Tips To Fight Fair With Your Partner

Arguments or disagreements can be a frustrating and draining experience in our relationships. When disagreements are handled in unhealthy ways, you may find yourself or your partner feeling discouraged, unhappy, defensive, and feeling less hope for the relationship. Often this is caused by us not knowing how to “fight fair” when disagreeing with  each other.  In trying to get our point across, we communicate in unhealthy ways. This creates more distance and relationships and causes partners to fear worst possible outcomes such as criticism or a deadend conversation. We are often unaware of what makes this happen- often it’s not intentional and we just don’t know any other way or we are not aware that what we are doing or communicating is unhealthy. To give some idea of what unhealthy communication looks like here are 5 signs that disagreements are being handled in unhealthy ways:

1.     One partner or both is feeling misunderstood or unheard

2.     Blame is being passed around between partners

3.     Someone is reminded of their past offenses which are not relevant to the current conversation

4.     Yelling, screaming, or swearing, name calling or negative labeling

5.     Deflecting, defensiveness, or any kind of aggressiveness be that physical or verbal

As you Look at your own relationship, stop and ask yourself – do you or your partner engage in those unhealthy behaviors on this list? This is important to know, because we often get stuck in a repeated cycle of doing these unhealthy things when disagreeing or trying to get our point across. As a result, instead of accomplishing our goal or feeling heard, we are just frustrated with our partner. Eventually this leads to words being  said or actions are taken that cannot be taken back, which can cause long and  short term relationship hurts. I’m pretty sure the big question is, what do I do If I don’t know how to “fight fair“? Well often times the things we do or say that are unhealthy are a result of being upset and not being able to manage our emotions in the moment. Riding high on emotions such as anger, anxiety, sadness, fear, or hurt can cause knee-jerk reactions which can be and often are damaging to our relationships. Most of us by now may have realized that knee-jerk reactions in relationships don’t work out too well. 

To avoid unhealthy reactions, statements, or behaviors in these moments I recommend taking a “time out“. Some people may be thinking “duh” or that this seems pretty obvious, but often times we don’t use timeouts when we know we should, or we don’t know how to do a time out the right way. Often times as adults we walk away just to avoid having a conversation or we just go to another room and continue the argument with ourselves, only making ourselves more upset. Couples that have done breaks like this often feel as though it does not work or things never get resolved.  Well I have a couple pointers I’d like to share with you on ways you can make timeouts work in your relationship.                         

First we have to know that timeouts are not a way to resolve issues but they are to prevent further harm that could be caused by unhealthy arguments. Collaboration is key- both partners have to agree that timeouts are needed in the relationship. Once you and your partner understand why timeouts are needed and agree upon using them the next thing to do is to develop a SafeWord. This SafeWord is a mutually agreed-upon word that will let both of you know a time out is needed. Your SafeWord can be  a color, a number, a food that you both dislike, a title of a movie, anything can work as long as the both of you agree on it. Here are 3 tips on how you can make a safe word work for you: 

1.     Identify triggering words in your disagreements that are warning signs of needing a time out

2.     Identify ahead of time what the hot topics are in your relationships that normally lead to unhealthy arguing

3.     Decide where your time out location will be to take space from each other, where each of you can feel emotionally safe

Next you will want to outline what happens after the SafeWord is used, this will help to improve the results of any  attempted timeouts. Here are tips to help you outline your relationships’ Timeout Plan:

1.     You and your partner must be in separate rooms and stop the conversation

2.     Both partners must identify a list of activities that can help to calm them down or distract them to avoid further upsetting themselves in their safe spaces                      

3.     Set a cool down period to be apart from each other (usually 15-30 minutes is a good amount of time)

4.     After your cool down period, decide if you should attempt to have the conversation again or if it should be discussed at a later time when moods have improved.   

These steps should help timeouts in your relationship to be more effective and give meaning to the SafeWord you’ve identified. This is just one of many strategies that you can utilize to stop unhealthy arguments in their tracks and prevent further damage to your relationship. This can be very helpful for couples who struggle with managing their emotions in the moment and are better problem solver‘s after they can calm down.  

I hope this post was helpful for those out there looking for better ways to prevent unhealthy arguments. If you found this to be helpful or if do you have any struggles within your relationship communicating even after using these tips, maybe couples counseling could be even more helpful for your relationship. The mental health therapists at our office offer counseling for a variety of issues including trauma using EMDR, depression, anxiety, grief, and couples counseling. We work with teens, adults, and couples. We also offer online counseling services which can be great for people with busy schedules or for people who live in parts of Pennsylvania with limited counseling options. You can check out our website to see the full list of counseling services that we offer. Or, Request An Appointment here.