68: The Brutal Truth About Relationship Conflict--and What to Do About It

Welcome back to Make More Love. In this show, we share real strategies that help high performing men build passionate intimate relationships and live fulfilling lives. If you're new to the show, please don't forget to like follow, subscribe, whatever your favorite podcast platform calls it, so you don't miss anything. I'm your host Ellen Dorian. I'm both a relationship coach and a business coach, so I know how to handle all the crap that comes up when you're working to be the best at everything. So let's get into it. Hey, so we've had two episodes on conflict so far. We started with the Cold War Fighting style. And then we talked about hot war tactics. Maybe you've recognized some traits in yourself that you're not completely happy with, and you might be wondering should you consider making some changes? So how do you make that decision? We should start with why you're fighting in the first place. Esther Perel, who is one of the most respected relationship experts in the world, says most fights come down to three things: Power and control respect and recognition or care and closeness. When we fight about chores or schedules or money or sex, we're really fighting to feel in control, to feel valued, or to feel connected. So here are five questions you can ask yourself to decide whether your conflict style could use a change Do our arguments fit one of those three categories? Is what I'm doing, getting me what I want? Does my fighting style bring us closer together or push us apart? After the dust settles, do I feel more connected or more distant? And Does my conflict style solve problems or create new ones? Even one of those patterns means there's a skill you could strengthen, but maybe you're thinking, yeah, I don't know what to do with this." I get it. It's not easy stuff. So let's jump on a Relationship Reset Call and walk through it together. This call is free. It's private, and it's quick. 15 minutes. Just you and me working out whether to change and how to get started. If you'd like to do that, just head over to relationshipresetcall.com and set up a time. I'll be here whenever you're ready. Now let's move on to some new ways to address conflict in your relationship. Most of what I'm gonna share is stuff you're gonna need to work on when you're not in the middle of a conflict. But I believe you can do this. I wanna make one thing clear. If uncontrolled anger or any kind of physical acting out is part of the picture here, things like looming over your partner or throwing objects, or punching or kicking things, or vicious yelling, those are signs that you need an intervention. I strongly recommend that you find a proven, specialized anger management program. Because sometimes there's no substitute for therapeutic approaches, and this is one of those times. But if what you're dealing with is more about breaking patterns and shifting your style, then passionate problem solving is the system I teach my VIP clients. It's how you escape the trap of both Cold War and Hot War conflict. and it rewires the way you handle conflict from the ground up. The system consists of two pathways. Pathway number one is early intervention. It's most effective when you recognize the signs that you're becoming heated before that gets outta hand, so you can deescalate. Pathway number two is radical repair for working through a full blown conflict. You'll have to practice the skills, but as you get more Comfortable with it, you'll be able to shift the way you show up in these conflict situations. Pathway number one has two parts. First Is To learn to recognize your tells. A Tell" is A subtle physical sign or behavior that gives away what you're thinking and your emotional state. Your body always gives you clues, like a tight jaw, clenched fist or clenched toes, shallow breathing, a knot in your stomach, numbness in the back of your neck. Those are just a few of them, so if you notice one or more of your tells, you need to do a little bit of internal investigation. Like what exactly is setting me off right now? When have I felt this way before? What does it remind me of? Where was I? Who was I with and what was happening when I felt this way. If you are experiencing a level of intensity that seems out of whack for the situation, it's likely about a wound from your past that's creating a trigger in your present. This happens all the time to everybody. We just notice it now because we're looking for it. So let's say that you've noticed your tells, and you take a couple of deep breaths. That brings us to the second part of this early intervention process. And that is to deploy kink and BDSM play protocols. I bet you weren't expecting me to say that, were you? Kink and BDSM play have a lot of similarities to hot war style conflict. It's deeply intense, a little bit risky, and your emotions can easily overwhelm you. In the kink community, they know that and they put rules in place to protect the players. Everything is governed by negotiated rules of play. Safe words, boundaries, and aftercare. We can apply the same principles to relationship conflict. Number one, safe words. These are agreed upon words that stop or slow down the action. A lot of people use colors like red for stop or yellow for slow down. So in practice. you Say red when you feel yourself losing control or yellow if you just need a minute to collect yourself. You don't need to use a color system, you can pick any word. just make it unusual, not something that will come up in casual conversation. Make it easy to remember because you're gonna be under stress when you need it and agree on what it means. I recommend that you use your safe word as an emergency break, like, if you're about to say something that you can't take back. The safe word is actually about stopping yourself before you say or do that thing that you're gonna regret. When you and your partner have agreed to it, you can use the safe word to mean that everybody stops talking, everybody stops moving and takes a little time to cool down. Now you need to respect that safe word every single time because if either one of you ignores it, you destroy trust both in the system and in each other. You also need a prior agreement about when and how to come back to face the problem. Otherwise, the safe word just is another way to shut down or withdraw, and that's not what we wanna do. The next kink rule is negotiated agreements. These are rules that you set outside of a conflict time, not during one. So when you're calm, you sit down and talk through what are gonna be your fair fighting rules, what's fair and what's off limits. That might mean no name calling or no threats of leaving, or no walking away without saying when you'll come back. A divorce lawyer I know says you should never, ever say the word "divorce" in anger. I think he's right. Try to keep things simple and based on common sense. You don't wanna be calling your partner names. You don't wanna be getting into a situation where somebody's just walking away. That might be what you're going through now, and that's what you wanna change. So let's not perpetuate that. And then the third kink rule is aftercare. This is what happens after the fight cools down. In kink, it's part of the rules. It's the reassurance that you give each other so the fight doesn't leave emotional scars. It could be a touch, a look, or even just a quick, we're okay, I love you. I respect you. But it's something that lets your partner know and lets you remember that you're gonna get through this. This is not easy to do, especially when emotions are high, but it's a relationship superpower if you can master it. So just to recap, early intervention involves learning your tells. Then deploying the kink and BDSM play protocols of safe words, negotiated agreements and aftercare. Early intervention works well when you catch yourself as things are heating up. But let's be real, that's not gonna happen every time. That's not even gonna happen most of the time. So what do you do then? When the situation has gone off the rails, it's time to turn to pathway two, which is Radical Repair. This process is based on the Japanese framework for an apology, which is called Shazai. It Channels your intensity into repairing the relationship and resolving the problem. Let's ground this in a real example from one of my clients. I wanted to choose a hot topic where you could really feel the emotion. And there is no hotter topic than porn, right? Imagine a couple has agreed not to watch porn, but one partner slips and does it anyway. They know it matters, and they don't wanna minimize it. But to them it feels like a temporary lapse rather than a full on breakdown. Meanwhile, for the other partner, they feel like their world is crumbling. So you can see how quickly those two perspectives are going to clash. This is how radical repair works. It validates the emotions instead of dismissing them. It names the hurt in detail so it doesn't get overlooked in any way. And then it emphasizes responsibility and rebuilding trust, not just moving on from the argument. In an ideal world, you also resolve the problem. If you don't get that right, then you're just setting yourselves up for another round in the future. So let me walk you through it. Step number one is to name the hurt in detail. The partner who was hurt lays out the impact in clear terms. I'm going to use the porn example throughout here. So they may say something like, "when you watch porn, after we agreed not to, it made me feel betrayed. Like our agreement didn't mean anything and like, I'm not enough for you. And maybe I don't turn you on anymore." This step is supposed to be specific and it's gonna feel confrontational in the moment, But there's gonna be plenty of time for you to address it and resolve it. And step number two is to reflect back. This is a tool from active listening if you've ever done any management training as part of your business. It is exactly the same process. It might sound like this. "What I hear is that you felt betrayed that I broke our agreement and like you weren't enough for me. Or I don't find you attractive enough and now you feel uncomfortable being with me physically. Did I get that right?" So far, everything I have said has been so logical, so so perfectly civilized. But In real life, that doesn't really happen. The way that these emotions flare into accusations might necessitate a cooling off period. So the partner might come at you with you are such a perv, why am I not enough for you? You can forget about seeing me naked from now on. You broke us." That's just as realistic, if not more than the first approach, and the other partner might be just as intense about the way that they respond. "You know, it was just a little slip. It's not about you, you're just trying to punish me. Or maybe you're just using this as an excuse for us to have even less sex than we already have." If that dialogue sounds a little more familiar to you, that doesn't mean that you've effed up. It just means that you may need a timeout, you agree to take some time long enough to calm down, but short enough to stay connected. This is not one of those we'll talk about it someday kind of things." I recommend taking at least an hour, but not more than three hours, unless it happens late at night. I think that getting enough sleep, giving yourself enough time to gain a little perspective is important. So if it happens late at night, agree to sleep on it and talk about it in the morning. And yes, during this cooling off period, you're gonna ruminate, you're gonna play things over and over in your head. You're gonna rehearse your argument. That's all normal. But even with that short time out, you might start to see your partners point at least a little bit. You think you're not gonna do that, but I promise you are gonna start to think in those terms. When you reconvene, you can start with, "we don't see this the same way, and that disagreement is hurting us. Can we talk about what this issue means to each of us instead of who's right and who's wrong?" It will be hard for the hurt partner to say no to that 'cause it's just so reasonable and because deep down they really don't want the situation to stay as it is either. And that brings us to step three, which is to own responsibility. This is where the partner who slipped, gets to speak their truth. If you feel misunderstood or you feel treated unfairly, you can say so, but be aware that you're gonna be holding two truths at once. Your intention and their impact, and that's what's hard about it. Here's what owning responsibility might sound like. I don't think it's fair to call this a betrayal. That wasn't my intention, but I can see the impact you felt hurt, unsafe, and rejected, and I take responsibility for the impact that that had on you." So if you have something to get off your chest, say your truth, but just say it once. Then shift the focus back to their experience. If you keep hammering your intentions it's just gonna sound like denial instead of taking responsibility, and that's not what this is about. This step doesn't deny anything. It acknowledges the effect without having to agree that it was a betrayal on your part. Okay Step four is the radical apology. It's not the resolution step. This is just about the healing. You apologize for the hurt that was caused not for your existing. Just because you did something that hurt your partner, doesn't mean that you are a bad person. It means you're willing to name the hurt and take responsibility for it. What makes this apology radical is it goes deeper than just saying, oh, sorry. It's important to name in your apology what you're sorry for, and that you understand how it landed. So it might sound something like this. I broke our agreement and I see that left you feeling betrayed and unwanted. I regret doing that and I want to rebuild trust with you. There will be time in the future when you're past the heat of the conflict for you to discuss details and do some other kinds of repair, but right now, in this moment, it is about accepting responsibility. The next step is to reaffirm your connection. This is just like aftercare in the first pathway, you close the emotional loop. I still love you. I respect you, and I want us to be close again. As long as they're sincere, simple words like this can avoid lasting scars. If you are used to hot war fighting, you know that scars get left behind. And the way that you know that is that in future fights, the old ones keep coming back up, because they're still there in the background, just waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Step six is attack the problem, not each other. I know I've said this before, but it's such an important point that's been around both in business and relationships for a long time, and it really helps. So here's how that could go. The problem is that our agreement didn't address all of our issues and that's why it broke down. So let's create a plan that works for both of us." This may mean rethinking boundaries. It might even mean renegotiating the agreement. Maybe the partner regrets agreeing to the restriction, in which case that's the problem to work on, Like "I don't want to agree to never look at porn again. I want to find a different solution." Now you might not wanna hear that your partner wants to look at porn But that is the reality so let's work from where you are, not from where you wish you were. Which raises an interesting question. Can you do this on your own? I believe that depends on three factors. The first one is the meaning gap. One partner sees a slip, the other sees a betrayal. The bigger that gap, the harder it's gonna be to resolve it on your own. Number two is the strength of your foundation. A strong relationship gives you better odds of being able to handle it yourself. If your relationship is fragile, then every single conflict is going to put you over the edge, so you may need to bring in some outside help to keep that from happening. And number three is your skills. If you can regulate your emotions, listen actively, do the radical apology, separate the behavior from your identity, then you may be able to succeed on your own. If you're not used to doing those things, then you might need outside help. And that's not a failure on your part. Sometimes the strongest move is to say out loud to each other, we are committed to solving this and we can't do it on our own. We need additional support. That is one of the most mature and hopeful statements any couple can say at a hard point in their relationship. So this is your opportunity to work on resolving the problem, you might find yourself reusing some of those early intervention skills that we covered earlier. That's a good thing because you're developing those skills and those tools. So. As we start to wrap up, here are three key points I hope you'll take away from today's episode. First, early intervention is about self-control, not partner control. Learn your tells. Use your safe words. Set fair fighting rules. To help you manage your own reactions before things spiral outta control. Second, when conflict does go off the rails, repair matters more than being right. Radical repair works because it validates the emotion. It acknowledges the impact and rebuilds trust even if you and your partner don't see the situation the same way. And third, always attack the problem and not each other. Whether you're preventing conflict or repairing it, the goal isn't to win the fight. It's to solve the real issue together. I wanna leave you with this. Passionate Problem solving is not a quick fix, and frankly, it's not for everyone. It takes practice and discipline and the willingness to lean into some pretty uncomfortable shit. If you try to wing it, it's not gonna work. But if you commit to it and practice it and build the skills. Then you'll be able to completely transform the way you and your partner handle conflict, and that is worth the effort. Alright. I hope today's episode got you thinking. But you know, we can only do so much in an open forum like this. If you want to look at your specific situation, book in a free Relationship Reset Call. We'll figure out the next best move and set you on a path to a better relationship for both you and your partner. You can just head over to relationshipresetcall.com and pick a time. You can also join our Passionate Partners Insider Community on Facebook. There's exclusive content and resources there. Or, visit our website or our social channels to learn more about our programs, workshops, and private coaching options. All the links to everything I mentioned plus my personal email are in the show notes. I'll be here whenever you're ready. Now I've got a quick request. I'd really appreciate your help spreading the word about Make More Love. First, if you haven't done it already, hit follow or subscribe on your favorite platform. It helps more people find the show and it also keeps you in the loop. Second, leaving a review would mean the world. It helps us grow our community and reach more people. And finally, if you know someone who is struggling in their relationship, then share the show with them. You might just change their life. Thank you so much for spreading the word. I believe Love is not something you find. You have to make it. And that's my mission. To help you Make More Love... With Your Wife and In Your Life. I'm Ellen Dorian and that's what I've got for you today.