Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura and I'm Brittany, and you guys already know, but today we've mixed it up a little bit. This is not Ask Uncut like you come here for on a Thursday. This is our Tuesday episode, just to really throw a stunner in the works. I think they're probably used to the little mix up.
Now I've had to do it all like, it's not like it's surprise I'm mixing it up. It's like this is just stand in last my fuck. We don't know what these girls are going to pull out of the heart this week. Every week something new. No, we did have to mix it up this week. If you listen to Tuesday's episode, you'll know that we were fully prepped and ready to go with our juicy episode and another
I guess competing podcast did the same episode. They obviously bugged the studio and got in first, so we had to change our style for the week.
It's actually it's really interesting we have now like this this topic that we were going to do for this week's episode. We were originally going to talk about busy and like the psychology of being busy and like, how it's something that we shouldn't be glorifying, but now it's everywhere. Yeah. Literally, Like I even sent Britt another article that was written by a completely different publication yesterday, and I was like, why is everyone talking about being busy now.
In the same week. We wanted to drop it, but I also.
Think it's because it's that time of year where like there's so much going on and everyone feels like they're just stretched the absolute limits when they should be enjoying themselves. So I think it was very relatable. Anyway, we decided to scrap it, put it on whold. We'll do it at another point in time and we'll kind of flush it out a bit differently. But like we mentioned on Tuesday's episode, today's episode is going to be all about
conflict resolution. Actually it's really sexy, guys, It's a sexy, sexy topic. I did have to do.
Some quizzes and did a lot of research where it was like, what's your conflict style in a relationship? And I was like, can you just ask me what my conflict style is? Full stop? Why does that have to be in a relation because I haven't done that for a long time.
Yeah.
I read over the notes that Britt made for this today's episode and it was all about at work, and I'm like, Brit, it's got to be about relationships, and.
She was like why, I don't fucking know.
I was like, can we relate it to like work and love, like some people just have work?
No.
But the thing is with the conflict resolution and what we will speak about, it's relevant to all aspects of your life. It is your relationships, it is your friends, it is your work colleagues, it's your family, it's all situations. It's how you just deal with the stress. But it doesn't matter. It's not just relationships, So we want to make that really clear. It's for everybody in every aspect of life.
Let's talk about that later before we get into the episode. I did see something on the Facebook group which I want to bring up with you guys because it's so wholesome and it is so funny, and I know that Brit hasn't seen it yet, so I really want to share it with you. Okay, one of our listeners had
posted her Tinder text chat with this guy. So he started off the Tinder chat with two truths, one lie and I don't know what the first one was because it kind of like starts a little bit down like where she screenshot the chat from, starts a little bit further down the list. But she's like, I think you're not related to Keith Urban, so that was obviously the one that was a lie. And he's like, haha, good guest.
You get today's mystery prize. You can choose between a wheelbarrow ride around Adelaide to see all the wonderful sights and all the wonderful people, or a bowl of corn flakes with yesterday's milk in it. And she rides back and says, well, that's easy, I'll take the wheelbarrow ride, and he's like, good choice, because I already ate the corn flakes for breakfast, so I would have been awkward if you chose that. Anyway. The reason why this is so funny is because she showed up for the.
Date and the guy brought a wheelbarrow and wheelbarrow lane.
My god. Yes, her name is Tegan. She's posted this on the Facebook group and she has kept us updated along the date as well, so there's like videos of her sitting in the wheelbarrow and having a ride around. I love them.
We're at the point that not only do you, guys as they're happening send us, you are accidentally unfiltered. It's like, whilst your most embarrassing moments happening, you're like riding to us. I love that now you are. I'm streaming your dates to our Facebook group, Tigan.
If you're listening to this. I want to be updated constantly about this relationship. Where's it going. I know you're having a second date coming up, but I'm fully emotionally invested in this now and I need to be kept along the journey.
Yeah, any of this stuff, we need to know how it ends, guys. And also you are aware that if you get married, you're gonna have to go down the aisle in a wheelbarrow, and.
You're also gonna have to invite us a dear. Anyway, tell me what's been happening with you, Brett. I like that somebody else's story is the highlight of my week. Like that's what I brought to the table for, like what's been happening in my world.
So let's talk about last week because we didn't talk about it on Tuesday because we saved it for this week. Last week I took a few days off. You guys know that. That's why Maddie and Laura did the episode together. And I was like, I'm going to take three days off. I'm going up to the Gold Coast to see my brother and my nephew and my niece and who I haven't seen in a year. I'd lined up a date on the Gold Coast. I was like, I was going to get you the stories. I was going to live
my best life. And then day one, boom, I got appendicitis, and I was like, fuck you, Universe, give me a fucking break anyway, So I got appendicitis.
I had to cancel my day. I couldn't.
I didn't even write back to him, and he was like, ah, so like we still doing this and I was like, oh, sos, I've had a pendicitis, Like no, I can't see you.
And he would have absolutely thought that you made that up. That's such an unbelievable excuse. Hey, Surrey, couldn't get back to you. I hadn't had an appendicitis. I'm a thirty year old with an appendicitis. Is The funny thing is it's true.
I know it sounds like the most made up excuse ever, but I was like, curl If anyone's had a pendicitis, you like curl over in pain. It is it's like someone's stabbing you in the stomach. So when a pendicitis hits, it's not necessarily it doesn't come in at one hundred percent. He comes in slowly, like you start to get the pains. Then the next days after is when it gets worse.
So day one, I was in bed, curled up.
It hit me at nighttime and I was like, oh my god, I've had a pendicitis before three years ago. So I was like, this is going to be a pendicitist. I can tell. And Sherry and Jay came in and they were like, we're going all of us, like we're going to went wild today.
Jay's never bin and.
I was like, oh, I've got a pandicidis.
I can't go.
Like, oh, well, you just stay home, and I was like no, I had so much pomo. So I went to went wild with a pendicitis. I was going down the slide like holding my groin, rolling around then that was the one thing I got to do. Then it got too bad and I just had to sit around at home. That was my week guys, I wish I could come back and tell you about hot sexy dates, et cetera.
But you're a pendicitus, did you dirty?
By pandizes to be bloody dirty if it happens again, so I didn't have to take it out.
This is the reason why you're single, That's it, the only reason. Yes, it's your a pandemic. She just get that shit removed and get on with your dating life. Yeah, fully, but that's it. Just so you guys know, Brittany's just taken her top off and she's sitting here in her undies and her bra recording this episode. She just was like, I'm so hot. I hope that you're okay with this. I'm just gonna take this off. She's literally nude, and I'm just here pregnant with my hairy belly flopping around
on the floor like a whale. I was like sweating, I'm so hot.
I think we're at that stage now where we can record nude.
Yeah, great, perfect, I'm gonna not record nude. You don't want to see this, no one does. But anyway, I had something really funny happened to me yesterday. So have you heard of the Instagram celeb Spellcheck correct. Okay, if you guys, if you haven't heard of celeb spellcheck, go and follow him. It's a private account so you have to request it. But it's very funny. Basically, celeb spell Check is they just take the piece of celebs. They absolutely take the piss out of celebs or dealers celebs.
You know, I don't think that we could. I don't think Britain I can collect claim celebs say so. Basically they hold people's terrible spelling accountable, which is pretty funny. But also like when celebrities do things which are a little bit like questionable, they also seem to post and they're just so on the ball. It's really really funny. So much to my surprise yesterday when I get tagged in a post that's been put on celeb spellcheck. Oh
god what Okay? So I get tagged in this post and it is a photo of a Vinnie like a Savage Army or a Vinnis, And there are two Christmas stockings hanging up in this Vinnie's with like four dollar price tags on them. One says Buster on it and one says Marley May on it. And celeb Spellcheck has fully fucking busted me. So basically the post says, if you also have a child named Marley May and a
dog named Buster, it's your lucky day. Get your hands on unwanted Christmas freebies kindly donated by at Lady and a cat to the local Vinnis. And then it is just so many people trolling me in the comments section. But I just want to say, I have literally never seen these stockings before. Who's gonna want your stocking?
You think that someone's gonna want your stocking, it's a probably with your family's names.
What I think has happened is that my shop, Tony May is directly next door to a Vinnie's, So I think that a delivery that was supposed to be sent to me at Tony May has accidentally been given to the Vinis next door, and they've just unpacked it and put it on the shelves. Because I've literally never seen these stockings before. And also I'm not dumb enough to put stuff that has my kid's name on it in the vinnie that's next door to my shop. I would just put it in the bin. Guys.
That reminds me of last week when I accidentally gave a Christmas present to my cousin that was embroidered with Brittany. This just makes me seem like such an ungrateful influenza, like some brand has sent me this. And there are certain things that you just don't give to a Viny's in live and they are things that are embroidered with your family's name.
There's also now a Daily Mail article that's come out about it, which just makes me sound like is such a pop person. Anyway, Alisa didn't end up in a landfill here. I am just trying to do the right thing by the environment, regift my gifts, and I'm getting flak for it. So this actually reminds me. Have you seen?
And I feel really sorry for what's going around the media at the moment, at least Nols. I've seen the poor girl's being trolled, and I do feally sorry for her.
Long story short, I love her.
She's not the greatest speller, and she often makes spelling mistakes, which is fine, like who cares? But there are so many celebrity sites like this spell chack. And there is one person in particular called the Fat Jewish who has like twenty million followers. He got a hold of one of Elsa's posts. So basically has taken a photo of herself on the bed and she's gone to write the French word vola, which we all know starts with what we don't all know, but well clearly we don't all know.
That's the whole point of the story. It starts with a v woola. Alise obviously doesn't know that, and she's written at wawlah wolla cute fine, like.
Who knows how to spell that?
It's the hardest word to spell anyway, like would you be able to spell of Laura Celeb spellcheck screenshot at it, and then it ended up on the Fat Jewish and then it just went viral.
And so here's this photo of poor Elise Knowles with the caption.
Wola apparently actually something in Arabic or something. But I feel really sorry for it because she's been trolled over it, and guys like, if someone makes a spelling mistake, who cares?
I don't think it means we need to drag them through the mud. Also, shout out to all.
These people overseas. There are so many people overseas is writing Oh what more.
Could you expect from Australians. They're all uneducated.
I think it's so interesting to see how the world looks at Australia. I watched something else. Oh I'm on a roll now. I watched something last week where there was a quiz show in America America and the question was what and you got eliminated if you didn't get the question right. The question was what language do they speak in Australia And everyone was like, oh great, why does he get the easy question because now he can stay in the competition and he goes, oh easy Dutch.
Wow. I remember when I had a exchange student come and stay with me when I was like maybe fifteen or fourteen, and she was from America and she we were on the train, we were going down to Kyama to have a beautiful day, and she was like, you know, it's so funny how like English and Australian are so close together. And I was like, what do you mean and she's like, well, obviously, like you speak Australian, but then like English people speak English, but the language is
so similar. And I was like, bitch, you a crack, Like what are you talking about. I was like, well, we speak English here and she was like, no, you speak Australian couldn't convince. It could not convince, so really common. But also, okay, will you say that, like people stereotype Australians is being dumb because we have that whole like outback country hickfield thing going on, but we're now also stereotyping other people to say, well that they think that
Australians are umb as well. I don't think that it's like a blanket rule. I just think that there's always some outliers from all over the place. But going back to Elice Knowles, I mean I think we care too much about grammar. There's always the grammar police on Instagram, there's always the grammar police who are on Facebook. I think that we're so quick to like judge and pick and like when somebody comes up with like really good rebuttal to an argument, but then they've written they're wrong.
They've written like t H E R instead of tre and the other person's response is like, well, maybe you could learn to spell first. It's just such a pathetic way of undercutting someone and like minimizing their argument to say like, well, because you've got one spelling mistake in your response, your complete argument is invalid.
So I mean, I it is my favorite thing to do in like a text fight.
I also do it as well.
You're like if like when they write something like this big argument, like I'm talking privately, not like to cut them down, like if he was with a boyfriend or something. Imagine that if you're having that text fight with someone though, and they write like there instead of they are or something like that. The best thing that you can do back is you like ignore everything else in the text and you just do it where you recorrect it with asterix.
It's like you just don't even need to write anything else. There's so much strength to It's such a power move, is it, though? Yeah, I fucking love it. But I wouldn't do it like I wouldn't do it publicly to someone to cut them down. I don't think like we all make spelling mistakes. I just think Elisee doesn't deserve this, So the moral of the stories don't add us.
You think that Lisee doesn't deserve this. I don't think it's a big deal. Like I think it's funny. I think it's a funny spelling mistake. If I ended up on the fat Jewish because I had written Ala instead of wolla, I would laugh at it. I don't think I would take that to offense.
That's fine, That is the funny thing. The thing that's bad is the hundreds of thousands of people trolling her like it's everywhere, and they're being nasty, like it's everywhere.
That's the bit I'm not cool with.
If I ended up on fat Jewish for a spelling mistake Loolcano, like, it would be so funny. It's what comes after that. It's like he sends an army of twenty million people to go one right or off.
That you would end up on fad Jewish for saying shit like Lolcano. Let's be real, pick that up, fat Jewish. Anyway, let's get into some accidentally unfiltered Okay, I know that you have and I can't believe they said that, So you can kick it off. Brett.
Okay, this is actually pretty cute and funny. Last week, this happened to someone I know. Last week on the Gold Coast when I was seeing my brother. My best friend of twenty eight years lives up there and she's got a little boy and little girl, and I haven't seen him in a long time. Anyway, we went up
and he's her son is about four. She was going to the supermarket with him, and at the local supermarket there is someone that works there that is I'm going to actually say that he's a dwarf, but politically we don't say dwarf anymore. Just going to tell you that they're called little people. Anyway, there was a little person that worked there, and he's like, everyone knows him. My best friend knows him. She's always like, hey, low and stuff. Anyway,
this particular day, she's like, I don't know why. My son walked straight up to him, looked at him in the eyes, looked at me and goes, mom, why is the baby wearing a watch? And then he goes she was like, lawson, she's awsen, that's enough, let's go. And she's like, also, why has the baby got a mustache?
It's just so intense and insensitive to his face. And I was like, I'm dying for you. What did you do?
And she's like, to be fair in his defense, she's like, I was mortified, like I wanted to die. But he was like it's fine, and he's like, that's the best thing I've had said to me in a long time.
But you know what. I think we need to be more comfortable with kids saying things that are uncomfortable because like, the kids are going to do it, they don't have a filter, right, Whereas like I think it's the parents' response to that situation that makes it better or worse. So, like I think in that situation, if that was me, I would have said, actually, do you know what, He's
not a baby. This is something you know, there's lots of different types of people in the world, and some people, you know, they're not as tall as other people, and some people have different types of abilities and disabilities, and I would try and explain it to make itsusive. Only know this from my own experience where I've worked with people who have disabilities, where it's like the embarrassment of the mum or the embarrassment of the parent is actually
what amplifies the whole situation. Instead of saying, the reason why that person is sitting in a chair with wheels is because they can't walk, and there are lots of people who can't walk, and explaining that situation to a child so that they can grasp like what disability is is so important. The thing that bothers you in this situation is how they're going to feel at the time. She's like, I had this moment of panning where I was like, my son has just hurt this man's feelings. But he laughed.
He was like, he's like, I'm grown up with my whole life like this.
He's like, I think it's funny. It makes my day. She said. She's like that was my saving grace. How grat he was.
She's like, I just can't believe the things that come out of kid's mouth.
But I think that's the thing, right, Like the people who have these disabilities have grown up with it in their whole life. They're not embarrassed by it. So the only person who feels that embarrassment is the mum. Because it's an uncomfortable situation. But you can diffuse that. I'm not saying that it's easy to do, but it's definitely something that you can take agency over. I love how
shit kids are. So the other day, my niece so, like my niece and my nephew, they all know that I'm pregnant, but I don't think that they've They've only ever seen me like wearing T shirts and stuff, so they've not really seen my belly. Then the other day I was at home and I took my took my top pop file was wearing a bikini and my niece comes over and she goes, why is your belly so fat? Like she was repulsed to buy it, and I was like,
please just don't. I was like, this is what we're dealing with for a while now, darling, thank you, this is where the baby lives. They just have absolutely no filter.
I mean, don't take offense. Kids have no idea. They're dumb dumps. Okay, I'm going to bring in accidentally unfiltered ladies. This is actually something I feel like you would do.
I don't know why, ladies. I don't know if I'm going to be offended by this or not.
Ladies, please come dig my grave for me. Yesterday I had to go to the physio for my dodgy hip. And for this appointment, I got one of the new physios. Now, let me tell you, he was gorgeous. I'm literally talking an eleven out of ten and he was so lovely as well. Anyway, I'm lying face down on my stomach and he's kind of like digging around my up hip
flexer butt region doing some massaging. We're having a really nice chat while he's doing this, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I let off the most unsubtle, biggest, stinkiest fart I have ever done. He must've just he must have just poked the perfect spot to push it out. I couldn't even play it off as been any other noise either. I safe to say I won't be showing my face again. Now,
hang on, This is all she wrote. I needed to know more, so I wrote, I was like, hang on, girl, you can't just come and say you fired on the hottest guy ever in a silent room and not tell me what happened.
But also like, you can't downplay that like any other situation, Like if I far in a supermarket, I can blame or my kid. You can't downplay farting in your underwear getting your ass massaged by like a physio. It's nowhere to hide.
You have to just you have to just look up and laugh and be like I'm so sorry.
Like you have to.
And I was like, whoa girl, you can't drop that you fared on a hot guy and didn't say anything.
What did you do? What did he do?
Like? What was the situation I'm on the edge of my seat. She's like, literally, you could have heard a pin drop. Everything just went quiet for three seconds. He stopped massaging for a second and then we just paused. Then we just went on a day again. He's like, he just kept massaging and we kept talking like nothing happened.
Something happened. I felt that need to address the elephant in the room because that is gonna linger as well. I will never forget the day. But also, you can't go back. No, yeah, you're done. The eleven Hotti is out.
I'll never forget the day that one of my really close friends told me about how so she she'd met this guy and they were dating, and like she was really into him, and anyway, they had gotten intimate for like the first time, and he had gone down on her and she was like it was the best I had the best orgasm ever had in my life. He was amazing, and I was so relaxed, and all of a sudden, I accidentally farted in his face whilst he was going down on her, Like like a no, I
don't think you can play them off. They smell particularly different. You're not strongy. Farted in his face whilst he was going down on her and she was like, I have no idea how it happened. I was just so relaxed.
It felt like I'm so mortified. They don't I'm sorry, girl. They don't fall out. They don't just like fall out your bar. They can everyone's done a surprise far before. You've never done a surprise far whered that come from? No, I don't think it just falls out, you know what's coming.
I think what happens sometimes is people think that they're going to be like small and cute, and like nobody thinks it's going to be small and cute when someone's face is between your legs, like, you don't take that risk, girlfriend, that was an accidental.
Far How may people drop farts without knowing? Not that they don't know, it, just like can sometimes happen and then you're like, oh, I was expecting that. A few friends the other day.
I'm not going to name the ame because I would never do that. It was so funny though, a few friends were all in the lungdry room sitting around just like having a chap and one of my friends just bent she dropped something. She bent down to pick it up and just let the biggest fart room and she's like, oh, She's like, I didn't know that was coming.
I'm like, what the hell? Like this? What is wrong with all you people? They don't just come out without you knowing. You haven't had children yet. Stuff just happened that I sneeze an ape, I cough and ope, I laugh and ape. I leave this room after recording, and my pants are full of pee. Things just happened to my body they have no control over. I'm going to put that up on our Instagram poll. How many times have you accidentally farted without realizing until it happened?
Yeah, there are so many of you out there. Don't leave me out here in the lamb. Now you need to phrase it. How many people let their farts slip out?
I'm gonna just follow up with this story. They ended up dating for like five years. Well, he was like, I'm actually so happy that you feel so comfortable and relaxed around me. It was like the weirdest, most beautiful response that made me feel strange. Anyway, Okay, this morning, in my half awake state, I could hear some strange sounds. At first, I thought maybe he was coming from the TV downstairs, but I soon realized the noise was actually
coming from my husband's bedside table. My husband had been watching YouTube the night before on his wireless headphones in bed, so I reach over. I grabbed the headphones and I hold them up to my ear and oh my god, it's this man moaning. Wait no, it's also a woman moaning.
Oh my god, it's a man and a woman going at it over my husband's headphones. You guys, I realized my husband was downstairs in the shower watching pawn and he had no idea that I knew.
He thought he was doing it silently. I go, sure. What makes this so funny is that he thought he was being super stealth by watching it with no sound on, but it was actually on full fucking blast, so loud that it woke me up. I'm sorry.
But also this is like, I can't get my head around it yet because I'm not in a relationship anymore. Why would he leave his wife in bed and go down and says to listen to porn?
Like, wouldn't you just roll over and have sex with your wife?
Nah?
Sometimes she can't be bothered, she has written here, I can't stop laughing thinking about it, you know, what it's like sometimes you just want to tickle the pickle all by yourself.
You know.
Okay, she answered my question, but I think, okay, I love this. I laugh so hard when this came through. But I love it so much because I think every time we receive conversations around porn, and we receive conversations around like oh I saw my partner watching porn, or I discovered my partner watching porn, it's always in such a negative light. It's always like the person feels betrayed that they didn't know that their partner was watching porn. And I just love that this woman has written in
and she can see the hilarity in it. She's not like offended or threatened by him going and doing it, and she's like, you know what, every so often you just gotta go and run one out yourself, and it's so okay. I don't think there's.
Anything wrong with porn occasionally, Like I mean, I don't watch it personally, but I.
Don't think you don't watch it ever. No, I'm not. I'm personally not into it. I never have been.
I've watched it before with like old partners, but I've done it more for them, like it just doesn't do anything for me. I would rather think back and imagine something like a real situation.
I'm too lazy. I prefer porn.
But I think when we do get all these questions in about like people really offended that their partner's watching porn. I don't think there's anything wrong with it if it's once in a blue moon. The problem comes when it's all the time, in replacement of you every day and there's a proper addiction, When they're starting to think that normal sex isn't enough, that's when the problem comes. Anyway, we're not going to talk about that now. It's a whole other episode.
That is actually a whole other episode. But you've never done an episode on porn through But I think that that's a good conversation because I do think that there's a lot of negative connotations around it. There's a lot of thread around it. But yeah, like you said, let's look get into it now. Just let Laura watch her porn in peace. That's what she wants. That's the message for her episode. Sometimes you got to tickle your pickle, guys. I do like pickles. So I have been really really
looking forward to doing this episode because we did. We did what we did attachment styles, and we've done love languages in the past, And I feel like this conversation around conflict resolution and our conflict styles is kind of like the third phase in those conversations.
Well, they all intertwined, don't they, Like they all have something to do with each other.
I think they were so quick to talk about how our love languages define our relationship or how our attachment styles define our relationship. But I actually think genuinely what results in like a long term happy relationship is our ability to resolve conflict. Like I think conflict and our conflict resolution is so important in actually being able to maintain a long term happy relationship. And Britain and I have done so much research and unpacking this, and we've
looked at a couple of different studies. We've also kind of broken down for this episode, what are the five different conflict styles and then also like what are the different types of fighting that we get into, Like you know, whether it's like passive aggressive, whether it's defensiveness, all these different character traits of how we deal with conflict and how we act in like a real nitty gritty way.
We want to unpack all of that in this episode. So, I mean it sounds like a heavy one, but I'm sure we're playing the last and arguments that are a completely unavoidable part of every relationship. I think if you try and completely avoid them, you're never going to resolve things that come up, and you're never going to be able to work together as a team to actually find that deeper level of love and respect for each other.
And there's this fear about arguments and this fear about fighting that it's always going to end up in or we're going to break up, you know. I think that there's definitely some relationships that are so volatile where you feel like every time you have a fight it's going to mean the end of the relationship. But I think, you know, fights can be a really really great way
of galvanizing you. Conflict can be an amazing way of making you work together as a team, and it really kind of separates the people who are going to make it for the long haul and the relationships that are going to fucking fizzle.
The thing is, like Laurid has said, conflict's arguments, fighting, it's all inevitable. There is absolutely no way you can have a long term healthy relationship without the fighting.
In fact, they actually.
That couples that don't argue and disagree and fight at all, that there's something wrong in that relationship because it means that someone's probably suppressing their feelings. The thing that they say is, it's not actually the fighting that's the problem. Couples have a really hard time coming to terms with the fact that it's not the fighting and it's not what it's about. The thing that's important is how you deal with the fight. And that's why we wanted to
go into this. That's why we thought it was so important to go into this, because how you deal with a fight is literally what will determine your relationship.
Maybe you are in a relationship where you're like, oh my god, me and my brave friend, we never fight, we fly out so much. Well, no, I don't think you're necessarily lying. I just don't think you've necessarily done the full spectrum of your relationship yet. Matt and I we never ever used to fight, Like I honestly, before having kids, before like living together, when we were in our honeymoon phase, we never fought. And I was like,
this relationship is blissed. This is how relationships are supposed to be. And now that we have more responsibilities, now that there's more stress, now that there's more pressure, now that we have to deal with money, like all of these different aspects of a really serious, committed relationship that are going through the full journey of life. Yeah, of course we argue. We don't fight like Matt and I never we never fight in a way that's like toxic
to our relationship. But we argue and then we resolve it. And I think that, you know, us being able to argue and respect each other has been really really beneficial in us actually forming a deeper connection. And I would say even though now we argue in our relationship very sporadically and from time to time, we're way closer now than what we were when we're in our honeymoon phase, when we were like everything is us, everything is the thing is in a while since I sung that.
Song, You're a welcome seeing that to me all the time, you see it to Marley, You're I's got like, No, the thing is everything that I've read for every relationship therapist, every psychologist, and even like it does it is just how I feel about the situation as well. Couples that absolutely say that they never ever fight, they never argue,
and never disagree. It's it's almost in pot someone is just suppressing their feelings and their opinions and their thoughts too much, because it is impossible to find two people in the world that can a find each other and then totally one hundred percent agree with every single thing
in life, Like it's impossible. What it just means is maybe there's a part of you, and we're going to go into this that has a bit of an avoidance style, which is where like you just want to please you just you can't be bothered to have the argument, so you're like, yeah, babe, like that's fine, whatever, I'm sorry, let's not talk about it. So we're going to break
them all down now. But we think the really important thing is once you know your style, and once you know your partner's style, it's important to know how to use that, how to change that, and how to work together to continue your relationship and progress in a really healthy way.
Totally because exactly what we talked about when we did the Love Languages episode, you might have a different conflict style to your partner, and that's where things can become really tricky like if And we talked about this on the last Ask Uncut episode where I did it with Matt.
The person had written in saying that there's somebody who requires a lot of reassurance and their partner is more of an avoid and that leaves them feeling really invalidated in their relationship and in their fights, and that it makes them really frantic and really upset because they want their partner to tell them, you know, to love them and reassure them, but really when they're having a fight, their partner just wants to kind of go away and have a little bit of time to themselves. So I
think it's really important. And we actually did our own conflict resolution style tests, So there's a test that you can do that tells you how you deal with conflict, and you can sit down and do that with your partner as well, and that gives you a better understanding of who they are as a person. And you know, relationships are all about compromise and compromising on your conflict styles and not expecting someone to fight in the exact same way that you fight, because that's unfair as well.
You know, we expect to compromise in our love languages. We expect to compromise in our attachment styles. We expect this level of understanding in all other aspects of our life, But sometimes when it comes to fighting, we can be so fucking stubborn. Because what happens when you are angry about something or you want to win. Now, I want
to win. But what happens is we have a rational mind and we have an emotional mind, and the emotional mind, when it is angry, is much more powerful than the rational mind, and we don't have the capacity to use both simultaneously at the same time. Very well. Even though we are a very advanced species, there's some things that we still haven't got our shit together on. You might
even recognize this in yourself. But when you feel angry at your partner, if you're in a relationship, and I know I do this, when I'm angry at Matt for something, my rational mind completely goes out the window. I'm not angry and thinking at the same time, Oh, I love this man so much. You know I'm gonna talk to him calmly. We're gonna have a lovely conversation. I'm like, I don't even care if he walks out the door
right now. I want to strangle yourse. I care like, of course, my rational mind would be devastated if he actually walked out the door. You'd be like, no way,
I was joking back, totally, totally here. But in that moment of anger that overpowers any feelings of love, any feelings of adoration, of any feelings of you know, all of this hard work that you've put together as a couple, anger is so powerful that it can override all of those other emotions, and it can make you feel very irrational and well, that's why it's important all the time to not necessarily have conversations around arguments when you're feeling angry.
Sometimes it's really important to step away from it, have that time to cool down, and then have the conversation about whatever it is that's made you upset. When you're able to actually use your rational mind so that you don't say things or do things, or act passive aggressively, or just behave in a way that's going to damage the relationship further, or it's going to create more of
a problem. You end up finding not even about the thing that happened, but about the way that you're speaking to each other or the way that you're treating each other.
Well, the thing is, we've all I all want you to think back. We've all sent a message or said something in the heat of a moment that you immediately regret and you're like, fuck, why did.
I say that.
That's because you should never ever ever fight or send a message or send an email or do anything when you are mad, like please, don't step away from your computer, turn it off, throw it out the window, whatever you have to.
Do, do some deep breathing, and go for a walk.
One percent, nothing good ever comes from sending a message when you're really mad, because then what happens is you know that you might not have meant it, and you will apologize for it down the track. You'll be like, look, I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean to you, I was angry. The damage is done. You've said it, and your partner or your friend or whoever knows that that is somewhere lying inside of you, and that sometimes
can be irreparable. Okay, So let's actually get into what the argument styles are.
So there is a researcher named doctor John Gotman, and doctor John Gottman is he's kind of the founder for this research, he spent thirty forty years. I mean there's forty years, let's go forty years. Sure. He spent the last forty years researching why some couples managed to like stay together and how they deal with conflict versus why some couples their relationships disintegrate. So there's been two massive
studies that have been done. One of them was this longitudinal study that went over the space of thirty years where he observed newlyweds and then years and years later
figured out which ones stayed together which ones didn't. And he thinks somebody to talks about commitment long research min issues, does he Well, it's actually having his wife who do it, and they're both psychologists and they have So basically what happened is in the seventies there was this huge influx in divorce rates, and as a sort of knee jerk response to this, a lot of psychologists and philosophers started doing research studies around why were people getting divorced and
what impact was this going to have on children and on couples and their ability to live long and happy lives now that divorce rates were going up exponentially, and then David Gotman sort of jumped on the bandwagon in nineteen seventy, but he did some really profound research around nineteen eighty six, and that's when he did this nearly weired research study, and basically the results of this have come out to say that it's a ninety percent predictor
of couples that are going to stay together and couples that will divorce. Because he believes that conflict style comes down to everything in a relationship. And so five complict styles that there are. Three of them are healthy and can be used in different ways. Two of them are incredibly unhealthy. So the three healthy ones are conflict avoids, volatile couples. Doesn't really sound like that should be positive, Yeah, but it is volatile couples validating couples. They're the three positives.
The two negatives are hostile couples and hostile detached couples. Now, Brittan, I both did our own tests, and before we unpack what each one is, what are you, Brittany? So mine was actually really surprising.
I did Oprah's test because I love Oprah, but then we did the same test, so I, yeah, I thought I'd be avoidant, but I actually got a validating style of conflict, which I can see as well. But it was surprising because I thought in my mind that I was just a complete avoid of conflict, but turns out I'm not. I do avoid conflict at all times. I mean, you can even look back on my Bachelor Bachelor in Paradise.
I just I wasn't even on the show because I was like me, I just got so awkward whenever there was a fight. I was just like, I don't I just naturally it makes me really anxious. Like I not that long ago got into an argument with a friend, which I have never done it my life, Like I've never arguing with a friend, and I was almost physically sick at the thought of fighting with someone and talking about it. And I literally avoided it. I was literally saying,
let's forget it. I don't want to talk about anything about it, Let's move on with our friendship. But she her style of conflict was quite like aggressive and quite we're talking about this now, we're dealing with this, now, this is what And I was like, Matte, don't want to let's pretend it didn't happen. Even though I was not in the wrong at all, I was just like, look, I'm apologizing that you felt that way, but let's move
on because I'm done with it. I will avoid it at all costs, But validating just means that I don't want to be in it. But when I am in it, I won't avoid it. So when you're avoidant and you're in a fight, proper proper couples that are avoidant or you're a proper person that has avoidant argument style will literally shut down. They won't even engage in the conversation at all. They won't hear anything, they won't contribute, they'll literally just walk away or sit there in silence. That
is what it means. When I get to that point, I will happily have conversation. If I'm in the room and it's happening, I will go at it. I will prove my points, and I won't avoid it once it's there, I'll just avoid the situation happening.
But avoidant conflict style doesn't mean. It doesn't mean stone walling, and it doesn't mean silent treatment. And I think that that's the really important I think the language in this can be a bit confusing. So that's what I would just want to like separate out avoidance styles just mean that when there's conflict, you need a little bit of time to go away to process and then you'll have a conversation about it. It doesn't mean that you avoid
it completely. People who avoid completely and will get into this later, people who avoid completely by giving someone the silent treatment. That's actually one of what they call the four horsemens of conflict. And it's like that's the beginning of the end.
Well, that's the frustrating bit where you're in the fire and you're like say something anything, because they're just sitting there in silence.
Yeah, And I think sometimes when people do that, like silence, like silence is more powerful than anything else, and it can be more hurtful than anything else. We'll get into what that is and break down avoidant a little bit further. But I was really surprised by mine. Actually, no, I take that back. I wasn't surprised at all. So I'm sure suggressive. I'm not. No, I'm not a hostile, but I don't know. Mine was still a positive conflict style.
I'm a volatile, volatile conflict style, which basically just means that like I'm very passionate, i am very opinionated and I don't hold back, but also I make up very quickly so and Matt is exactly the same. And I would have thought that we were like a bit more collaborative, but then reading about how we fight and this is really interesting. One of the things that was like one of the key questions in our little questionnaire was like, what do you do when somebody is trying to bring
up conflict with you? And like, for me, in the heat of the moment, if Matt is angry at me and he's getting telling me what I've done wrong, in my mind, I'm formulating my rebuttal like, that's what I'm doing. I'm not listening to what he's saying. I'm like, I'm to tell you what you did wrong. Actually, that is totally you, totally And it's like a defensive thing. And I've spoken about a little bit on past episodes. For me, it's not like I am really really conscious of it now.
And I try not to do it because I understand that it's not helpful and it doesn't actually progress the conversation to a point where where you know, making up. But the reason why I do it is because I don't want to believe that I have hurt his feelings. So instead of actually accepting and saying I'm really sorry that I've done that, I'm really sorry that I've hurt your feelings straight away, I continue to hurt his feelings. No, what I do is that I invalidate those feelings by
saying like, well, that didn't happen, or like you're overreacting. Yeah, fully, but we do it twe each other because Matt and I are exactly the same in the way that we fight, and we've talked about this now and like we recognize that in each other, and as soon as someone is doing it, we can easily say, like, hey, you're not listening to me, you're deflecting. This isn't helpful. Let's talk about this in ten minutes.
And both very strong personalities. And I've seen you have little arguments, like nothing serious, but I've seen it and I can tell you it's definitely not collaborative style.
It's like you're both strong.
And you're both stubborn, and you both want to be right, and so I don't want to be wrong. But that's completely normal as well.
Yeah, And I think that there's a lot of people who like default is defensiveness in relationships and in fighting. But like the other thing with volatile conflict styles is that you also make up really quickly, and you also make up in a very passionate way. So like make up, I mean anymore you're all pregnant bird over here. But more so, just like our fights are very short lived, Like any argument or conflict that we have in our relationship, I give it an hour before one of us is like,
I'm baby, I'm so sorry. Like you know, we always see things from each other's perspective. It's just we deal with things as soon as they happen, and we usually are dealing with things when we're both still a bit mad. And that's the problem is like when you're a bit mad, like I said, your emotional mind overcrowds your rational mind. So that's was our conflict styles, and we thought that we would just kind of bring that to the table because when we did Love languages, we unpacked what ours were.
And Britt and I are so different, but also we get along so well. So it's like just shows that you can have different ways of well, you have different personalities, you can have different ways of dealing with things, and you can still be really great together.
It's funny because I'm so I was just thinking of when you were talking about that, how opposite I am. I'm so competitive in every other aspect of my life, like in sports or in trying to win the best podcast whatever.
No, but I am.
But I retreat completely with conflict. I don't know what it is. I don't care to win in a fight. I don't need to win in like a verbal fight. Like if you put me in a competition where it was like a wrestling match, I'll wrestle to the death. But in a fight, when you say that, you're sitting there and you're like thinking of your rebuttal and you're thinking how you can and you'll never be wrong because
you don't want to be wrong. I in a fight would rather even though I know I'm right, I would rather just say you know what, You're right, I'm sorry, I won't do it again. There might be like an undertone that's passive aggressive, which I would hope.
Wasn't you know.
It's like me being like, yep, you're right, I do everything wrong. I don't mean it really like that, but it's probably there. But it's just because I would rather get the argument over. I hate nothing more than I would rather admit defeat and be like fuck, you know what, like, Okay, I did this wrong, Let's move on, let's get over it.
I think I would rather have open dialogue where I'm mad at a partner, it's all out on the table, than have someone be passive aggressive to me, because I'm like, well, I know that those feelings are there. I know that that's what you think of me, and I know that that's how you're feeling towards me, but you're not actually verbalizing it. You're just gonna have cheap digs at me like that, to me is more hurtful than sitting down and being like hey, I don't like this and it
being a very frank conversation. Let's fully unpack what the five styles of conflict is. Number One, we've already done volatile couples. That was what I am, so like we can kind of like take that one off. Number two, conflict avoids. We did kind of touch on conflict avoids. You know, that's the people who need to take some time out to process their feelings, to really think about
the situation. Usually they're the ones that want to have nice conversations once they've calmed down and don't want to have conversations about conflict when when the conflict is in the heat of the moment. It's a really smart way of dealing with conflict.
There's only so long you can actually avoid a conflict anyway, even if you are an avoid you can't do it forever. And all that's going to do is perpetuate and grow and turn into something ten times bigger than it ever was. It's something that I have tried. I have to start to work on as well. Is not put it off so long because it just implodes and it festers. Fest
is such a great word for it. If there's something in you that needs to be dealt with and something in your partner that needs to be dealt with, and you're pushing it away, it's not going to disappear. It's going to fester and brew and implode.
Even though you may not be getting that instantaneous reassurance from someone who's an avoid they're not avoiding you because they don't love you and they're not happy. They just need a little bit more time to process than what you do. And I think, like from the question that we had last week, where this person was much more reactive and they needed to have that reassurance from their
partner straight away. I think that that's when you have to have that greater level of understanding of who your partner is as a person and respect the fact that, like some people need to retreat after an argument and that's okay, doesn't mean that they're going to dump you, just means that they need to process what the fuck is going on? Absolutely, And then what Brittany is, which is a validating couple. Did you want to unpack that a little bit more? Yeah, I mean, like we unpacked
what it is for me. But basically you're characterized by.
Being easy and calm and and your cruise in a relationship. You don't want the fighting, but you still need to come to the table. You still need to contribute to an argument and even though you don't want to, you need to sort of step.
Up to the plate. Then there are the two really negative conflict styles. Now, the first one is hostile couples, and I think, like, you know, if you're in a relationship where you have a really really toxic conflict style, because you feel like you're in this perpetual fighting cycle. So hostile couples, they have a high level of defensiveness on the part of both parties so that neither of them are ever going to give in. Yeah, they're right,
it's their way on the highway. They don't want to see it from the other person's view, and they're adamant in being right now. The thing with hostile couples is that often hostile couples will stay together, but they'll stay
together in very unhappy marriages. And this will be like, you know, they're committed to each other, but there is no happiness or positivity in their marriage because there's this like fine ratio that doctor John Gotman talks about and he says, like, to have a great marriage or to have a great long term relationship, it doesn't have to be marriage. I don't know why I keep referring to that, but you know, to have a great long term relationship, it needs to be this five to one ratio, five
times positive, one time's negative. And people who are in hostile relationships, the ratio is fully out of whack and they have way more hostile engagements than what they do positive.
And there's a lot of criticism in these relationships and a lot of like the terminology they use is you always and you never and you don't and you won't, and it's very aggressive and it's very in your partner's face. There's no listening. There's no listening to what you're a partner is saying and changing your point of view. It's like you've said it, this is right, and you're not
gonna budge on that fact. And that is where it really unravels, because there's no coming full circle and being like, oh my god, you know what, like what you just said is right. I didn't realize they do that. That's not existent. It's like I'm right, you're wrong, and this.
Is never going to end.
And when two couples are like it is explosive and neither of them are ever going to admit defeat. And this is where the relationship unwraaled.
And like Britz said, this idea of like you never, So, for example, if you're upset about your partner not doing enough housework, instead of having conversation which is like, you know, I don't really feel supported. I would love it if you did this more, coming into that conversation saying you never help me, you never do anything because you're lazy well, yeah, you get on the back foot straight away. Absolutely. It's it doesn't open up a dialogue for any sort of
constructive conversation. And that is a real like keynote of being a hostile couple. But like we said, hostile couples often stay together. They're just really fucking unhappy. Sounds great anyway. Number five is hostile detached couples and hostile detached couples they will not work out. That is like this is joom gloom and you're going to break up town.
Well, there's never a resolution, there's never ever a clear victor. It's always just like a stalemate and let's kick this back up again next week. There's highly emotional, highly aggressive style of fighting, and that is one hundred percent my way of the highway one high to present, toxic and often more than not will not work out.
Yeah, So it says that the hostile detached couples, these couples are like two armies engaged in mutually frustrating and lonely stand off with no clear victory, only a constant stalemate. They snipe at one another during conflict, and the error is full of emotional detachment and resignation. So this is like, this is the worst one, and this is when things will really come to an end in a relationship. You can't stay in a hostile, detached relationship and have any
sort of happiness. You just feel completely invalidated and unloved.
When I think about, you know, my past relationships and the fighting and the arguments and how that all went down. I think one thing that I really struggled with was my partner was very aggressive and very defensive. The defensiveness was probably the biggest characteristic of a relationship. That was obviously because he was a sociopath. He was marrying someone else at the same time. He had this double life, and it's very common in that situation to have defensiveness
and to deflect and put that back on you. So I struggled with that for a long time, and maybe that's why I became a little bit more suppressed in my fighting style, and I was just a bit like accepting, more accepting than I should be, because I was always made to feel like I was the one starting the problem and I was the one in the wrong, and he did this because of me, and everything he did and he cheated because of me, and he was marrying
someone else because of me. It got to the point where he was so defensive on everything that I was always like, I'm so sorry that I made you do that, And that was something I really struggled in with my relationship. So I think defensiveness and that is actually something we're going to talk about. It's one of the characteristics of something called the Four Horsemen, which is really interesting. Laura talked about it at the start, but we will go
through that. But that was something that I really really struggled with and it's the main characteristic that I've ever had in any relationship.
I think it's interesting as well, right, Like you like, you don't just acquire a fighting style. It comes from like your childhood as well. So like the way that you react to conflict when you're a kid, or the way that you react to conflict with your parents, or the way you see your parents react to conflict, how they fight with each other, all of that influences the way that you are able to relate to your partner
as you get older. And I think like when you actually unpack the way your parents behave and your parents have conversation verse, then the way that you do it. There is always these parallels where you have these similarities because like we're taught, this is learned behavior, and it's learned behavior over so many years. So when I think about myself sometimes I've definitely dealt with defensiveness in relationships.
But like for me, the one thing that I had to like really curve and be super aware of is passive aggressiveness. And because I think that I don't see my parents doing it that much anymore because they're not in a relationship with each other. They've been divorced since I was three, But the way that they communicated my whole childhood was so passive aggressive, and I was really really attuned to it. Like you know, you think that sometimes these things fly under the radar for children, but
it really doesn't. So the four horsemen, there are four different personality traits. And I don't know if you've ever heard the four horseman expression before, but basically it's an apocalyptic metaphor which depicts the end of times in the So it's saying, if you have these foretraits in your relationship, then it's doom, gloom and break uptown for you. So the number one is something that I think we can
all relate to and that's criticism. Like, there's nothing worse than being in a relationship where you feel like you're constantly being criticized by your partner. And whether it's small things or big things, but feeling like what you're doing is not good enough really leaves you feeling deflated and really leaves you feeling like you're not valued. I know. Like for Matt, criticism is the one that he struggles
with the absolute worst. And I have to be really careful about how I deliver my critiquing of things that he's done wrong, but it has.
To be constructive criticism. And it makes such a big difference.
Totally because I know that, like, he will become defensive if he feels like he's being criticized and it makes him feel useless, you know, And I think that it makes everyone feel useless. Criticism makes you feel like you're not good enough, or you haven't done a good enough job, or you've let someone down. And no one wants to feel like that, especially not constantly in a relationship.
No, And they do say you have to learn to differentiate between a complaint and a criticism. So I'm going to give you a little example. Complaint I was scared when you were running late and didn't call me. I thought we had agreed that we would do that for each other. That's the complaint. That's a nice way to do it. Criticism. You never think about how your behavior is affecting other people. I don't believe you are that forgetful.
You're just selfish. You never think of others. They're literally saying the same thing, but one is so aggressive and is not going to get you anywhere, and one is constructive criticism, where it's like, you know, I was worried, so you need to call me because I want to feel safe in the relationship, not like you're a selfish pig.
And yeah, sometimes it's frustrating to have the same conversations about the same thing over and over and over again. But one of the things that's important to take away from this conversation is that in every single relationship, you are going to have a couple of key things that you argue about that probably will never go away. You know, like you're never going to resolve every fight that happens
in your relationship. Maybe you guys argue about money. Maybe you will argue about money until the day you die. Maybe you argue about the fact that your partner doesn't quite do enough washing. Maybe you will argue about that for the till the day you die. I think that there are things in relationships where sometimes you will never resolve them completely. They're always going to be there, But
that's okay. You just have to like pick your battles and live with which things are acceptable and which things aren't, which kind of leads us into the next horseman, which is number two, contempt, the worst one. Yeah, like, okay, you cannot treat your partner with contempt and expect the relationship to ever work out. And I think we see this a lot in relationships after children are born, and this feeling of like you don't do anything to help me,
or the other way around. Maybe it's from the husband to the wife, where it's this conversation of like, well, I work hard and you're just home with the kids all day and you don't do anything, And it's this like lack of recognition for the unpaid labor. And I've
seen it with my friends. I've seen it in relationships where the husband who goes to work, who doesn't see the amount of work that the mum is doing, doesn't respect to the amount of work that the mum is doing, and there's this real lack of appreciation between the two parties and this feeling of contempt of like you're just spending the money, you're not trying hard enough, and I think that that's like a really dangerous place to be in, and there needs to be this open conversation and this
real acceptance that actually, you know, both people are trying really hard, and like, just because you work hard doesn't mean that you own busy. Like you don't get to be the person who says, oh, I'm the busiest, Like you're allowed to both be the busiest. That's that's totally acceptable, and one person feeling stressed out doesn't invalidate the other person feeling stressed out.
Body language, if you think of things like eye rolling, yeah, turning your back on them, waving your hand in their face, like, it's very dismissive and it's definitely the worst one. There's never ever going to be a positive outcome with contempt. There was actually some really interesting research that did show that couples that are contemptuous of each other are more likely to suffer from illnesses like just like the common cold and things like that because they are immune systems weaker.
I think that's amazing. It's very powerful how you feel and how you speak, and the stresses in your life.
What it can do to your body, like harboring hate.
Yeah, like just so much negativity and so much stress that your body just goes into a meltdown.
It's well, I'm going to get that. I guess the thing. Like you know, we actually touched on this a little bit in the Positivity episode, how you can't just will yourself healthy. So I don't think that you can will yourself sick either. But I think the interesting thing that actually is and came from these research studies, is that it's having a higher cortisol in your system, so that
stress hormone, which is what makes you sick. So constantly living in this fight or flight stage of a relationship where you feel that anxiety and you're constantly on edge, never get to settle into being happy because you're always fighting. It's the heightened cortisole in your body that actually makes you sick. Yeah, what just lowers your immune system? There you go, Okay. Three.
The third one is defensiveness. We've already touched on that. I just spoke about it. It's just where you're going to constantly feel invalidated, unjustified. I don't think we need to go into it too much. We've all been defensive in a relationship. We've all been with someone that's very defensive.
We know what that's like. Yeah, And I guess, like with defensiveness, like the thing is is that they're invalidating your feelings because there's too busy trying to figure out a rebuttal to tell you why they're right or why you're wrong. So like that's definitely like the hallmark of defensiveness.
The last one on the list as well is stone walling, and we touched on that at the beginning when we were talking about avoidant personality types and how being an avoidant personality types is different to like being someone who's stone Walls. So I have been in a relationship before.
It's the relationship I've touched on a couple of times in this podcast where you know, we're together for two years and he had a lot of narcissistic personality tendencies and a lot of cheating went on, and the way that he would punish me for an argument or the way he would punish me, even if he had been the one who had had the bad behavior, But the way he would punish me would be to completely ignore me, turn his phone off, ignore me, not give me a validation.
I wouldn't hear from him for two three days, and it put me into such a state of distress because I felt like I didn't know if we were together or we weren't together. But I think that like giving someone the silent treatment, is such a cruel form of torture worse, and it takes such control away from the other person, and it really just invalidates everything that they're feeling.
And I feel like it's a very immature form of fighting.
Stonewalling.
I feel like as what you do when you're a teenager in your early twenties, where you'll literally I remember being in a relationship and they were stonewalling me. They wouldn't respond to me for days. We were still together and it was fine. Then four days later they come back and it's like it's just what was normally done that just wouldn't fly.
Now.
Even even the worst of people usually say I can't talk to you right now. Usually they give you a message, but ston't complete stonewalling and complete like shutting down in silent treatment.
I find it a very immature form of fighting. Yeah, And I guess like some people can use it as a really like purposeful and manipulative tool, like I know in my relationship, like he used it as way of punishing me, like that's what that was, Whereas I think other people use it as almost like a I physically cannot fucking fathom having this conversation right now, like I'm so emotionally flooded, I just need to remove myself. But they're not thinking about how that makes their other partner
feel at all. And you know, removing yourself from a situation for days and torturing your partner is not acceptable either. So I think it's important to kind of figure out is your partner doing it intentionally to punish you, or are they doing it as a reaction to something. Either way, neither of them are great, but one of them is slightly better than the other.
The best thing that you can do in this situation is, Okay, you don't want to talk to them, you don't want to deal with it. You walk away, go for a walk, go into another room, read a book, do a meditation, go to the gym, do anything for a few hours to get your thoughts together, to calm down, to lower your heart rate, to think the process through, to be like, maybe I am wrong, maybe I'm not wrong, and then go back and approach the situation in a mature, respectful
and calm way. And the key word here is calm. But anyway, guys, they're the main key areas. So they're the five conflict stars, and they're the four characteristics that really really characterize what creates a destructive relationship or what creates a positive relationship. Just to tie it up at the end, guys, just some things to remember and take away from this is except that conflict is inevitable. It's going to happen. It's fine, it's not the end of
the world. Remember that conflict can in fact be beneficial. We all need it at some point and we can all learn a lot from it. And that is a big one. Just remember to listen and be accepting that maybe you're wrong and you can learn from that. Always use neutral language. Don't come at them aggressively. It's not you do this.
You never do this. You're an asshole. Don't do that.
So really think about the way you're talking, especially when you're upset.
And one of the most important ones.
Is agree to disagree. It's okay to, in the end have different opinions and different feelings about something, but you need to get to the point where you're like, Okay, I see why you feel this. I don't agree with it, but I'm validating it and I'm okay with it and let's move on. So agree to disagree is the biggest one.
I think, like the last thing I want to say in regards like to wrap this all up. You know, it's easy to talk about all the different conflict styles. It's easy to talk about all the things that you do wrong in a relationship, or all the way that we like negatively communicate. But I just think like one
of the most important take homes is kindness. Like you can become so close to your partner that you treat them in a really unkind way, Like you might even treat them in a way that you wouldn't treat your friends or your family. You know, you can say things and behave in a way because you are so close
to them that's actually your worst reflection of yourself. So I think it's really important to remember that like relationships that are happy, in relationships that will last the lot like a lifetime, or you know, will be fulfilling and positive. Are relationships where there's a lot of kindness and a lot of mutual respect for each other and you treat
them how you want to be treated. Absolutely. I know that's like the most simple and sometimes like benign thing to say, like treat people the way you want to be treated them. But it's not. It's one of my favorite saying.
It's just fucking be a good person, But it's true.
Like, you know, I think we can forget to be kind to the people that we love and the something that makes them feel appreciated. It makes them feel validated, and it makes them feel safe in the relationship. So you know, go text your partner if you're in a relationship and be like, I appreciate you, Like those things
are really important and cute. You need to show that every day, all right, guys, you know that we never finished an episode without our suck and our sweet our highlight and our low light of each and every week. Do you know what I love? I love that we've had so many people right in to say that now they do suck and sweet with like their partner or with their kids. Yeah, it's the best. That's how it happened.
We grew up, my family grew up doing around the dinner table at night. We would eat dinner and would do our suck and sweet. So I love that you guys are doing that now, just like makes you appreciate the little good bits and also some of the bad bit But anyway, my suck straight up would be just that I've got appendicitis on my little getaway because just really through a spanner in the works really ruined it, and I just feel like I didn't even get what
I wanted. But looking on the bright side, my sweet is okay.
I've got two.
One is that I just got to finally see my little nephew, and I was really worried. He's only about to turn three, and I was really worried that after a year at that age he wouldn't remember me as much, and because I don't get to see him often. But it was really nice to see him. He was beautiful, he remembered me. It was nice to see my brother for the first time in a year. Said that was great. But I had one other sweet. I did have one more than I just think it's funny. It's not really sweet.
I was just going to tell you anyway. I was at work last week and this guy was wielding a patient was wielding and he I had a mask on and everything, because you have to. I think I had a hairnet too. And he was about thirty three. I was a couple of meters away through a glass window because I was setting up the computer. I hadn't gone in yet, and he.
Looked He's like looking at me, and then he turns to the wardsman and he goes, is that Brittany Hockley?
This is a rough looking, big beard, covered in tats, earrings in his ear He looked rough and the wardsman was like, oh, yeah it is. And he looks up at me and he's like, you're pretty Hockley and I was like and I was like.
Yes, and he goes celebrity. And I thought he was going to.
Be like, oh, you know, I love football, watched you on the Bachelor with nik comms whatever.
Now this is the roughest thirty five year old guy.
And he goes, I fucking love your podcast and I was like what.
I was like, you listen to my podcast? Like the podcast that we made for like twenty four year old women. What are you talking about? He was like, I love it so much. I'm the biggest fan.
And I was like, I don't know if you're taking a pist or not, and he's like, no, I'm not. He's like, that's what I know you from. Like he's
like a genuinely frothy podcast. And I was like, I was not expecting you to say that, but I can't wait to Laura, I freaking love like the age demographic of people that we get messaging us who listen to this podcast, Like, you know, we have girls who are seventeen years old, and we have women who are sixty years old, like it is such and we have thirty five year old middle aged men too, and we have thirty five year old middle age like tuckies.
Like it's just like such an amazing and diverse listenership. And I guess, like the thing is, you know, we can all learn stuff. Guys can learn stuff from a female. Really more men should probably be listening to this, and we can all learn stuff about like how to better navigate our relationships. I mean, obviously we don't just talk about relationships to this episode has been a really heavy relationship one, but I love it, Like I feel so privileged that we get to make this podcast. It's the
freaking best. Okay it what's yours? Okay? So my suck and my sweet are both child related. So sorry to everyone who finds children boring. That would have been me. That would have been me five years ago. But now my entire life is just babies, babies, babies. Okay. So my suck for this week is that we found out you know how I've been saying Marley's been sick and I've been talking about her being six since September. So
I found out why she's sick. My child is lacked no, so that would explained diarrhea, ed explains a lot of things. So basically what can happen, which I had no idea about, is that when a child gets sick with something like gastro or a really bad virus, they can have a response, like an inflammatory response reaction where they get analogy a sudden So she never used to be allergic to lactose, but she got so sick, but she're so sick that
now she does. So we're waiting to actually find out whether it's a proper allergy or whether it's just lactose intolerant. But she's been started on this lactose intolerance diet and like she's a completely different child. She was doing three explosive diarrhea shits a night, usually one in the bath, and I'm talking like all over the cot, all over the sheets, green, frothy, like next level Exorcis style diarrhea
for three weeks plus. Also just coughing a coffin, coughing constantly, coughing, cough, coughing so much. Like we couldn't figure out what was going on with her, so we thought that she still had the flow from September. We thought she had like this gastrobug. Anyway, it turns out I've been poisoning my child with the well, I mean, at least you know now,
I know, right. Anyway, it's so hard with kids because they can't tell you what's wrong, and then you just have to do this like weird process of elimination.
You're sweet, my sweet. My sweet for the week is.
That we got Marley's daycare photos back. My child has just got so much sad. I spend so much time laughing about these daycare photos, like every other person's kid is just sitting there being like adorable and cute and normal and three and like one and a half year old. And then there's my daughter with like her dress sultraally put over the side of her shoulder, and she's like pulling this little face. I turned my money on my mummy's on Instagram. It's just outrageous. She turns.
You have to go and look at the photo on Laura's page. She's every kid is like literally just being a dirty little kid. She's turned, she's smack bang in the middle. She's turned side on. She's doing like the influence of skinny arm pos. The dress has gone off her shoulder, and she's eyeing down the barrel of the camera with the most like I don't know off if eighteen year a month old can have a seductive look.
But she's like, she looks like surmising. She's like smiling with my eyes but not smiless. So I don't know how to do this. It's so funny. I loved it so much. She's literally one and a half going on seventeen. It's my favorite photo of her ever. If you haven't seen it, go and have a look. It's very very funny. Yeah. I was someone who thought I was like, oh, daycare photos, do we want to pay for that? I don't think
we need daycare for it's best photo. And I am now like, like, my kids' school photos are going to be my pride and joy, so send them out to all the family. It's so weird. I never thought I was going to be this sort of mum. I always just thought i'd be like a little bit of it, like eh, whatever.
A bit aloof They're just like, yeah, cool, get your photos done.
I don't know you need them. Who needs photos? But I am so obsessed. It's just really funny how you turn out to be a very different type of mum to what you think. And I think there's people out there who probably thought they'd be way more children relaxed, but they actually end up like helicopter parents. Yeah, super anal and like you know, you know, sugar. But I'm definitely not the type of parent I thought I was going to be. That's for sure. I'm obsessed with my child.
Look, guys, that is it's for today's episode. We hope you learned something. We hope you enjoyed it. There was a lot of info in this one, but I think it's really important and I hope you guys all go and do an argument style quiz to see what you are because it might actually surprise yourself.
I think it's really interesting to unpack some of the more serious parts of relationships. And obviously, like conflict is something that it's un avoidable, we like to try and avoid it, we like to not talk about it. But I think it's really interesting to unpack that and we hope you guys learned something from it. And if you love the episode, you know all the drills, please go and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts if you haven't already done that. We love that so much because
we need the ego boost, guys. That's what helps us grow guys.
So if you are one of the little scoundrels that haven't left us a.
Review yet, where you at. Also, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast as well, Like I know that these things just seem like boring housekeeping things, but if you do love the pod, it's actually one. It means you get the episodes first, so that it drops into your inbox first and you'll be notified each week when you comes out. But it also is Yeah, like Brits said, it's really important for us to be able to like help grow this little community and for people to be
able to find us. And yeah, it's just you supporting the free content that you love. And I, on that note, have to run because I have to get to work. All right, guys, you know the drill. Tell your mom, tell your dad, tellto tell everybody because I share the love one job shed alough because we love that. I wonder what her name is singing here And so y'all let it