Hey, everyone, it is producer Keisha here, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. As some of you are already aware, Laura and Britt are on their midiar break. Except if I'm being completely honest, I actually have started to feel quite bad because I've made Laura record just as much as normal, and.
I've been messaging both of them like a hundred times a day.
So, Laura and Britt, if you are listening, I'm really really sorry that I have not let you have a proper holiday. It has been so nice for me to catch up with some of you in our dms. You can still send through all of your accidentally unfiltereds and you're asking cuts. I'm gonna be banking them for when the girls are back. Just slide into our dms on Instagram at Life Uncut Podcast. And yes, it has been me posting a whole bunch of memes, so I hope you've been enjoying.
Though.
Is something super exciting that he's going to be dropping in your podcast libraries this Thursday Is that our favorite batchy couple of course, Laura and Maddie Jay are going to be catching up with our brand new bachelor Jimmy Nicholson Pilot Jimmy, the one that you've seen the commercials with him pulling his little luggage through the airport seeing all the people.
In love that one. We did a call out to you.
Guys to see what kind of things you would like to get to know about Jimmy, and some of your questions have been absolutely hilarious and it would seem as though Pilot Jimmy was a little bit of a bachelor before he was a bachelor. So that will be dropping in your podcast libraries this Thursday. But for today, we're going to be taking a trip down memory lane, which means that we are revisiting some of our favorite episodes
from the past and today. The episode that we are jumping back to is episode eighty six.
It is from.
December last year, and it's called Fight for Your Right.
Talking conflict resolution styles, we thought that this was a kind of good one, particularly right now if you're in Sydney, a lot of you are going to be locked inside with your partners, your family, or your housemates, so we thought it would be a nice time to go back and take a look at some conflict resolution styles and which one you kind of fit into I actually remember listening back to this episode and realizing that I had an avoidant style of conflict, and it made a whole
lot of sentence as to how I kind of deal with conflict in my life. So I really hope you enjoy it. See you back here on Thursday for a brand new episode of Laura and Maddie Jay catching up with our brand new batchie Jimmy Nicholson.
We hope you enjoy the episode. Let's get into it. 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. 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 all noting 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 oh, we're going to break up, you know. I think that there's only 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 hall 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 say 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 boyfriend, we never fight. We love it 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 bliss.
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 close, so now than what we were when we're in our honeymoon phase when we were like everything is, everything is. The thing is in a while since I sang that song You're a welcome, sing that.
To me all the time you see it to Marley Sho, You're it's got like, no, the thing is for 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 impossible 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 so, 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 understand 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 that 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 some thing, 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 passiveggressively, 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 fighting 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 hundred 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 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 Gottman, 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 and talks about commitment long research min issues.
Does he well, it's actually heaving 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 cup 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 newly 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 conpict 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 this same taps, 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 in my life. Like I've never argued 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 pretend it didn't happen, even though I was not in the wrong at all. I 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 the 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.
Avoidant conflict style doesn't mean it doesn't mean stonewalling, 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 could be more hurtful than anything else. We'll get into what that is and break down avoid in a little bit further. But I was really surprised by mine. Actually, no, I take that back. I wasn't surprised by mind at all. So I'm sure suggressive. I'm not a hostile fighter. No,
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 I'm gonna 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 wherehere, 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 and or like you're overreacting, which yeah, fully, But we do a tweet to other because Mat 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 you both 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 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, 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 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 Britta 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, 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 flight. 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 just 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, then 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 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 tick 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 gonna dump you, just means that they need to process what the fuck is
going on? Absolutely, And then what Britany 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 hot style 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 and 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 animant 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 not 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 times 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 relationship 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 the do that does not existent. It's like I'm right, you're wrong, and this is never going to end. And when two couples are like that, it is explosive and neither of them are ever going to admit defeat.
And this is where the relationship unreal. 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 backfoot 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 hundred percent 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 area is full of emotional detachment and resignation. So this is like the 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're 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 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 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 than 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 this 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, they 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 Bible. So it's saying, if you have these four traits in your relationship, then it's doom, gloom,
and break uptown for you. So the number one is something that they 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. 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 that 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 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 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, 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're 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 higher cortisol in your system, so that stress hormone, which is
what makes you sick. So constantly living in this fint or flight stage of a relationship where you feel that anxiety and you're constantly on edge, you 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, agree, what's moving.
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 stonewalling, 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 whose 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 any 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 stone walling. 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 the worst of people usually say I can't talk to you right now. Usually they give you a message, but ston't complete stone walling and complete like shutting down and silent treatment. I find it a very mature 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 a 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, like they're the main key areas.
So they're the five conflict styles, and they're the four characteristics that really really characterize what creates a destructive relationship or what creates a positive relationship.
And 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 conflicts 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 live and be accepting that you 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 that 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 a 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, 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 that's 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 cue you need to show that every day by Banbury Karaba