How to Argue Better with Your Partner.
Fights happen, how can they not? We are not always going to agree and that is okay. I often tell the individual therapy clients and couples I see in therapy in my California counseling private practice that the goal is not to get to a place where they never fight again but to fight in a way where neither of you becomes too activated. I stress the importance of fighting in a fair and loving way to help my clients and couples to solve their issues instead of ignoring issues or becoming aggressive. Arguing, in a healthy way, can actually bring couples closer together.
Keep on reading to learn 3 rules I share with my therapy clients and couples to help them fight better.
Hello there! I’m Elisa Blair, a Latina licensed marriage and family therapist practicing 100% online all over California. My therapy practice is Mindfully Minding Me and I get to work with people from all over from San Diego, to Los Angeles, to the Central Valley, to San Fransico, and every county in between! I focus mainly on couples and trauma, where my mission is to help people live where they can let go of what no longer serves them, heal generational trauma, and learn to live an easier more peaceful life. I hope you find this article helpful, it is something that I find myself talking about all the time and I have been meaning to write about it for a while. Enjoy and don’t hesitate to reach out to let me know what you think! Keep on reading to learn 3 rules I share with my therapy clients and couples to help them fight better.
3 Rules for Arguing Better.
Rule number one: Make sure that neither of you is too activated to actually have the argument.
Rule number two: It is you and your spouse against the issue, as a team.
Rule number three: Never stop working on your own stuff and increasing your awareness.
Rule number one: Make sure that neither of you is too activated to actually have the argument.
I want you to picture or think back to a really good debate you heard, where the people gave their points and neither of them became too heated, didn’t talk over one another, and actually said things like “wow, yeah you have a point there” or “true, I never that of it that way.” A great argument with your partner means that you are in a calm enough mental and emotional state to actually listen and respond to your partner. But you can’t do this if you are too emotionally hot or activated.
If you find yourself feeling reactive, triggered, or activated by your partner or spouse, it is a good idea to take a pause and revisit this conversation when the two of you are in a better space. Go out and take a walk along the beach or go to the gym. Take a bath with your favorite bath salts. Sometimes it is too late to have the argument and the both of you are better off calling a truce, calling it a night, and setting a time the next day to revisit the topic. Believe me, taking some space will keep either of you from saying things you don’t mean and will help you actually solve whatever issue, no matter how small or large.
At the end of the day, an argument is just a conversation with someone, where maybe you are not on the same page or have different viewpoints. This is something that is bound to happen and something that people who are skilled in relationships know how to navigate. It is a skill that anyone can strengthen… if they put in the work. Going over some basic fair fighting rules is usually something I teach my clients and couples early on when they start working with me in therapy.
Rule number two: It is you and your spouse against the issue, as a team.
Another thing that I stress almost daily to my couples in my California private therapy practice, is to remember that it is you and your partner against the issue when you guys are arguing. Too often when couples are trying to work it out in front of me from the comfort of their own living room (yay to virtual therapy!) I see them making this mistake over and over again. They begin to attack one another and somehow appear to forget that they chose the very person in front of them to spend their lives in such an intimate and beautiful way. It really looks like they become a little kid, where they are just terrified trying to get their point across. The hurt and the defensiveness is sky high in this moment, which means an effective argument is impossible.
So what can you do when you find yourself in a similar situation with your partner? You can breathe and use a code word to help remind you both that the conversation is “getting away from you both.” No longer is it you and your partner against the issue, but it warped into fighting against one another. In addition to using the skill in rule number one from above where you need to make sure that neither of you is too activated to actually have the argument, going into the conversation with the mindset that you are a team is so important.
I often tell my clients and my couples to never forget that they are on a team, where it is you and your partner against whatever life throws your way. Often the world can be a lot and downright scary at times, the last thing we want is for our relationship back at home to cause more feelings of insecurity. Doing small acts of love and kindness can help you build up this team mentality emotionally so when an argument actually happens, you’ll find it easier to stay in a team mindset.
Rule number three: Never stop working on your own stuff and increasing your awareness.
Maybe you have wondered why I call my therapy practice Mindfully Minding Me when one of two of my specialties is working with couples. Well, I am a huge proponent of that in order to be a good partner or spouse, you have to work on yourself…daily. People often ask me, “So when will I be done with the work?” And my answer is never. We are never done with the work because the work is part of life. You can heal from the hurt or address the issue that brought you into therapy and finish up therapy, but you will never be done with the work. For example just because you reached a fitness goal, doesn’t mean you are done. Just because you leveled up in a hobby of yours, doesn’t mean you are done. The same can be said about working on yourself.
As you live life, you are going to be faced with so many different opportunities to learn, grow, and change, but only if you view it this way and embrace the journey. Often if you are a therapy goer, self-help book reader, reading blog posts about mental health (like this one!), you are probably the type of person who knows this to be true. You understand that you are not the same person you were 10 years ago, 1 year ago, or even a few weeks ago. You are constantly evolving and changing, and hopefully, you can use this awareness and strengthen the relationship that you have with your partner. That is why I choose my practice name, I truly believe that in order to have better relationships, it often starts with doing your own work.
That is why when I work with couples in my therapy practice, I often ask if they have been to therapy on their own before. And depending on the issues that we are working through in our couple's work, I sometimes suggest that they seek out individual therapy so that the work that we do in couples therapy will be more effective. I have a great list of individual therapists I suggest to my couples, because I know how overwhelming it can be to find a quality therapist that will actually help you meet the goals you have.
That’s it! Those are my top three rules for fighting in a more fair way. Hopefully, you found some use in this article on how to argue better with your partner and I hope you start using what you have learned to help you fight with more compassion.
Also, just as a side, some problems are not really solvable, but these rules can still help you and your partner work through it together and increase your understanding of one another, which goes a long way in having a loving, sustaining, nurturing relationship.
Until next time!
Kindly,