be.

“Why can’t you just pay attention and load the dishwasher the way I ask you too?? Jesus, Bill, it’s not that hard,” Melissa yells after a long day at work when she comes home and finds the forks BACKWARDS.

“I’m sorry. I forgot. What’s the big deal? Why is THIS so important to you? They’re just freaking dishes!,” Bill yells back

And then there’s lots of screaming (again) that makes the dog crawl under the bed with his paws under his ears.

What’s Important Here Is That Neither Of These Folks Is Actually Fighting About THE DISHES

Nope. Even though she’s not consciously aware of it what Melissa is really MAD about isn’t that the dishes are done “wrong” (though she’s got some OCD there) . . . it’s that after all the times they’ve been through this she feels like BIll KNOWS this is something that’s important to her and she feels disrespected and even ATTACKED by Bill in some way when he doesn’t take the time to do the dishes how she wants them done.

In fact, she probably plays the “If you love me” script in her brain. “If he really loves me he’ll MAKE himself pay attention and do the dishes the way I want.”

And so Melissa’s fight isn’t about “Dishes,” it’s about whether Bill REALLY loves her or not.

On Bill’s side of things, this whole “dishes” fiasco has absolutely nothing to do with how he actually feels about Melissa. He loves Melissa. He thinks she’s really uptight about the dishes for some reason, but because housework and dishes aren’t a high value of his it never even dawns on him that this is a BIG DEAL in Melissa’s mind (just like Melissa probably wouldn’t understand how important watching the Football game is to him or why he’d “rather” do that than spend the day with her shopping for patio furniture.)

So Bill feels simultaneously attacked for something that seems really minor to him (because he thinks the fight is about dishes when it’s really about Melissa not feeling loved) . . .

AND he feels disrespected and diminished as a man because, to his view, Melissa constantly focuses on what he’s doing “wrong” in the relationship as opposed to the many things he does right.

So Bill’s fight is about “Jeez, I’m sorry, OK? I try to remember to put the dishes in there the way you want, but I forget sometimes and I don’t understand why that makes me a bad person or why it’s a big deal.”

And you can do this same “translation” on any topic at all. A “Money” fight might actually be about feeling taken advantage of (Melissa makes more than Bill and wishes he would value those dollars as much as she does); a “sex” fight could be about not feeling attractive (Melissa doesn’t feel good about her body since having a baby; Bill feels undesired because Melissa doesn’t want to have sex) etc.

So How Do You Stop The Cycle? How Do You Stop These “Stupid” Fights (And Even More Serious Ones) Dead In Their Tracks?

Well, by following these three steps (two of which are “hard” and one of which would be “easy” if it wasn’t so terrifying.)

Step 1: Is to take the time to understand what you’re REALLY fighting about. If you fall into the trap of thinking you’re fighting about money (when you’re really fighting about how you need to have a certain amount saved to feel safe)you’ll never get anywhere. Both partners need to take the time to develop the self awareness to understand WHY they have the emotions they do around different topics.

Step 2: Is to understand YOUR values as well as your partner’s values and that no one person’s values are “better” than the other’s.

For instance, one of the big problems my ex-wife and I had wasn’t that we had very different values it’s that she insisted her values were RIGHT.

One of my “favorite” fight we had (besides when she told me she couldn’t even take 10% of the responsibility for what was wrong in our relationship and it was all my fault) was when she, in all seriousness, yelled at me and said “I can’t believe I married a man who doesn’t want to mow his own lawn.”

To my ex “doing things yourself” and being “handy” was a value. To me? Uhh. Not so much. I like writing. I like playing drums. I like working out and dancing around and if I can afford to have somebody else mow the lawn I’m going to dammit.

Unfortunately, my ex sincerely thought that “not wanting to mow your own lawn” was a serious character defect and simply couldn’t accept the fact that mowing my own lawn was not (and never will be) important to me.

And that brings us to step 3, which is really the most important one . . .

Step 3: VALIDATE Your Partner’s Feelings Around Whatever You Are Fight About

I’m telling your right now if you can just internalize this next bit and actually USE it in your life next time you’re having a fight you’ll be amazed at the effect it has and how it creates a waterfall of great things in your relationship.

AND you’ll have a tool that works not just for “stupid” fights but for really, really important ones too.

Ready?

OK, heres’ the deal:

What most people (men and women) REALLY want when they get into a fight isn’t to WIN . . . it’s to be HEARD and to be told it’s OK to feel what we are feeling.

We want to be told that our EMOTIONS are OK and that our partner UNDERSTANDS why we are feeling the way we are feeling even if our emotions are completely irrational in the moment (and emotions are almost ALWAYS irrational. That’s why they are emotions.)

For instance . . .

If Melissa comes home, finds the dishwasher is loaded the “wrong” way and picks a fight with Bill . . .

Getting defensive is the wrong idea (because then there’s just a lot of screaming) . . .

Apologizing profusely and saying he’s 100% in the wrong is the wrong idea (because fundamentally how the dishwasher is loaded isn’t that important to him. He didn’t load it the “wrong” way as a way to hurt Melissa, he did it because he was tired and wasn’t paying attention and because to him it genuinely isn’t a big deal.)

Nope . . .

What Bill needs to learn to be able to do instead is take a deep breath, UNDERSTAND what’s REALLY going on for Melissa (“My not loading the dishwasher the right way has triggered emotions for her around not feeling loved enough”) and then VALIDATE those emotions and letting her know it’s completely fine to feel what she’s feeling (even if the ANXIETY she has around this meaning he doesn’t love her is groundless.)

So . . .

“Oh, man. I’m sorry, honey. I know this is important to you but I was exhausted and just totally forgot. I want you to know that I totally understand why you’re feeling angry right now even though from my point of view this had nothing to do with ‘us’ and was just a mistake. If I was in your shoes I know I’d feel a flash of anger too even though intellectually I would know you didn’t mean anything by it. I’ll try to remember in the future but I hope you understand that I’m going to mess up sometimes and can forgive me. I love you.”

So what did Bill do there?

He VALIDATED that there was nothing wrong with how Melissa FELT about this; he immediately addressed the insecurity this triggered for her; he told her he UNDERSTOOD her emotions and that he would probably feel the same way and he promised to do better without promising to be perfect (which is impossible.)

What’s Cool Is That This Same Technique Can Be Used For WAY More Serious Problems

For example, two weeks ago my girlfriend and I had a pretty astounding crisis to deal with. I won’t go into too many details, but it involved a guy I know obnoxiously hitting on her and her not knowing how to handle the situation without “offending” a friend of mine.

I was furious with the guy (and let him know it.)

And even though I COMPLETELY understood the situation my girlfriend was in; that she didn’t want to create a scene and that she didn’t want to cause problems between myself and my “friend” . . .

I had to eventually admit that I was REALLY mad at her.

Did I yell at her? Nope.

Did I pick a fight? Nope.

Did I let the fact that I was feeling ANGER convince me that she had done something “wrong” and deserved my wrath?

Nope.

Instead I went to her and said “Hey, I love you and I know intellectually that you didn’t do anything wrong and that I probably would have acted the exact same way in the same situation. But there’s a part of me that’s feeling a lot of ANGER towards you right now because you didn’t shut him down more quickly and because I got emotionally hurt by this situation.”

(Yes, this kind of thing is hard to say.)

And then I said “Can you just let me know that you understand why this situation made me mad even though you didn’t do anything wrong and I ‘shoudn’t’ be angry?”

And she looked at me and said “Yes, of course. I completely understand why you’re feeling what you’re feeling and I’m really sorry I didn’t act differently.”

And just like that my anger evaporated.

Because she told me my anger was “OK,” that I was “allowed” to feel my anger and that she understood that as a human being I can’t “choose” what I feel or how I emotionally react even if she didn’t do anything “wrong.”

Got it?

It’s a complicated concept but it comes down to this: We all just want to feel like we are being HEARD.

[Sandra]

Thank you Scot, your advice was helpful.