How to Argue Without Hurting Each Other

Episode Summary of “How to Argue Without Hurting Each Other”

Arguments don’t have to damage your relationship. In fact, how we navigate those moments of friction can actually become a bridge to deeper intimacy. In this episode of the Communicate and Connect Podcast, How to Argue Without Hurting Each Other, I’m sharing some “mini-tips” on the difference between healthy and unhealthy conflict and why building emotional safety matters so much more than winning an argument.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
– Healthy vs. Unhealthy Conflict: Recognizing the Patterns
– The Impact of Criticism and Name-Calling
– Understanding Defensiveness and Dismissiveness
– Why We Avoid Money, Sex, and Kids
– Skill 1: Using I-Statements for Vulnerability
– My Personal Story: A Lesson in Loud Restaurants
– Skill 2: The Importance of Taking a Strategic Break
– Skill 3: Why Repair Attempts Build Confidence
– Building Long-Term Emotional Safety

Don’t forget to check out our free 10-week relationship email course. This email course is really designed for people who are maybe having trouble with communication or connection in their relationship and helping them develop some quick wins right away to start improving it.

Free Relationship Pattern Assessment

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Episode Transcript for “How to Argue Without Hurting Each Other”

This podcast is sponsored by Communicate and Connect Counseling, where we have a team of therapists who provide individual couples and family therapy services, all tailored to meet the needs of military and veteran families. To learn more about our services, visit www.communicateandconnect.com.

Welcome to the Communicate and Connect podcast for military relationships with your host, Elizabeth Polinsky, a military marriage counselor. If this is your first time listening to the Communicate and Connect podcast, please take a second to go rate review and subscribe to make sure you get all our future episodes.

We also really want to know what it is you love about our podcast, and if for some reason you’re not loving it, we want to know that too because we’re committed to providing the best quality content to help you improve your relationships.

You’re listening to episode 71, How to Argue Without Hurting Each Other.

Healthy Conflict vs. Unhealthy Conflict

Hey everyone. I am excited to be doing this little mini tips for the podcast. And so today I wanna talk a little bit about the difference between healthy and unhealthy conflict. We’ll be covering some concrete skills that you can use for navigating arguments and being able to help you argue in healthier ways together.

And then also we’ll be talking about the rationale for why you wanna use this because emotional safety really does matter more than winning the argument.

So let’s just start briefly with healthy versus unhealthy conflict. I think if you think about unhealthy conflict, I’m sure you have a million examples that come to mind.

The Impact of Criticism and Name-Calling

So some things that I think about immediately are the Gottman’s four horsemen of the apocalypse. So criticism and name calling. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with how loud you get, or your tone of voice. Some people have a more loud and expressive way of talking, and that can still be healthy, just as healthy as having like a more calm demeanor in your speech patterns.

But what does make a difference is if you are being critical. If you are name calling, if you’re using statements like you always do this, you never do that, you’re selfish, you’re arrogant, you’re a piece of shit. You know, like any sort of name calling would definitely fall under the unhealthy conflict category.

Understanding Defensiveness and Dismissiveness

Defensiveness also would go in the unhealthy category or something comes off critical, even if it wasn’t intended as a criticism. If I hear my partner say something and it brings up a little thing inside of me that’s like, are they criticizing me?

It’s so easy to get defensive. It’s like universal. All of us almost get defensive but defensiveness often involves then being critical in blaming the partner. It can involve explaining yourself and explaining the situation in such a way that is dismissive of the other partner.

Dismissiveness and defensiveness often somehow go together.

And that is often one of the most painful things that couples tell me about is that, it it feels dismissive what their partner says, or saying,

“Well, someone else wouldn’t have reacted that way.”

“Someone else wouldn’t think that.”

“You’re overreacting.”

Comments like this. This is a no-go. This would be in the unhealthy category.

Stonewalling would be the next one, which would be shutting down and refusing to participate in even constructive discussions. I’m think thinking about, somebody right now, a couple that I know of who was talking about money.

Why We Avoid Money, Sex, and Kids

And money is almost like always, not always, but for many people is an anxiety provoking conversation, difficult to talk about. A lot of people avoid talking about that as sort of like sex, kids money. The three that many people find stressful topics so oftentimes couples will avoid them.

So if you are avoiding discussions, if you’re avoiding saying something that is like voicing what you would like to change in the relationship, I would put this in the unhealthy category and then also avoiding talking about something when your partner wants to talk about it.

It’s one thing to say like, can we talk about it another time? But just flat out refusing to talk about it in many cases, go in the unhealthy conflict category.

And usually there is a huge history, that’s been going on in the relationship impacting you both to the point where you basically hate each other and just think that, the other person, has very little value and that is definitely a relationship killer there if it gets to that point.

And so what are some skills that you can do to not argue this way?

To not have name calling, to not have defensiveness, to not have dismissing each other.

To not have the refusal to participate in discussions or just sweeping things under the rug and not voicing concerns that you have.

Skill 1: Using I-Statements for Vulnerability

Skill number one is using I statements. So the more you can talk about yourself, the less it’s going to come out as critical or defensive or dismissive. So really thinking about how to talk about your thoughts and feelings. This would not be, “I feel like you are a piece of shit.” That’s just name calling. That’s not helpful at all. So don’t be sneaky about it.

It would be like,

“When this happened, it really bothered me. I started feeling like I was doing this all by myself. Like you didn’t really care.”

My Personal Story: A Lesson in Loud Restaurants

I’m just thinking about something that happened for me and my husband while I visited him on deployment recently.

And we were in a restaurant slash bar and there was live music. It was really cool, very fun environment. We were there with another couple but the music was so loud. I’m pretty sure my husband is, getting some hard of hearing from loud environments anyway.

We were sitting across from the table from each other and I was trying to say something to him and he totally didn’t respond at all to what I said, and then like turned and started talking with, the person who was seated next to him. And this totally triggered me. I started feeling like he’s ignoring me. This was my internal thought process. He’s ignoring me. He’d rather be hanging out and talking with the person sitting next to him than talking with me.

We’ve been separated for months, and he’s more interested in hanging out in this social thing and talking to other people than like really talking to me and connecting to me.

And this could have been an easy spot for us to get into some arguments and it could quickly go bad if we weren’t using these skills.

Like I can totally see, earlier on in our marriage where I could have gotten really critical of him, I could have said like, you’re not listening. So now I’m accusing him of something. He would most of likely shut down, not wanted to talk after I did that. That’s totally how we were at the beginning of our marriage.

Instead I said, I was trying to share something with you and I don’t remember exactly the word, choice, but it was something like this. What happened inside of me is I started feeling like you were maybe ignoring me and that you would’ve rather hang out with them instead of me.

And so it has a much more vulnerable place that it comes from when you use an I statement compared to when you do sort of like a critical accusatory statement.

The other thing you can do, thankfully, we’ve been working on this for our whole marriage. I’ve basically been a marriage counselor, our whole marriage, and definitely a therapist, our whole marriage.

And ever since we met and started dating we were very intentional from the beginning about how can we build some foundational skills to do well and to make it long term together.

Skill 2: The Importance of Taking a Strategic Break

But if you are getting really heated, like if things are escalating and you guys are trying really hard to not get into unhealthy conflict and it just feels like it’s not possible, it’s totally fine to take a break.

I would absolutely take a break. Take 10, 15, 20 minutes. Do something to help calm yourself down, gather your own thoughts and your own emotions and that can help you be prepared to come back to the conversation and use something like an I statement instead of going into like accusing or dismissing or name calling or anything like that.

And the important thing is to come back to the conversation because if you don’t, then you run the risk of it just being swept under the rug and that is not ideal because what can happen is like if we sweep it under the rug one time, well, what about the next time? It makes it more likely that we’re gonna sweep it under the rug again.

And then we get into a pattern of sweeping tons of things under the rug, never resolving anything, never repairing, and then so much disconnection and distance can grow over time. It impacts the confidence that you both have as a couple to actually learn and navigate conflict together.

So it’s very important that you come back to talk about it and that you come back to repair.

Skill 3: Why Repair Attempts Build Confidence

And so repair attempts are the next skill that I wanted to talk about. Taking a break if you need to. So that’s skill number two. Skill number three is repairing, and that is the importance of coming back to talk about it because the more you have repair after conflict, the more the two of you build confidence together as a couple.

That we can repair after conflict, that no matter what the topic is, we have the skills needed to address and talk through and come back together and be connected in a good place together again.

And that is priceless. That’s invaluable to have a confidence in yourself and a confidence in your partner. To know that we can work through something together is so important. And is reason enough right there to build that together over time as a reason to come back and talk things through after taking a break.

And so why would you want to use these anyway? Well, I’m sure you want to have a good relationship with your partner. You don’t want, painful conflicts and arguments to be happening.

But in the heat of the moment, sometimes people do get caught up in wanting to win the argument. Wanting their partner to see them as right, not wanting their partner to see them as wrong or bad in some way. And then the whole conversation can turn into who’s right and who’s wrong, and who’s bad and who’s not bad.

That is not a great spot to be in because nobody wants to be a bad person and nobody wants to be with a bad person.

Building Long-Term Emotional Safety

What we’re doing instead, by using the skills of I statements, taking breaks, coming back to engage in reparative conversations is building emotional safety. So all of this is building emotional safety. Safety to be vulnerable and use I statements and to share about how difficult feelings are getting triggered inside of me.

Safety to know that it’s okay if I need a break that we both want. Value our relationship enough that if we need a break, we can take it together and know that we’re gonna come back and talk about it. And then that’s also building safety. The repair attempts, build that confidence that we will come back and we will work it through together.

And that also creates emotional safety and then emotional safety helps create trust and confidence., the, confidence that we can handle this together, the security, the internal knowing we’re, okay, we’ve got this, we can handle it, whatever it is that comes first from building emotional safety with each other.

That is really why, you would wanna use the skills that I covered, the I statements, taking breaks when needed, and making sure you come back to talk about it, and to repair together afterwards. if you found this helpful, then I would really encourage you to use even just one. Just pick one of the things that I covered today and see if you can use that in your next disagreement.

And if you try it, I would love to hear how it goes. All right, until next time.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so, please take a second to go rate review and subscribe so you get all of our future episodes. Make sure to check out the show notes. To sign up for our Free 10 week relationship email course.

This email course is really designed for people who are maybe having trouble with communication or connection in their relationship and helping them develop some quick wins right away to start improving it.

While I am a therapist, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not considered therapy, and it should also not be a replacement for therapy. If you think you need a professional of any kind, you should definitely go find one.

Until next time.