What is this powerful indicator that Dr. Gottman was focusing on? The communication styles of both sides, when the fight begins. There are four very definite conflict moves that will tell if you if they know how to fight fair, or if they are going for the yugular, as in other street conflict you can have. There is a fine line between constructive conflict and destructive one…and here it is crossed early on.

Yes, the first sorry mistake is to forget that you are fighting with the person you love, and begin fighting as if your loved one is an enemy to destroy. What kind of satisfaction will you obtain if you win the piddly battle now but lose the war and end up losing your spouse in the long run?

Looks silly to respond that you want to “win”, but that is what most people do. Let’s see how do they fight:

The Nasty Fight has four elements:

a) Begin critizing the other person immediately, about something real or about something you’ve imagined that the person did. It doesn’t matter if it is real, the effect is get the other person feeling critized in a very real way;
b) Defend yourself immediately, and don’t consider if the other person has said something true. To protect yourself is the first duty, and doing that reject any opening to share responsibility or worry by listening.
c) Even better, do the total silence/stonewalling answer. You withdraw from the conversation, deny that you have something to do, and block the communication lines between your spouse and you. 85% of the stonewallers were men, by the way, in Gottman’s study.
d) Contemp is the last move you can do to destroy your partner’s trust on you. You are the superior one, and look at her as from the high levels of your better judgement. She has to appear small, insignificant and silly…help convey this meaning doing some put-downs, correct her ideas or language, make fun of some ideas and laugh at loud at such silliness.

Did you see yourself in some of these behaviors? Are they your first answer when you feel like cornered by circumstances too difficult to accept? And now, are you a bit scared of the price you will pay for this conflict creating behavior?

Well, it’s not so difficult to change and learn to have more positive confrontations. Begin by using phrases like these ones when asking:

“Can you tell me more about what worries you? I’m here to listen;”
” and you were hurt by my behavior? how so?”
” I understand that you did what you did because you had good reasons, and I trust your judgement; perhaps I’m missing information?”
“We need to talk about this issue, and I find myself resisting, but be patient and bring me back when I wander?”
“When you tell me your reactions as now, I feel a bit scared of the consequences, but allow me to walk around a bit…”

More information about how you can learn to have conversations with your partner without aggression? Have a look at Fair Fighting

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.

Technorati Tags: aggression, backstabbing, confrontation, critiques, feelings, fight, Healthy Marriage, humiliation, negative emotions, put down, reconciliation

A new study by Florida State University researchers has found that people who were verbally abused as children grow up to be self-critical adults prone to depression and anxiety. Of the whole sample population, an staggering 30% reported that they were often verbally abused by their parents. What kind of abuse? Insults, negative comments, swearing, and threats of physical abuse, all determining an unhealthy doses of self-criticism in the children.

What happened with the people who were abused as children? We know already that it has negative effects on the personality of grown up people. Professor Natalie Sachs-Ericsson, the study’s lead author, says that the results are on the area of depression and anxiety: “People who were verbally abused had 1.6 times as many symptoms of depression and anxiety as those who had not been verbally abused and were twice as likely to have suffered a mood or anxiety disorder over their lifetime.”

Now we know for sure: parental verbal abuse is toxic, and it not only affects the emotional stability of children, but follows them as a shadow in their adult years. We are forever paying the consequences of abusive parenting. Negative self-criticism generated by parents’ comments continues into adulthood and has been shown to make an individual more prone to depression and anxiety.

Why is this? Aren’t parents the ones supposed to take care, love and protect their children? We have been silent for a long time about noxious parenting happening almost in every household.

Either it is that parents have been themselves traumatized by abuse when children or that they got to believe that stern discipline and fault finding is the best way of raising their children, this has to stop. We need more public advocacy about negative parenting, more role models for positive, self-esteem building child-raising styles and in general a deep transformation in the way we treat children.

It’s no surprise now that adult children of abuse sometimes decide that they need to separate from their parents, when the parents continue the abusive and denigrating commenting about their adult children’s lives they did in the past.

We need more public comments on how abuse from the past re-appears in the present and keeps doing psychological damage. We need to say clearly that we are only going to interact with healthy people who would not use destructive comments to hurt other people’s self-esteem. Perhaps now we can go around even feeing appreciated and loved, for a change?

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.

Technorati Tags: aggression, appreciation, domestic violence, Emotional Abuse, feelings, humiliation, isolation, passive aggressive, reconciliation, resilience, verbal abuse

photo credit: Vanity Press

Is it having arguments or the way they are handled what hurts the relationship? Do you want to be right or do you want to be loved?

Download From Conflicts To Love

Technorati Tags: confrontation, emotions, recognition, reconciliation

So, you are going this blessed year 2008 to give the best gift possible, the only gift nobody can buy. A Healed Relationship!
It comes from a generous, if wrongheaded heart, and is a jewel for the person receiving it.

Are you still here with me?
OK, please, think of the most awful confrontation of this year…take a bit of time and remember the one that left you with a bitter taste, like “is this what our relationship is coming to?”

Don’t escape yet; allow your memory to recover most of the interaction with this person…It doesn’t matter if the reason for the fight was a petty one (most of them are). I want you to remember the angry feelings that pushed you to confront this person –that you love very much—in exactly the worst way.

Now, do you remember your anger? Good, then be in that anger for a second, and let it evaporate in the fog of the past….it’s gone. Isn’t it pathetic how do we fight for things that, seen from a distance, were silly, petty claims? Isn’t it silly to try to decide who is right or who is wrong, if we end up hurting each other so much?

STILL, the fight left deep wounds, and the other person has lost some of the previous trust on you. There is a silent gap, a more careful version of the past relationship…dancing around the memory of the shouting match that followed.

Nothing of that matters now, you are going to reconcile with this person. Are you ready? This is not the time to chicken out….this is the time to get whole again!

Here are the steps

1.- Work on Yourself:

Go through the memory of the incident and answer this question: how much of what happened was your responsibility? You need to move away from the victim-villain dialogue and see clearly what did you do to initiate, escalate or make the fight so destructive. Was there something that you needed, that you could have asked for in a nicer way? Were you trampling on other people’s feelings and did not care about that?

Being accountable only acknowledges that it takes two to have a good fight, and that we all try to impose ourselves on others.

2.- Accept The Impact  On The Other Person, According To Her Own Feelings:
Listen to her version of the incident in silence, say sincerely “I do understand,” and validate her perspective saying: “Thanks for sharing with me your side of the story.”

3.- Offer An Apology For Your Own Behavior:
“ I’m sorry about the way I handled my side of this fight. I love you and did not mean to do anything except know more about how we can approach our relationship better. Can we talk about the issue and this time I will control my feelings and listen to your needs instead of yelling at you?

4.- Ask For Forgiveness:
“I did not know how you felt about this issue, because I was only listening to my frustration. Can you forgive my behavior? I now can see better what was going on between us. I want to be able to deal with our disagreements without fighting with you.”

IF you give yourself the gift of forgiveness, you will be one step ahead towards understanding that other people’s point of view is as valid as yours. From here, is easy to feel our shared fears and emotions, and then feel compassion for the other side, and for your own clumsiness…what you wanted was to be a loving companion and not an aggressor, but you didn’t know how! (And in point 4 you can even cheat a bit: use flowers or a small gift to reinforce the asking for forgiveness, but you have to say the phrase: “please, forgive me.”)

YES, you understood it well, Point 5 is about

5.- Forgive Yourself.
Breathe deeply and give your inner clumsy guy a pat on the back and say: “Next time, you know how to do it better…”

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

About the Author

Nora Femenia is a well known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and signup free to be connected to her innovative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.creativeconflicts.com.

Technorati Tags: fight, forgiveness, reconciliation