Navigating Conflict In Close Relationships
Healthy communication in relationships is simple.
Most people communicate about conflict subconsciously trying to alleviate unpleasant body sensation.
If you're not yet very aware of body sensation (mindfulness meditation is a great way to cultivate) like tightness or heat in the chest, shoulders, neck, face...anger is a clear flag.
Turns out, acting from this place this is super unhelpful 🙃. While throwing a jab may temporarily relieve discomfort, it's going to come back twice as strong. Not to mention the harm done to other.
The shift, practice, is to simply pause. Notice discomfort. Have the courage to be with it, to stay. Own it, take responsibility. Because the other person, words, actions are just triggers. A gun and ammunition are needed to fire a bullet, and that's, well, us. We can actually one day thank our special people for allowing us safe and loving opportunities to heal these old wounds.
After pausing, we can say, "sweetie, I need a moment...can we come back to this in 15 minutes?"
Then, go do what you need to do. Run, jump, do a HIIT workout, take an ice bath, hit a punching bag, scream into a pillow, meditate, blast Linkin Park in your earbuds, pray, look at the stars, think about all the good reasons why you chose this partner, whatever helps.
Physiologically, anger is the fight response to fear and experience of stress hormones in the blood preparing for battle. So let that shit rip in any way that doesn't harm yourself or another being. And the juice only stays in the system for 90 seconds. Any amount of time after that is from you re-triggering yourself.
Once settled, back to the commitment to return, the resolve to not sweep it under the rug because "it's better now." Because while "it" is better, "it" is OUR discomfort, not the relationship. Discomfort driving the bus destroys relationships. Now the intensity has passed, it's the best time to communicate, not procrastinate (people with avoidant tendencies take note). If we procrastinate, resentment, another relationship-killer, slowly simmers.
When you return, try something in our own words like: "thanks for the space...I can tell this is really hard for you...I care about you so much...I also felt this tightness as I listened...this is difficult for me..."
Don't litigate.
Instead, communicate microscopic, inarguable truths. When <objective thing happened>, I felt <blah>.
By objective, I mean the opposite of judgmental. And trust me from experience, you can't dress up judgment in pretty language like, "I feel like you," and expect positive results. You have to actually take responsibility. If there's an ounce of judgment in your system, your partner will feel it. Time to go back outside.
And <blah> is something basic like anger, sadness, fear, tightness.
We all know how to communicate like this. The practice is restraint to pause and let our shit do what it needs to do to get out of the way...and then to come back to it.
This is what it actually means to "be vulnerable", humble.
It's very simple, unfortunately not very easy. This is why we practice.
And last but not least — you’ll want to ask for an agreement with your partner beforehand (most definitely not amidst a conflict) to practice communciation like this. It's only effective with a mutual commitment to communicate information to bring closeness, versus censure, blame, criticism. Practiced properly, you'll be learning on the regular why they call it makeup sex ;)
