Couples often end up in a negative spiral where each feels justified in their ire towards the other. Oftentimes the certainty that they are in the right leads to an expectation of an apology or admission from the other person and an escalation when this expectation isn’t met. Gradually over time couples locked in such a cycle end up growing more and more bitter and ever more distant.
So how do we resolve this stalemate without giving up on our justified demands?
Understanding the Reason for Conflicts in Relationships:
We all have a part of us that looks out for our best interest. This part of us is tuned in to things other people do that come across as not respecting us or not treating us the way we ought to be treated. We can think of this part of us as a little person sitting on our shoulder always keeping a watchful eye on the situation.
This part of us, although looking out for us, is also quite moralistic. It believes in right and wrong, good and bad, and sees people as either with me or against me. Whenever someone steps on our toes it gets angry with us if we just let it fly or give the other person a pass. And if we continue to ignore it it will just get madder and madder until it eventually shoves us aside and takes matters in its own hands.
Doing so often means going to war with our partner by using a number weapons at its disposal from snubbing the other person, to acting passive-aggressively to make a point, to blowing up and calling the other person names.
Unfortunately, to our dismay, when we let our warrior handle our business this way, we often don’t get the response we want… instead we end up creating an enemy
Why Letting Our Angry Part Take Over Often Doesn’t Work:
Why does it not tend to go well when we let our warrior do our bidding?
Well, for one, our warrior tends to be a bit heavy-handed in handling our affairs.
Sometimes our warrior assesses the situation accurately and reacts in a measured enough way to get an apology out of our partner, but on most occasions the warrior’s approach tends to increase the other person’s defensiveness.
Why does the other person react this way? Because the other person has a warrior looking out for them as well, and the bad news is, in the battle of who is right and wrong, neither warrior want to admit to any fault.
The Mistake of Letting Our Warrior Fight Our Battles…
Want to know a secret? No person ever really views themselves as fundamentally bad or inconsiderate, so when the other person comes at you with this kind of moral judgment, likelihood is no such admission will be forthcoming.
To maintain my view of myself as fundamentally being a good person, my own warrior will instead think of all the ways you as my accuser is being irrational, rude, or out of bounds.
Instead of an apology you will therefore typically get an attitude or a retort in return.
Even if our warrior fights our battle in more subtle ways such as by giving the other person a cold shoulder or acting passive-aggressively with them, it still doesn’t really get what it wants. Any such tactic, whether conscious or automatic, simply dishes out a punishment that when felt by the other activates the other person’s warrior as well.
Warrior now battles warrior and the humanity of each of us retreats from view.
How To Get Out of the Stalemate:
So how do we get out of this impasse?
You are probably not going to like to hear it but it starts with you telling your warrior to stand down.
Rather than giving in to the itch of letting the other person have it for the sake of preserving justice and honor, you will need to take a step back and think about what’s good for the relationship long-term.
This is insanely difficult to do if you are filled with fury and feel either really disrespected or really uncared about.
And yet, even though it would certainly be satisfactory to stand your ground, tales of a warrior winning a battle without losing the war are few and far between.
You can’t really win what you want by doing damage to the person whose love and respect you ultimately desire.
How to Listen to Your Warrior without Starting a War:
So what can you do?
Getting a little bit of space between yourself and the warrior will help turn the warrior into an advisor rather than an agent gone rogue. And from this place of still being in control, you can take its opinions into advisement and determine how best to address its concerns.
Maybe your warrior is partly right about something but may be failing to appreciate the full context of the situation. Warriors tend to have confirmation bias so they only consider information that validates their ire and ignore other aspects that disprove its forgone conclusion.
Or maybe the warrior assumes an intent where there really is none. The logic might be: I am hurt by your actions so that must mean you don’t care. But this conclusion doesn’t need to follow from my hurt. My hurt can simply be my hurt whether you intended it or not.
However, this brings us to our third point. Our warrior is upset because it is protecting another part of us that feels bad. This vulnerable part of us may feel hurt in some way, unloved, not good enough, and so on, and this is the part our warrior stands up for. However, the warrior does not allow this hurt part to express its vulnerability or hurt. It instead covers it over, hardens it, and reacts with anger and bluster. In short the other person doesn’t get to see the vulnerability in me, but only gets to feel the wrath and accusation of my warrior on my behalf.
How to Resolve a Conflict in a Better Way
The alternative to letting our warrior act as our mouthpiece would be to do what in Internal Family Systems therapy is called a U-turn, another word for turning your attention inward.
Instead of pointing my finger at you like my warrior wants to do, I can learn to separate both from my anger and from my hurt. Now from this more neutral place I can get to know more about my hurt part and become more curious about where the feeling is coming from.
What I might then learn is that my own history is making me particularly vulnerable to certain experiences. I might have a particular vulnerability to feeling abandoned, unseen, rejected, uncared about, not heard and so on because of earlier experiences of feeling this exact way.
Being curious about the history of my hurt will help me understand my feeling as being not just a direct result of this particular moment and therefore you, but a more deeply held sore spot that lives within me and can get triggered by anyone from time to time.
By doing this self-examination I can now take some responsibility for my own feeling and acknowledge at least the part of it that has to do with me and my history and not with you and your actions.
The Recipe for Better Conflict Resolution:
So to put it all into a simple recipe that can be used for conflict resolution whenever I feel hurt and angry:
Instead of just letting my warrior handle my affairs, what if I could:
- Take my warrior’s concerns under advisement (listen to my warrior without giving complete control and authority to my warrior to act on my behalf…)
- Consider other aspects of the situation that my warrior might have omitted before jumping to conclusions about your intent.
- Understand what part of my ire might stem partly from my own personal history by recognizing that my warrior protects a vulnerability in me that I could seek to understand in its own right
If I could do this I could then:
- Calmly assert my needs or dissatisfaction without blame or anger
- Reveal that what was said or done triggered a hurt place inside me
- Take responsibility for how this hurt has lived in me in my life and isn’t just about this particular interaction or about YOU
Now, without simply ignoring my warrior, I can address my concern in a less combative way and this in turn might mean that the other person can lay down their arms as well. Without triggering the other person’s warrior, my partner can stay more centered as they listen to how they impacted me by their actions or words.
As they now hear from another part of me that feels more vulnerable and less attacking they can now actually hear me and respond to my need for understanding and empathy without becoming defensive. Rather than responding to my warrior with their own warrior they can now instead respond to me in a way that confirms that they care about me and care about my feelings.
