The Fight is never about what you think
In one way or another. I’ve been working with couples as a relationship coach for more than 35 years. As I mentioned before, it’s never been within the context of psychotherapy, and I’ve always been quick to refer people to a psychotherapist when I can feel that they’ve got too entrenched in the weeds. For what I have to offer, my role has always been to coach people in these kind of powerful practices that can shift you from doing “okay” to “off-the-charts indescribably ecstatic and awesome”, even if only in moments at the beginning.
Even though I work with couples who are more or less in good shape, and not at each other’s throats, everybody still sometimes has moments of fight and conflict. In fact, you could say that the art of conscious relationship is not exactly to never have a fight or to never have any conflict, but to know how to navigate out of it within a few minutes.
In all these years, I’ve learned one golden rule, which applies to to my own relationship, just as much as to anyone else I know, but boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, it’s about the hardest thing to remember in the heat of the moment. Here’s that golden insight, which never fails to be true.
>>> You are never fighting about what you think you’re fighting about.<<<
I know words like “always” and “never” sound a bit fanatic, but in this case, I’m going to stand my ground. Let me explain what it means.
What you are talking about
When there is any form of conflict, it usually looks and sounds like one of a few things is happening:
- You each want have a different desired outcome for something in the future. This could be as simple as Chinese or Indian food tonight, or as charged as should we continue to be monogamous or have an open relationship? Either way, you may each have a different idea of what you want, and it’s not lining up.
- You each have a different ideological perspective or belief about something, and you get attached to the need to be right. Again, it could be as hypothetical as “do angels really exist in action actual bodies, or is it just a figurative way of talking about energy?” It could also get as charged as “I can’t believe you voted for that guy. He’s a complete criminal. I feel totally ashamed to know that you made that choice.”
- You have differing memories or narratives of something that happened in the past. “I absolutely never said that. I can’t believe that you’re putting words in my mouth in this way.”
There may be more topics that you could talk about during a conflict, but that covers a lot of it.
Once you are in potential conflict, there are three possible directions for how that could go.
3 directions
A] everybody remains in a calm, humorous, relaxed disposition. This is what is known as a well-regulated nervous system. If that’s the case, what you’ve got on your hands is a discussion marked by respectful curiosity, humor, and everybody letting go of thinking they have the final word on anything.
B] One person is in a dysregulated state, they feel triggered, but the other person continues to remain regulated. In this situation, we could say that one person has gottne “upset.”
C] Both partners move into a dysregulated state of upset, which we could now call a real conflict, or a fight.
Always disagreement and dysregulation
Conflict which causes breakdown in relationship always involves a mixture of these two things, a disagreement about a particular topic or decision, combined with dys-regulation in the nervous system and triggering in one or both partners. When we get involved in a fight, we always think that the fight is about what you’re talking about, but actually the energy of conflict is is caused by the the dysregulation of the of the nervous system. Without that, it would simply be a help a heated discussion.
