I am for you….

Today is about relationships. The partner part of Person Partner Parent. We're going to be talking specifically how you fight or when you're fighting with each other, how you see each other in that conflict.

I don't care how awesome you are or well matched you are. Even the best couples have conflict. It's just going to happen to all of us. It may look very different, but we all have it.

Your conflict dynamic may be the same as ours, may look similar, or it may be very different. You may both be passive, you may both be auditory, or a combination, or you can have two who are very aggressive. But even those who are passive, we're telling stories in our head. If you're not saying it out loud, there's still a rhetoric happening behind the scenes. So, when I talk about what we say about our partner, I'm talking about in your head as well as out loud. Therefore no matter what your conflict style is, this applies.

For Andrew and I, sometimes we fight really well. And by that I mean we fight efficiently and we're quite proud of that title! We find a way to process, decide and move forward. We're very logical and pragmatic about a lot of things.

My husband Andrew isn't emotionally attached to a lot of things. So, as long as I can keep myself in a certain head space, we can pragmatically go at a lot of things except…

When we don't.

One of us or both of us is being so passionately stubborn that we can't see past certain things. We're leaving things unsaid. At this point we're not fighting well. There are hurt feelings, neither of us is feeling supported, and there's no resolution insight. At this point, I think you guys can relate, we need something. That might be a method of communicating, conflict resolution skills, therapy.

Guys, I am a HUGE, HUGE fan of therapy for individuals, for couples. It is not an indicator that you are broken or that there is something wrong with you or that mentally something isn't right. And do you know what? If something mentally isn't right, that's okay too because we all need to take care of our mental health like our physical health. Therapy is something you can proactively do because we have very complex, very stressful lives and relationships. It's being proactive. It's taking care to learn the skills that you need to deal with anything. To process anything. So, huge fan of therapy, whether it be long term, short term, whatever. Use it, be proud of it, talk about it.

These are all things that we can talk about at length in other episodes, but none of that can be done in the moment of conflict, right? Some of it can be done later that night or over the weekend or in a few weeks when the chaos of whatever crisis you might be in has passed. But what I want to talk about today is something that you can do right now, something you can do in the middle of the conflict to soften your hearts and change the way you approach conflict with your partner.

It is the mind shift change that you are for one another. Think about it. You are two individuals choosing to walk through life together and no matter how alike or well matched, you're two unique people. Every morning you wake up and you choose one another again and again and again. Hopefully, you want what's best for this person. You want to be happy and you want them to be happy. You can think of it as you are for them, not against them. Another way to say it is that you're on their team. We're on the same team. I think a lot of people relate to that language a bit better.

I think people are thinking, "Well, they did this to me and they've been really awful." Yes, this doesn't mean that your feelings or your grievances don't exist or have good merit. It's just a reminder of your ultimate goal. That love is what you began with in this journey and what you want to remain when you're getting past this conflict. You still want to love each other, you still want to have kind hearts to each other. What this mindset does, is it changes how you individually approach the conversation because as we know, you can't change the other person what we can do is change ourselves. Now you can have them listen to this episode or talk to them about this approach and maybe both of you can try this in conflict, which is a great idea. My husband and I have done that. But for now what you can do is change how you approach the conversation.

The goal is not to be right, the goal is not to win.

It's not you versus them. It's both of you versus the problem or crisis or issue.

You want to find resolution and move forward together.

What this mindset communicates is you are safe with me. That even in anger you want to be building safety and trust. And what that means is your relationship is a place to share feelings, your deepest fears, and your biggest dreams without mockery, without name calling, without dismissal. You may be like, "But what if my partner wants to open a donut shop in Antarctica with hula dancing waitstaff? That's ridiculous." Well, okay, Jessica, but what if things were flipped? What if you shared your deepest desire and your partner met you in an unsafe way? Let's say you shared your deepest dream to go back to school and they said you weren't smart enough or that it was silly or that it just didn't make sense right now financially. You'd be hurt, right? Maybe devastated and it would change and damage your relationship. You wouldn't want to share again or maybe you wouldn't feel good enough and you felt that from the person that you love the most, that you're not good enough. Maybe you doubted yourself. Maybe you had anger. How dare they? You probably closed off. You put up walls and you want to prove them wrong. It doesn't mean that their point doesn’t have merit as well. If the financials don't work, if different things don't work, all those things are still truths, but that can be discussed in a kind way. They can be explored, they can be debated, it can be a conversation. But when you pour out your heart, you want your partner to receive that in a supportive way first. I'm not saying that you're going to agree 100% of the time. You might not reach perfect resolution on everything you face, but no matter what, you can respond to the situation or treat each other with kindness.

It's very possible that you do reach an impasse. I don't think that it's very easy to get 100% agreement on everything that you face, but what you can do is you can move forward for now or you can find a way to make a piece. Maybe that means resolution or maybe it's a decision to reevaluate later. "Hey, is this something that we can address 30 days from now or six months from now?" Or maybe it's something where we need to seek help outside of our relationship. Maybe you need to seek answers or strategies to help you move forward. Maybe we need to read something and learn about a topic, maybe you need to go to therapy. There's so many different ways when you reach an impasse that you can really decide to move forward together or even agree to disagree, but there's no need to have verbal attacking fights with each other. There's no need to hurt the person you love over it. The goal is we want to confirm our love for each other despite our feelings of anger or hurt.

That all sounds simple, right?

But with most simple things, it's not easy.

It's not easy to do in the moment and with our emotions and our passions are going. It requires a lot of self-awareness and self-control. We have to set aside our ego, our instincts of self-preservation and defensiveness. This allows the walls to come down, you can communicate more clearly and you can understand each other.

I believe that things left unsaid or miscommunicated are the number one source of conflict in relationships. I have no sourcing on that, that is my personal belief, but I think that a lot of theorists may agree with me that, often we just aren't clear on what we want or we're not communicating it clearly to our partner. We may not feel safe to feel the way we feel or share, so we create our own stories, our context about the other person. We arm up. Just like, with my husband coming home. Before he even came home, I was convinced he didn't want to be home with us. I was convinced he just didn't want to hang out with the kids and wanted to stay at work because that's easier. That he didn't care about me enough to come home. And none of that was true. None of it was, but it was all things that I had armed up in my head because I wasn't ready to tell him how I was really feeling and how I was really struggling.

Another way to implement this is if you're struggling to literally take a time out. Ask for a moment, step away. If you're a person of faith or spirituality, you can use this moment as prayer. You can use it as a mantra up to God or the universe or to yourself, whatever works. You can just lift it up and say,

"Universe, remind me and my partner that I am for them. I am for them as you are for me. God, the universe is for me, not against me and I am for my partner, not against them. My goal is love."

Some who may think that this is kind of silly or woo-woo to do in the moment, but I really want you to try it. Whether you say it inside yourself, whether you take a step away and you say it out loud, however you can pivot and shift how you're approaching that conversation, that conflict in the moment.

I think you'll start to notice a difference when you look at your partner. When you're thinking "Gosh, I'm so angry right now I cannot believe you forgot to pick up diapers again. Why don't you pay attention? Why don't you listen to me." And instead just look at them and go, "I am for you. I love you. Maybe we can download an app to keep track of the lists and send reminders. I know you're really busy with work let's just use an app to track this, so I'm not mad at you and you're not forgetting and we just take care of the problem together."

What's awesome is you can apply this across the board. It definitely works with kids, and maybe that deserves it’s own episode, but I think it also applies to friendships, other family members, relationships with your parents or siblings.

I invite you to try this and let me know what you think.

Join the conversation with comments below.

xoxo nancy elizabeth