Fighting With Your Sweetie?

How's your love life these days? Is there still loving love in your relationship?

If your sweetie did something…well, unsweet, and youre upset... remember how you talk and listen to each other, will determine whether or not you remain with each other.
Darlene Mininni, Phd, author of the book THE EMOTIONAL TOOLKIT, has some helpful tips to make sure your honest conversations don’t become your last conversations.

1. Begin difficult conversations WITHOUT criticism. According to Gottman’s research from The Love Lab, 96% of the time you can predict how a conversation will end based on its first three minutes. So make sure you don’t start out BLAMING – or calling the person an uncaring person. If you do, then your sweetie will spend more time defending themselves, than attending to your needs and feelings. Instead, explain how the situation affects you – affects your feelings, values, goals. After your talk, your sweetie should then repeat back how they hear what you feel, so they can fully empathise – be in your shoes, head, heart -- thereby increasing their listening and empathy power – which will increase your ability to find a loving solution power!

2. Don’t try to convince your sweetie you are right and they are wrong. When you feel attacked by your sweetie’s actions/words, it’s normal to want to defend yourself - to explain all the reasons why you are right and your sweetie is wrong. Whether your tone is loving or combative, the underlying thinking is the same: “Once your sweetie realizes how wrong they are, they will change!” Guess what? It ain’t so! So stop trying to focus on winning your arguments. Instead try to focus on having a winning relationship! How? Try talking in “I” sentences instead of “you” sentences – so you speak more about how you feel. (And NO.. “I think you are a jerk is NOT an example of an “I” statement!) Your goal is to get your sweetie to EMPATHISE with you. So forget about facts. Keep staying with your feelings, values, dreams. From this place of empathy, perhaps your sweetie will better hear you -- and thereby want to find a way to take care of your needs and feelings (aka: want to change their evil ways!).

3. When you’re angry, calm yourself before you begin communicating. Although studies show that yelling is better than stonewalling, because at least it’s about intimately connecting with your sweetie, and showing you care enough to want to deal with the problem at hand – alas, yelling has its share of problems as well. Studies show that when people rant and yell, they just get angrier. The best strategy: Wait until you’ve calmed down to speak to your sweetie. Interesting factoid: If you and/or your sweetie’s heartbeat becomes higher than 100 beats per minute during an argument, you will not be able to fully hear what the other person is saying. This physical reason alone is good reason not to yell – as it will only stymie your attempts to communicate, frustrating you further. Also, studies show that a strong emotion like anger literally interferes with your ability to think rightly. When you’re angry parts of your brain’s processing become blocked, and it’s literally more difficult to think clearly and solve problems. Keep in mind a ditty Einstein once said: "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level thinking we were at when we created them."

4. Never share important conversations by emailing back and forth. Or texting. (Yes some couples talk about important issues by text!). You need to sit in the same room, and if possible hold each other's hands as you have your difficult conversations. This sense of touch will keep you reminded about your goal: to share a loving, empathic conversation.

5. After a conflict, you need to put in the effort of repair. Gottman suggests you need a ratio of 5 to 1 nice/nasty moments- that's 5 nice moments to 1 nasty moment. After a conflict, send loving emails, do loving gestures, share what you love and appreciate about each other out loud -- or in quiet, sexy whispers.

6. Don't obsess about the past. Once a disagreement or difficult situation has occurred, and you've talked empathically about, do not ruminate about it. Forgive and forget. What you should be focusing on after your talk is: Does my sweetie want to change so this conflict does not repeat. If your sweetie is putting in the effort of change -- then, well, your sweetie truly is a sweetie, and you should let them know how much you appreciate their efforts