385 - Keep Conflict from Destroying Your Relationships
Conflict in relationships
Nearly all relationships have conflict of some sort, but the way we engage in it can determine whether or not it’s constructive. Conflict is often associated with decreased relationship satisfaction, poorer health outcomes, and that children are negatively affected by marital conflict. Additionally, some studies have indicated that it is only damaging when characterized by negative behaviors, and that while conflict can cause decreased satisfaction short-term, it can lead to more positive outcomes further down the road. Either way, there are many different perspectives to consider and approaches to improving conflict, which we discuss in this episode, along with ways to ensure it isn’t harming your relationship.
Unhealthy conflict patterns
Shouter vs. Silent Martyr:
Shouter very quickly escalates from calm to shouting, while the other partner quietly and calmly collects evidence to later use to explain how they are unfairly attacked and unjustifiably criticized. Eventually the shouter just gets tired out when it is ineffective.
Snarky vs. Unflappable:
One partner does little sarcastic jabs, continuing to escalate if there is no reaction, while the other partner often seems unflappable and seemingly non-responsive to the jabs. This frustrates their partner. It often ends with no real discussion because the unflappable one doesn’t engage at all.
Pursuer vs. Runner:
Pursuer will often follow the other from room to room, demanding more details, rehashing, or pushing for their view to be accepted. The “runner” may just want harmony, and so they won’t engage with any criticism or disagreement. Often ends with the runner finally getting fed up and exploding.
Flipper vs. Self-Doubter:
The best defense is a good offense, so the flipper will immediately try to turn any criticism around on the other person. The other partner then switches to the defensive and is no longer able to keep their original thought or feeling alive. This often results in the self-doubter apologizing and the flipper walking away feeling justified, without acknowledging any truth in the original complaint.
Escalating Yellers:
Conflicts may start out calm, but end up in a shouting match and the winner is whoever can shout the loudest, longest, or most forcefully. Neither partner ends up listening to the other and both are focused on attacking the other. This ends once both partners have exhausted themselves and retreat away from each other.
Answer-Seeker vs. Truth-Dodger:
One partner starts by seeking answers to a conflict, something confusing or something that is troubling them. The other partner immediately feels stalked or like they are being interrogated and avoids, tells half-truths, or starts doing other tasks that are unrelated in order to avoid. This makes the asker even more curious and suspicious and this continues usually until the asker gives up, leaving them feeling even more suspicious and unsettled, eroding trust over time.
Drama Queen/King vs. Scoffer:
One partner tends to exaggerate, often switching their own portrayal of what happened to fit the desired outcome or to combat disagreement. The other partner mocks and undermines this as a way to unmask this absurd performance. The dramatic partner often ends with extreme offense, slamming doors and making a big exit while the scoffer sits and feels victorious.
How to do better
Some suggestions from us about how to manage conflict in a healthy way:
Use the triforce! It may help you avoid some conflict in the first place by starting from a place of understanding.
Sometimes leaving a conflict conversation for another time (like a RADAR) can be more effective than just “powering through” in the moment when you’re both upset.
Take some time off to lower your blood pressure and when more calm, do some personal writing to figure out your thoughts.
After the conflict, check out our Repair SHOP framework for repairing and reconnecting, especially if this is a recurring conflict.
Another method is from a Psychology today article by Amie M. Gordon, Ph.D., called 7 ways to make conflict healthy:
Try seeing things from your partner’s perspective instead of just your own point of view.
Avoid these four things: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling.
Give your partner the benefit of the doubt, and do not assume their intentions are malicious.
Reflect on your partner’s positive traits, using gratitude-inducing techniques if you would like.
Think of yourself and your partner as a team rather than opponents, with the goal of figuring out why you don’t agree. Avoid trying to “win the fight” and “prove your partner wrong.”
Remember that it won’t always be easy to follow these suggestions, especially if your partner isn’t playing by the same rules.
Give yourself a mantra to repeat when you start feeling angry or upset to help you remember your goal. It can be something as simple as “be understanding.”
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're going to have some fights. Wait, what I mean is, we're talking about what you can do to make sure your conflicts aren't harming your relationships. Specifically, we're looking at some research about conflict and looking at ways we can apply these lessons to our daily lives.
We're also going to look at some unhealthy conflict patterns to highlight what maybe should be avoided. While the research is focused on romantic relationships, the principles in them apply to any type of relationship when you think about it. Just something to keep in mind as we're going through this. The last time we talked about fights was on Episode 210 back in 2019.
Dedeker: Gosh, why was it so long?
Jase: Taking fights after fights. I know, right?
Emily: We were very zen and chill. I don't know. We just weren't fighting at all.
Dedeker: We have had plenty of fights since 2019.
Emily: That's true.
Jase: Maybe we've been having too many fights to calm down enough to talk about fights.
Dedeker: That's fair. It's hard to better communicate about fights when you're in the middle of a fight.
Emily: Yes, absolutely.
Jase: Exactly. In the intervening years, since we did that episode, it feels like conflict is a lot easier to come by in all sorts of relationships in our lives just because tensions are a lot higher and people feel a lot more out of control, a lot more frustration, things like that. I think it's good to come back and revisit this and look at if conflict is inevitable, how can we be doing it in maybe the least harmful way possible, or, ideally, have conflict in our relationships in a way that can actually make them better? Would be cool.
Dedeker: It will be cool. That's the dream, right?
Emily: I think it would be nice to take our physical state and move it into a place where we're not as charged. I think that's the thing since 2019 that I've learned the most is that I need to calm my physiological state before I can really have a good all-out brawl with my partner or with someone else in a constructive manner.
Dedeker: Okay, in a constructive manner. Brawling constructively.
Emily: Yes, exactly. If we want to even call it that. I don't know. I think I feel like I have just tried to keep the peace so much because it feels like something that I can control in my life while there's so much chaos happening outside my window, outside in the world right now.
Dedeker: Well, you bring up a good point actually about your physiological state, and we'll talk about that more a little bit later in the episode but if you think about it like our day-to-day, I think for most people, does not offer us a lot of opportunities for just calming and chilling, right? Between getting up in the morning, and maybe you get up into chaos, like, "I got to get the kids ready, or I got to get ready for work, or, oh, I overslept," or whatever it is, stress about money or stress about work or lack of work, and then the whole global situation, and then you look at your phone and then between looking at the news and also scrolling through social media, everyone's unhappy and everything seems so stressful.
I do think we have this constant diet of stressors in our lives that really run our nervous systems ragged, and not that those are all bad, and not like we have to be totally chill all the time, but I do think that that does contribute to having fewer resources for when your partner does say something flippant or you feel criticized or they disappoint you in some way where I think it can make it that much easier to just snap and to have a short fuse. Maybe all of us have a collectively shorter fuse than maybe we would have five years ago or so.
Emily: It kind of happened. Yes. That's a good point.
Jase: I think the other interesting thing about what you said, Emily, is that because everything else is so stressful and it feels like there's so much conflict around me, I want to keep the peace. I totally get that. When it comes to conflict in relationships, one of the things that I guess it's so hard to figure out is that there are a lot of different studies or different psychologists or just different folk wisdom or whatever that have very different opinions about how conflict affects your relationship.
For example, there are a lot of studies out there showing basically that conflict leads to decreased relationship satisfaction, which can build up over time and eventually lead to relationships ending, for example. Other studies have shown that conflict is associated with poorer health outcomes. Then there are other studies that indicate, well, conflict is only damaging if you're being really mean and hostile to each other and it's fine or maybe neutral otherwise, or other ones that even say having conflict leads to better outcomes in the long-term, even if they suck in the short-term because the idea with that being you're not just bottling stuff up to keep the peace but you are talking about them and working through them and that that leads to you making improvements in the relationship. We get all these mixed messages.
Emily: I feel like conflict is necessary and inevitable, but it's the way in which you approach conflict and if you have the ability to step back from the situation and be aware of your own cognitive biases that you're bringing into the conflict, I think that that is key because if we just immediately, your partner says something flippant and so that means, "Oh, they're trying to attack me or they're trying to do something to me," as opposed to questioning, "Well, am I having this reaction because I am having a bad day or they might be going through something?" If you're able to look at the whole situation a little bit more globally, I feel like that's really key in approaching conflict.
Dedeker: Well, this is an interesting point that you bring up. I do want each of us to talk a little bit about how our own personal experiences with conflict have changed over the years. This point where there are certain studies that point out the fact that conflict sucks in the short-term but it can lead to much more positive outcomes later on, I think for myself, before I ever considered the fact that relationships and communication might be intentional and I just floated through life by the seat of my pants as it were and floated through my relationships in that way, I think I did experience that phenomenon that a lot of people experienced, which is the only way that the relationship changes, for better or for worse, is through conflict.
As in if we don't have something like a radar or some kind of check-in or if we're both avoidant of hard relationship conversations, let's say, or I feel a little bit too embarrassed to make this vulnerable request of you or something like that, that for many people in their relationships, it isn't until we hit that breaking point that we step on each other's toes and then all the feelings come out and we get all mad and work it out and then maybe on the other side of it, then we're actually able to have understanding be like, "Oh, okay, now I know this, and now let's change this thing."
On the one hand, I do think a lot of people have that experience, and I think if you're lucky and you happen to be with a partner where the two of you don't trigger each other too much and you're able to be non-aggressive to each other and non-hurtful to each other in your conflict, then I do think that kind of pattern does work for a lot of people. On the other hand, I think just relying on conflict to be the engine that drives change in your relationship can be leaving a lot up to chance. Is that making sense?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes. I think you're missing out on, you'll still have some conflicts, it's just going to happen, but like Dedeker said, if you're doing something like a radar, a regular relationship check-in, yes, then you're able to--
Dedeker: Just be willing to tackle uncomfortable conversations because I think sometimes that's the kind of thing that causes conflict is because we don't want to have an earlier, more uncomfortable conversation.
Emily: I think that's the kicker and that's the thing that I still struggle with is that I may internally have feelings about a specific topic but I don't want to rock the boat, and so I tend to just not talk about them, and maybe six months from now, when X thing is over, then I can talk about this because it'll be a little bit easier than, or whatever. That's not necessarily a good practice.
Dedeker: Sometimes, well, sure. I think sometimes there can be being mindful and skillful about when you choose to open up a topic. Also, there are some things where it's like it's never going to be a good time or it's never going to feel good to have that conversation.
Emily: Totally.
Jase: Yes. Then I think the thing I find, for example, with Dedeker and myself, is we do radars fairly regularly. Sometimes we don't do them every single month. Maybe it's 2 months, but we've been doing that regularly for very many years. We're pretty comfortable with talking about things, but conflicts will come up often because it's like something that you weren't even really consciously aware of.
Emily: Totally.
Jase: Builds up over time. Eventually, that boils over. I can see how, even in that situation, it's not like, "Oh, if you communicate enough, you'll never fight," but it's that you'll hopefully have less of them, and then when you do, hopefully, you're doing them well, which is what we're going to be talking about in this episode. Hopefully, you can do them well and skillfully so that it is more of an opportunity to learn and change the relationship for the better rather than just something that decreases your satisfaction and makes you unhappy.
What different views have you heard though? Because I'd want to come back to that idea of some people are like, "Conflict's great." Some say it's not. I know that for me growing up, I had my dad and stepmom who basically were just super chill all the time and didn't seem to ever have any conflict. They had my mom and stepdad who would have conflict sometimes that tended to involve more raised voices. At the time, I thought, "Oh, this one's bad and this other one's not," but now looking back it's like this, "Well, but was stuff getting addressed in that other relationship? Or were they just doing it where I couldn't see them?" I feel like sometimes we get this weird impression of conflict from our parents in that way where-- because we're not seeing everything as kids. Right?
Emily: Or you don't even have fight a second person to-- it's like your mom and nobody else. You don't see any conflict except when it happens to you.
Dedeker: Oh, yes. Me and Emily were raised by two moms. It's like, yes, either mom and nobody else or just mom with yourself. It's usually-- or maybe, I guess I at least had an older sister where I could also watch mom and older sister, but we'll be frank, it was usually mom and me in conflict.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: What do you feel like you learned from that, or did they express anything to you about conflict, whether it's good or not?
Dedeker: Yes. Okay. No. For me, never any meta-communication of even acknowledging, "Oh, conflict is a thing that happens in relationships and it's something that we can think about and be proactive about." My family, I think it was very authoritarian, it was always very clear. There's a clear winner and a clear loser in every argument. The whole point is just get to the point where we know who the winner and loser is and then we move along.
Also, not a lot of repair emphasis on repair, not a lot of coming back after a conflict or after someone has popped off in some way to say, "Oh, yes, I'm sorry about that, or I'm sorry I raised my voice, or I should have said that," or anything like that. No, it was just you're in it to win it, baby. That set me up real good for my first adult relationships.
Emily: I would say, and I understand this is my perception, but that I wasn't really ever in the right. I was basically just told that I was wrong. Once in a while, when that wasn't the case, my mother would come back to me and apologize. I appreciate that. My perception generally was that I was just the one getting told that I was incorrect or that I had done something wrong or that I needed to write a five-page paper about how I wasn't cleaning my room or doing my chores.
Dedeker: Oh my, hold on. Is that a real story? A five-page paper.
Emily: Oh, yes.
Jase: Wow.
Emily: Basically--
Dedeker: Hold on, how do you squeeze five pages out of that? Do you remember?
Emily: I don't. I pulled it out my ass somehow.
Jase: Double spaced, 16 font.
Emily: Hopefully-- yes, I don't know, but there definitely were times when I think some anger was a reaction of being a single parent and having to make enough money to survive and all of those things. Some conflicts that came up were definitely a result of that, that then later were like, "Sorry, I was being a bitch," or something along those lines, which did happen a couple times, and I appreciated that. How that translated into my life? I don't know. I'm not great at conflict. Sometimes I get really mad, and then sometimes I also am like, "Well, I'm just wrong and bad at everything."
Dedeker: Well, you're great at writing episodes. Maybe if we have you write an episode about reasons why one might avoid cleaning their room, have some great content.
Emily: Oh, God. Not now.
Jase: It sounds like all of us grew up with more of an impression that conflict happens and it generally sucks and it's bad. Have you ever heard from anyone this idea of like, "Oh, no. Fighting in our relationship is what makes it great. It's where the passion comes from," or something like that?
Emily: Oh, sure.
Jase: Something like that. Because I know I've had some friends who have that opinion.
Emily: Oh, yes. I have a very close friend. She and her partner definitely fight sometimes in front of me, or I have two close friends who are very combative on the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, they're very much in the fight category. It is fascinating, but it feels constructive, although they will like jib and jab at each other in a way that also feels a little like cringy, like holy shit, I could never or would never say that thing to my partner or to somebody I cared about. To them, it's just like, "Whatever, this is part of our ritual of fighting."
Dedeker: Yes. I had a friend once who, to be fair, she watched a lot of TV, and while she was single and dating around, she very much romanticized this idea of passion in a relationship where-- and what passion means is both were really into each other and the chemistry is off the charts and we just want to be around each other all the time and also our fights are super intense because that's what passion means. I don't think she pulled that out of thin air. I've definitely watched plenty of movies and TV shows myself where we do romanticize.
Literally, the only thing I remember from The Notebook, I'm sorry, everybody, I only watched it once, but literally, the only thing I remember other than Ryan Gosling looking like a real cheesecake in a good way, if you know what I mean, cheesecake that I wanted. Anyway, the only thing that I remember from The Notebook was one part of the narration when we're laying out their courtship story, but romanticizing the fact that they fought all the time and yelled at each other all the time. Even then at that tender age of whatever it was I was when I was watching The Notebook being like, "That doesn't sound nice. I don't care if Ryan Gosling is a tasty cheesecake. I still don't want to be fighting with him all the time."
Emily: No. That's a bad thing to teach generations of young people, I think, during that time.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: I think maybe let's focus a little bit first on what are some of the unhealthy ways of having conflict. Then we'll look at a study talking about one particular approach to how to make sure that your conflicts are constructive. Then some tips about how you can incorporate some of that into your life.
Dedeker: Yes. We have this list of common patterns of unhealthy conflicts. This is pulled from an article by Randy Gunther on Psychology Today. Randy, based on their work as a clinical psychologist working with couples, identified these nine conflict patterns. We're not going to go through all nine. We actually removed a couple of them because they just read abuse dynamics in particular. We just thought, well, not that we don't want to talk about abuse or acknowledge that, but we thought just with the caveat that we're looking at conflict patterns that can show up even if you're in a healthy relationship, a non-abusive relationship, you can still struggle with conflict and you can still have unhealthy conflict patterns.
If you're not sure about the type of conflict in your relationship of, "Is this an abusive dynamic, or is this okay even though it sucks," we definitely recommend seeking out a second opinion as it were, either that's a professional, a therapist, a counselor, a coach, or a trusted friend, or a family member. Again, even after all that, you're still really not sure, might be good to consider leaving the relationship. It's okay to break up. We have to give the caveat more times than not. With that in mind, we're going to go through this list of different conflict patterns that may be present in your relationship.
Emily: The first pattern of unhealthy conflict that Randy Gunther talked about is called shouter versus silent martyr. This is essentially characterized as one person being the shouter, and the shouter quickly escalates from calm to shouting in this conflict. Now, the other partner who, I guess, is supposed to be the silent martyr, they very quietly and calmly collect evidence to later use to explain how they are unfairly attacked and unjustifiably criticized. Then, eventually, the shouter just gets tired out when the shouting is no longer ineffective. That's interesting that silent martyr person is essentially collecting evidence to later be like, "Look at what you did to me. Look at what I suffered through."
Jase: I think something that's really interesting about these patterns that Randy points out from her work with couples is this, they're very much painted in this way that no one's really the good guy or not, and that's the point. It's like, this is just an unhealthy pattern, no matter what, and that's more important than whether or not someone's more good than the other, which it sounds like both of you growing up, it was this one person's right, one person's wrong. There's that idea too, of like, who's the good guy, who's the bad guy, who's being attacked, and who's the one who's being treated unfairly. I think that's interesting. Just something to note in these examples.
Another one we have here kind of similar to that is this snarky versus the unflappable. In this case, instead of shouting, the snarky partner does all these little sarcastic jabs, basically trying to get a reaction from the other person. Then the other person, if they're this unflappable type, they just are non-responsive to it, non-reactive, they don't take the bait to engage. Then this often ends up with no real discussion because the unflappable one just won't engage. That snarky one was trying to use that as a way to almost like to start a fight, to have that conversation, but then it just doesn't happen because of that. Again, this weird mismatch of these sorts of ways of trying to approach conflict or not conflict.
Dedeker: I think I've seen people describe that as also falling under the umbrella of passive-aggressive. I think there's many negative flavors of passive-aggressive, but the, like, "I'm just going to drop in, again, a passive yet aggressive comment that might be a little bit sarcastic or just like a tiny bit biting, but it's almost like just putting out some bait, I'm not necessarily diving straight into the conversation." Yes, I've definitely seen and also engaged in such behavior. The other--
Emily: When they said snarky, I was like, "Dedeker."
Dedeker: Yes. I am the lead snark around these parts.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: The next conflict pattern is what Randy calls the pursuer versus the runner. I have to give a call back to our Episode 275, Demon Dance Battles, about the work of Sue Johnson, looking at pursuit and withdrawal patterns. This is very, very similar, but this particular flavor is the pursuer in the conflict may follow the other person. I think often, this is like physically following them around, following them room-to-room. They may be demanding more details, demanding an answer to a question, rehashing the fight, pushing for their view to be accepted. Then the runner--
Jase: I've done that before.
Dedeker: Yes, me too. The runner may just want peace and quiet and harmony. They're just trying to withdraw. They're trying to get away. They're trying to not engage with the argument, with any of the criticism, or with the disagreement. Often, this pattern can end with the runner finally getting fed up, finally getting cornered, and then exploding. Then I imagine then it could blossom into a number of any other conflict patterns at that point.
Jase: That is a good point, too, that a lot of these can transition into each other or you may find that one-half of this sounds familiar, but the other half is a slightly different reaction or something like that, but hopefully, this at least gets you thinking about it.
Emily: The next one is the flipper versus the self-doubter. To me, this reminds me a little bit of switch-tracking, which is something that we've talked about in past episodes. Essentially, the best defense is good offense. The flipper is going to immediately try to turn any criticism around on the other person. Saying something like, "You're accusing me of this. Well, you're actually the one who does it all the time, or you're the one who does this other thing." That's really awful. Switch-tracking the issue at hand and flipping it on the other person essentially.
The other partner then switches to the defensive and is no longer able to keep the original thought going essentially. Essentially, it often results in the self-doubt or apologizing, and then the flipper walking away and feeling justified without acknowledging any truth in the original complaint. That's interesting. Switch-tracking we've talked about before, that's two people talking past each other about two different topics. This essentially feels like somebody switching into a different topic and then nothing gets resolved because they haven't essentially like talked about the initial complaint at hand either.
Dedeker: Well, it's like turning it around. This was one that my mom did all the time, and subsequently, I did all the time as well, which is, yes, if you criticize me for something, I'm actually going to point out how, "Wait, but you do the same thing all the time, or actually, you're worse at that than I am or what about this time that you also did the same thing," and it's not helpful or productive.
Jase: Sometimes it can feel effective. This is something that Dedeker and I have caught ourselves doing where one person will come with a complaint and the other one will immediately like react more intensely than seems justified. We caught it early on, and we're like, "What's going on? Why are you reacting so intensely?" It's like, "Oh, I'm preemptively angry at you because I think you're about to be angry at me, so I got to get in front of it."
Emily: Amazing.
Jase: We call that our preemptive anger, and we're able to catch it by giving it a name, which is hopefully what this list helps with a little bit. This next one may be familiar to a lot of people, and this is called the escalating yellers. This is--
Dedeker: The old band also come see us down at the--
Emily: Old escalating yellers.
Dedeker: Friday night, $10 cover.
Jase: The escalating yellers is where both people start yelling, basically. It starts out calm, but eventually just turns into this shouting match.
Emily: Oh my God.
Dedeker: I just had an image of my band, it's very post-modern. It's literally just an escalating series of yells until my voices go out.
Jase: Yes. Okay. Well, that's basically what happens in here-
Emily: Yes. It's beautiful.
Jase: -it turns into this shouting match of just whoever can shout either the loudest or the longest or the most forcefully thinks they're going to win. Right, like--
Dedeker: Not like--
Jase: Not like one shout.
Dedeker: No, just who can maintain that intensity the longest.
Emily: Yes, exactly. Of course.
Jase: Right. Essentially, neither one is focused on listening to the other really but are focused on who can just speak louder and assert themselves over the other. This tends to end once both partners have just exhausted themselves in retreat and nothing gets resolved.
Dedeker: When do we come to the end of the show?
Jase: Right. When everyone's lost their voice, and then the audience goes home.
Dedeker: We all shuffle home. Yes. This next one is the answer seeker versus the truth dodger. This could also be another subset of a pursuit withdrawal pattern, I think, but it's one partner starts by seeking answers to a conflict. There may be something confusing. There may be something that's troubling them. They may feel like, "I don't know if I'm getting the full story from my partner, and so I need to throw a bunch of questions at them." Of course, that sets up the other person to feel like they're being interrogated, like they're being grilled.
They may default to avoidance behavior or telling half-truths, or even start just straight up avoiding by just trying to ignore or starting to do other tasks that are unrelated in order to avoid the conversation or the answer to the question. Of course, that, in turn, will set off the asker even more because they'll become even more curious or suspicious. Then that will continue around and around and around and around until someone gets frustrated and gives up. Then eventually, this tends to erode trust. Unfortunately, I've been this person because of my brain.
Emily: Dedeker, you're like, "This is six or six here."
Dedeker: I know. I don’t know if I've ever been an escalating yeller other than my band.
Emily: Oh my God, no, sorry.
Jase: No, I don't think you have.
Dedeker: What I was saying was, yes, I had definitely have a brain that's like, "If we know more things, we'll be safer, or if we can just have all the answers, then it'll be okay." Yes, I have tended to be the answer seeker in relationships in the past, for sure.
Emily: The final one is the drama queen/king versus scoffer. One partner might tend to exaggerate it. That made me think of also using always or never language, stuff like that. Then often switching their own portrayal of what happened to fit the desired outcome or to combat disagreement. Then the other partner mocks and undermines this as a way to unmask this absurd performance. They're scoffing all over the place. Then the dramatic partner will often end with extreme offense, slamming doors, and making a big exit while the scoffer sits and feels victorious. Wow.
Jase: Once again, no one actually got their needs met, and just, it's like, I think that's what's worth noting.
Emily: It's all performative. All of these are in some way or another.
Jase: Well, more that they're all various mechanisms people have come up with to avoid actually addressing what's at the heart of the issue, and instead, to find some other tactic, usually, that involves trying to win, and one may or may not have figured out a more effective way to "win", but really, neither one's winning because nothing changed. Nothing really got discussed, and nothing's going to improve in that relationship then.
Dedeker: Well, I see in a lot of these also just letting your survival responses run the show. We get into that fight, flight, fawn, or freeze, and your frontal lobe is just checked out, and it's all your amygdala and your lower brain and stuff like that runs the show, and your inner child steps up and throws a tantrum in some way, or it's like we devolve into this much simpler, more animalistic sense.
That's why it's hard to sit and listen to your partner even when they're saying things that feel critical or to really gently express the fact that you need something. That's what I see in a lot of these is that it's just like a lot of just like nervous system instincts, stepping in and running the show in a way that's not helping you.
Emily: Totally.
Jase: I think, especially when you're not conscious of it, if you had role models where fighting is bad or fighting's about someone wins and someone loses that it's, "Well, yes, I'm going to do whatever I can to either win or to avoid it." That's the patterns that we saw in all those examples. I think it takes a very conscious effort to start to change that, especially if it's a habit that you've had for your whole life and that's been role modeled to you without really any other examples. It can take some work, but the good news is that it is possible to change, and all of us have significantly changed our conflicts for the better over the years, just that we've known each other and probably in the years before that as well. We've seen this change with other people too.
On that note, it brings us to this question of, well, what really does matter then in trying to improve our conflicts? In the second half of the episode, we're going to look at one particular study that is looking at one aspect that may be the most important part of actually having healthy conflict. Then we're going to look at some ways that you can incorporate that into your daily. Well, hopefully not daily, but into your regular conflicts in any of your relationships, not just your romantic ones, but before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some sponsors and some ways that you can support this show to help us keep this information coming to everybody for free.
If you can take a moment to listen to these and if any seem interesting or we've got some good deals for you, go check it out. It really does directly support our show. Okay. Let's look at a study. This is a 2016 study by Gordon and Chen called, Do You Get Where I'm Coming From?: Perceived Understanding Buffers Against the Negative Impact of Conflict on Relationship Satisfaction. This was published in the journal of personality and social psychology. That title's a bit of a mouthful, but don't worry we're going to talk about it and actually get to the heart of what this is all about.
Just as a quick background, basically, we're taking on this study specifically because of all this conflicting information we get about many studies showing conflicts harmful, others showing that it makes relationships better, others saying it's more neutral. What they wanted to look at is specifically not about how you do an argument, but whether or not you feel understood, and their hypothesis was that that might be the key based on the other research saying, "Well, what if this is actually the thread at the core of a lot of this?" That's what they ended up doing six different studies or seven different studies actually to try to get to that answer.
Emily: Yes. Those studies looked at the effects of conflict in romantic relationships. Also, in many of the studies, the majority of respondents were Asian American or Pacific Islander. That's super unique because this we've talked about before, most of the time, these demographics tend to be white people and they're usually very young like college-aged or something along those lines.
These studies looked at conflict, they looked at relationship satisfaction. They looked at how understood the participants felt and how positively they perceived their partner. Each successive study attempted to build on the findings of the previous one. They essentially refined and double-checked their findings from the previous one. It was over seven studies. They did a lot of different types of things like surveys online. They also had an online survey that participants completed every single night for two weeks.
One of the studies included videotaped conversations. Another one asked open-ended questions about conflict and whether or not people felt understood or not. Stuff like that, it essentially were various different ways in order to find out whether or not people were satisfied in their relationship and how positively they perceived their partner, as well as how understood they felt by their partner.
Jase: Right. The first thing they found in these studies from the first few was that, as expected, people who reported feeling understood by their partner during a conflict also reported higher relationship satisfaction than people who did not feel like their partner understood them during a conflict. First, they're like, "Okay, that's there, but let's dig into what's really going on here. What are the nuances of it?"
They wanted to determine, why does being understood help protect against the negative effects of conflict, and based on what they were looking at, they came up with three potential explanations that they wanted to investigate. One is that feeling understood shows that your relationship is good and strengthens it. The second is that it shows that your partner cares and is invested in you. The third is the hypothesis that by being understood means you're going to have less conflicts in the future because you're more likely to have actually resolved the issue.
Dedeker: These are just the hypotheses that they were testing.
Jase: Yes. These were the three hypotheses they wanted to test, and of those, they basically found that those first two, showing that your relationship's good and strengthening it and showing that your partner cares, were the ones that were correlated and there seems to be evidence that those are the reasons why it causes less of a decrease in satisfaction in the relationship.
They didn't find evidence really to support that fewer conflicts because of it is the reason, which is actually interesting to note, because that means that for things like perpetual disagreements, perpetual arguments that we've talked about also in the past, basically this idea that you have totally different world views or just different beliefs from each other. Maybe there are certain areas where you will never agree and it's not so simple as just, "Oh, let's make this little change," but there might be a more fundamental disagreement that even in that a situation where it's not going to get resolved, so to speak, that being understood still helps protect against any negative effects from those conflicts. I do think that was--
Dedeker: Yes. That's a good reminder because I do feel like it really gets to the heart of it, and it's like, we really have to learn to build that muscle of sitting in that place of, "I don't agree with my partner on this point, and maybe I would make different choices if I was in their shoes, but also, I can make an effort to understand where they're coming from," and I mean actually understand not the flippant understanding where we're like, "Yes, you just want to do this because you hate doing things that are good and you're silly and I don't like your f--"
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: That's an exaggeration, but we do that. That's how I see conflict play out so often is that we think that we understand, first of all, without actually understanding. Then the second part of it being, then we make that worse by then repeating that incorrect understanding to our partner, which and sometimes also a flippant and sarcastic way.
Jase: Right. One of the studies in this I thought was particularly interesting was study number five, which is the one Emily mentioned where they did a video recording of the couple having a conversation. What they did for this one is they had the couple fill out a survey beforehand, and then they had them have a conversation about a point of conflict in their relationship.
This is something that we've talked about in the past. The Gottmans also have a study very similar to this where they will observe couples talking about something that's a point of conflict in their relationship, and the Gottmans are observing for their behavior and categorizing what percentage of positive versus negative interactions do they have with each other during that. That's something they use to predict relationship success.
In this one, they took a similar model and they had them fill out a survey first, have that conversation, and then fill out a survey at the end as well. Both partners did it. They found a few interesting things. First one is they found that not only did they find that me feeling understood by you makes me feel better, but that when their partner reported feeling more understood, the person doing the understanding, even they didn't know that that was their answer, also had higher relationship satisfaction afterward. It's this just, in general, understanding seems to benefit both partners, not just the one reporting that they feel understood. It's interesting, and I'd love to like have a study that digs even more into the nuances of that, but that was just a little mention that they gave from that.
With that, they did look at that ratio of positive to negative interactions like the Gottmans, and they found that partners who felt understood also tended to have a higher ratio of positive to negative interactions, but they found that feeling understood was more predictive of how they would feel about their relationship than just the percentage of positive to negative interactions.
Their hypothesis there, which needs to be tested further is, maybe the Gottmans are on to something, but what if the cause or the root actually is being understood and a symptom of that is the percentage of positive to negative interactions rather than the other way around, or maybe having more positive interactions helps to be more understood. It's hard to tell which is which, right?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Anyway, all of this, one of the last things that they left with in the study is this idea that something to go back and view some of these other studies that have even shown things like angry conflicts with yelling can be productive and helpful to relationships to go back and do studies like that again and say, "Well, how much of it is whether they felt understood or not?" Because maybe it is that situation where I avoid conflict all the time until I finally bubble over and then we yell and we're angry, but we're finally understood, and we hadn't been before because we weren't communicating or we were doing it passive-aggressively or something.
That question versus other ones, like we talked about in the first half, that's yelling and angry but doesn't result in any understanding of each other. I just thought this study was so interesting as another way to look at what might be at the core of how can we better feel understood and also offer more feeling of understanding to our partner.
Dedeker: Well, so that leads us to the most important question, which is how can each of us do better in conflict? How can we operationalize these things? How can we apply these things to our life? Well, first of all, if you want just like 6 billion different ideas around conflict, I highly recommend that you go look through our back catalog. If you go to multiamory.com, our site's search feature is actually quite robust because not only can you search for, I don't know, search terms like conflict or fighting or arguments or things like that, it'll not only search our episode titles and descriptions but also all of our transcripts as well.
Even if there's very particular things that you're interested in, you can probably find in a transcript someplace where we may have mentioned that. We would recommend that, but second to that, we do have a collection of some tips here from others, as well as from ourselves. In particular, we're referencing a list by Dr. Amy Gordon on Psychology Today called Seven Ways to Make Conflict Healthy. This particular list is not necessarily offering anything unique or revolutionary. You can find a lot of the same advice across the internet, but it's always good to have a reminder.
First one being that, again, I think in the pursuit of understanding, to hold off on asserting your own point of view and to try to take your partner's perspective first and to make it a goal in conflict, to understand why your partner feels the way that they do. Now, I realize that's really hard, especially when you're activated. This is something that I'm working with the couples that I work with all the time.
Something that I would add to this is that this is a good exercise. If it's too hard to do in the moment when you're in conflict with your partner, this is a great place to go either during or after you've halted, you've taken a pause during your conflict, you've taken enough time to let your blood pressure come down, to let your breath rate come down, to let your heart rate come down. When you're finally ready to think about it maybe a tiny bit more objectively, think about it with more of a calm mind that this is a great place to go of sitting down and trying to write out what is your partner's perspective and really actually trying to get into their head and truly understand what that may be.
Second tip here is to avoid the four horsemen of the apocalypse. We've talked about that many times on the show for review, that's criticism or delivering feedback to your partner that's about who they are as a person and their personality as opposed to actions. Defensiveness, that means like basically not taking any responsibility for any part of a conflict. Contempt, that's--
Jase: Which if you were raised with that idea that fights have winners and losers, that defensiveness one really kicks in because you can't admit anything or else you've lost. Trying to get rid of that mindset can help there.
Dedeker: Yes. Next one is contempt. That's behaviors like eye rolling, sarcasm, any kind of behavior that takes on a tone where like you're superior and the other person is inferior. The last horseman, stonewalling, which is the freeze out, the shut out, the, "I'm going to ignore you or not talk to you," different from a halt, "I'm not telling you, I'm going to go in the other room." It's, "I'm just going in the other room and just pretending that you don't exist." Not so great.
Next one on this list is to go into conflict, giving your partner the benefit of the doubt, assuming that their intentions are not malicious. Again, with all of these, it's so hard to do when you're activated or when you're triggered because that's when your state-dependent memory tends to kick in. It's really easy to think of all the other times that your partner you off in this way, but again, the more that you can build that muscle to assume positive intent of your partner.
Jase: I would add that one practical way to try applying that is even to speak that out loud, to extra meta-communicate.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Jase: Even if you're feeling upset, you could even communicate that. Again, this might take some practice, but to say something like, "Okay, that's upsetting to hear, but I do realize you want things to get better and I appreciate that you're putting in this effort, so let's try to figure out how to make this better that works for both of us."
Something to reframe it into an us against the problem rather than us against each other, but even just talking through that when it's hard, I've at least found that to be helpful, to say like, "Hey, I'm really upset by this, but also, I want us to try to do a good job here, and I want us to approach this a little bit differently, but I am here listening, and I want to hear what you're saying rather than just getting mad at you." That has been helpful for me.
Emily: That's also really helpful for like smaller things like a partner may say something that to you, you perceive as being flippant or, "Oh, they are talking to me about this thing because they're trying to discuss a bigger picture thing that maybe I'm bad at, or it's some like underlying form of criticism," or something along those lines.
I've found that doing the exact same thing to assume good intent first is super important because ideally, you're like, "Yes, my partner just wants to help me out or is trying to be kind in some way even if it is triggering something internally," ideally, you think that, or you have the idea that they're doing something good for you instead of being an asshole or something like that.
Dedeker: Next on this list is, again, when you're physiologically more calm, you can take a moment to reflect on your partner's positive traits. A modification I would even make to this is that if you're in conflict where you have some story about, "Oh, I'm so much better than my partner in X, Y, Z regard," like, "Oh, I'm so responsible and my partner is so irresponsible." You can sit and think about, "Okay, what are the positive traits that I'm applying to myself? Can I find that in my partner? Even though I'm telling myself this story about how you're responsible they are, are their counter-examples?" Right? Now, they still--
Jase: There may be another area.
Dedeker: Yes, it may still be true, broadly true that like maybe you are more responsible than your partner, but chances are, it's not a black and white difference. Sometimes even finding that can help you come into a conflict with a little bit more of a measured perspective on the situation. I think it can also help to reduce some of that contempt behavior where you feel like you're superior and you want to make sure your partner knows that they're inferior. I think it can really help with that.
Next on this list is to think of you and your partner as a team rather than opponents. Remember that your goal is to work together on figuring out why is it we're not seeing eye to eye on this and then to find a solution. Again, to reiterate, it's not to win the fight and to prove that your partner is wrong. I think that is a really important shift in any conflict. Trust me, even to this day, I still have a lot of conflicts that start out in the who's right, and who's wrong, who did it good, who did it bad, who has the right perspective on this or the right idea, who has the wrong idea, but the sooner that you can shift it into, "Okay, no, we're in this together and it's going to be us versus the problem," I promise you, the faster, you're going to get to a more productive solution.
The caveat to a lot of these is also to recognize that it may not be easy to follow a lot of these suggestions, but it's going to be even harder if your partner is not playing by the same rules. I feel for you. I totally get it that I do think there are some situations and some relationships where if one person chooses to take the high ground, it sets up everybody for success.
Also, sometimes, if you're the only one whoever is trying to have productive conflict and your partner is constantly fighting dirty as it were, or doesn't want to work on the way that the two of you work through conflict, that's going to make this a lot harder. Have to reiterate that this work of making conflict better should not fall on just one person. It's an overused phrase, but it takes two to tango. That may mean the two of you have different parts to play in this or different ways that you contribute to your conflict going awry, but the work of making conflict more productive is not something that falls on just one person's shoulders.
Jase: Another thing to throw in there for this one though is that it's not only one person's job to make it so that conflict is healthy or doesn't happen, and if you have a partner who's just completely unwilling to engage in that, no matter how good a job you're doing, this might just not be a good relationship, and that's just not going to work out. I know that sucks, and I know that that's never a fun answer to give, but that is the reality of it.
On the other hand, I've also seen the scenario with couples where maybe this pattern's gone on for a long time, and even when the other partner does start to try, the first partner just can't even receive that anymore because they're so checked out on like, "This person doesn't do any work," and even if they are trying to do some work now, it's like, "I can't even accept that from them. I'm not even going to trust them, I'm not even going to believe them." That situation is honestly really tragic to see.
It's one of those things where either, hopefully, with some counseling or some outside help, some professional help, maybe being able to get past that and see, "Okay, no, we are actually able to work on this together," or it might be that thing of just like, "I'm never going to be able to trust that this person's going to hold their side of this, that they're going to learn their steps in the tango aesthetic or set."
In that case, if you're never going to accept that from them, then also, you shouldn't be in this relationship anymore. I know, again, that's harsh and it sucks to say, but it's just-- if you've gotten to that point where for some reason or another, this just we're not going to feel like we're understanding each other or making improvements, that's also worth noting and that's important to see.
Dedeker: The last item on this list from Psychology Today is to give yourself a phrase to repeat when you start feeling angry or start feeling activated to help you remember your goal. It could even be something as simple as just, "Okay, just be understanding, be understanding, or try to understand. Understand where they're coming from." It can really help if you've already done some work on figuring out what your values are in relationship and what your values are in conflict because that's going to be your guiding light that helps get you through the moments when you're just pissed off.
Emily: That feels like an internal micro-script as opposed to something that you do with your partner. It's a micro-script for yourself. I like that.
Dedeker: Yes. That's good.
Jase: Yes. Just a little reminder to repeat that to yourself. I also like that her example here is to be understanding, and I like that because we just talked about this study where understanding your partner and being understood by your partner, there's some evidence to suggest that might be the most important thing about having healthy conflicts, that don't cause a decrease in relationship satisfaction for you. I think even taking that a step further into, what if you go into conflict and it starts to go badly?
Maybe you take a little break and say, "I have to go to the bathroom." Just something to give yourself a little breather, regroup, and to come back with this intention of, "What if I go into this without the goal of either defending myself or trying to be right?" Instead say, "What if my goal is just, I want to make sure that I understand them and that they understand me." See how that maybe changes your approach. It might change what you think is success in that argument. Just something to try out and keep in mind.
In that, to add some tips from us that are not just these ones from Psychology Today, that is using the triforce of communication is the first one that comes to my mind. When it comes to being understood, I think the triforce is a great place to start. You can go back and check that out if you're not familiar with it in Episode 2, which is one of our fundamentals episodes where we talk about the triforce of communication, but basically, this can be a way to even prevent some conflict from starting in the first place or hopefully resolve it more quickly by being clear about what is the intention of that communication.
Emily: Also, if there is a bigger more global conflict that seems to be a cyclical pattern in your relationship, sometimes it might be best to just leave it for another time and do something like a radar, which is another thing that we talk about a ton on this show. You can find more on radar in Episode 3 of our fundamentals, but that might be a better way of approaching conflict as opposed to just powering through a moment where you're super-activated, super-physiologically intense in that moment or you're having a lot of emotions, all of those things. Instead of it tackling something right at that moment, maybe just save it for later, save it for a radar, come back to it when you are less charged and less on edge, and maybe when you have a little bit more perspective as well.
Dedeker: Related to that, we've talked a lot about halting, about finding a time when you're calm, and I would highly recommend going and listening to Multiamory Episode 218, which is titled I've Halted, Now What. It's not just about the pause but also what you do during the pause, and that's going to help give you some ideas for how you can get yourself physiologically down to a better place so that then when you come back to the conflict, it's much better and much more constructive.
Then after you've gotten to the other side of it, we really recommend checking out the repair shop framework for repairing and processing and reconnecting after the argument, especially if it was an argument that did not go so great and happened a couple days ago and you're ready to come back together and understand what happened and find ways to prevent that particular conflict mishap from happening again. You can go check out Episode 7, which is in our fundamental series.
Jase: Something I think is really neat about having read this study is that one of the core pieces of our repair shop framework is about going through different ways of being understood and understanding each other. It's like, "Ah, huh? That is related to this thing," so even after the fact, adding more of that understanding even after the argument can be really helpful.
This has been a cool visit back to this. I know talking about fights and arguments isn't always the most sort of sexy, fun, cool topic, but it is really important and it's something that is just a part of life, and so learning to recognize some of these things and do that better can have a hugely transformative effect on the quality of all your relationships, not just your romantic relationships, but also with family and friends and even coworkers. These same principles can apply in those cases.