One moment you’re getting dinner ready and the next moment you’re in a full-scale fight. What in the world happened? You were sharing your day, he was helping to prepare dinner, and then all of a sudden you’ve said something that generated a terse response. Where did that come from? You replay in your head how the conversation was going? You don’t remember saying anything offensive so why the attitude? What’s wrong with HIM, you ask yourself?
What happens next is critical…do you fight back, flee from the conversation, or freeze? Whatever you do it is imperative to stop and pause for 20 minutes. For Russ and me, sometimes it takes a day to recover. Depending on the fight, I can sometimes park it and wait until our weekly check-in talk. The weekly check-in talk, better known as the Staff Meeting, was introduced to us through the Intimate Encounters curriculum, written by Theresa and David Ferguson.
It’s called a Staff Meeting because they thought men would be more likely to attend such a meeting. It’s a time where we both come prepared not to be defensive and create a safe place to discuss any conflict or frustrations.
Our personal weekly check-in talk consists of:
- comparing our upcoming schedule for the week,
- our hopes and dreams with no monetary restrictions and
- what we did do to hurt each other the past week, if anything, and what did we do right?
So back to the conflict above, why wouldn’t I just address in the moment? For me, I prefer to flee, and even if I tried it is difficult to talk in the moment of a fight. My brain shuts down leaving me with no words to fight back with. Russ likes to jump on the conversation like a tiger and be done with it just as quickly as it started. So how do two people so diametrically opposed come back together and resolve the conflict? For me to stay in the argument, it requires Russ to create a safe environment. Yelling at me will only shut me down more. We’ve learned to take a pause – at least 20 minutes – and revisit the conversation or save it until our weekly check-in talk. As you know, any discussion during a fight is not productive. And postponing the talk prevents us from saying things we might regret.
It took years for me to overcome my family of origin way of fighting and that was to simply walk away and not talk about it….ever again. But in marriage, you can’t run. And I’ve learned to stay in the conversation and have grown closer to my husband. We still fight and hurt each other but our recovery is so much better. I’m not sure I could have done this without learning the tools in counseling. I find it ironic that we seek out coaches in our professions, in our health, and in our sports but we think something is wrong when we seek out a coach to help us relationally.
If healthy behaviors were not modeled in our family of origin, few are, where are you supposed to learn how to have a successful relationship with your spouse?
This repair process is one of the key skills we teach in our ‘Communicate Clearly Workshop™‘ Join us if you’d like to repair your disagreements in a way that doesn’t leave you resentful.
Tiffany Anderson says
I don’t fight healthy when I’m not in a good place. If not being in a good place for me is the same as not being close to God, then wouldn’t that suggest my relationship with Him is what I should work on first? Yet, if my relationship with him is based on my acknowledgment of my need for Him, my obedience to His command(s) out of reverence and gratitude for the price He payed out of unconditional love for me, then I should start by actively loving my husband first. Loving my husband first means to submit to him, fighting fair (healthy), which is what I have a hard time doing right now. I feel like I have too many puzzle pieces to put back into place right now, and feeling overwhelmed about where to start. Identify and address my fears and work on my personal relationship with God to allow me to live out my best self for the benefit of my husband and children (and hopefully and example of His gift and promise to us all), OR, start by acting (fake it ’til you make it) out His will within my marriage to rekindle my close relationship with Him. I’m sure the answer is that it’s somewhere in the middle, and that God will meet me halfway if I’m willing to do the same…and maybe that’s what I’m hoping the answer is.
danielle west says
Thanks for sharing, Tiffany. I don’t think there is any human being who fights fair when they are in a bad place. I commend you for looking inward. Going through Thrive can be overwhelming because it feels like you need to apply everything we are learning but just take on one thing this week. I love your focus on God and I have a feeling He’ll meet you more than halfway!