Can We Learn To Fight "Fair" in Our Relationships?

Fighting is a normal part of relationships. When one of my kids started dating, she shared a profound observation with Louise & me: “You don’t really know somebody till you’ve had a fight with them!”

One of the benefits of age and having been married over 50 years is that you learn a few of life’s lessons, often the hard way. And while I don’t pretend to be an advice columnist, I was rostered as a psychotherapist by the State of Vermont for years, am licensed as an NLP Trainer’s Trainer, have written several books on ADHD, psychotherapy, and trauma, and once ran a residential treatment facility for abused and emotionally disturbed kids in New England. I’ve seen a lot and heard thousands of stories of family relationships gone wrong as well as gone right.

So, in the hopes my experience may help you avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made in my life, and following on my earlier piece on how to let people know that you love them in ways they actually understand/feel, here are a couple of tips on making relationships work.

We all learned as early as elementary school that physically kicking somebody “below the belt-line” isn’t considered fighting fair. Unfortunately, most of us never heard about the psychological/emotional equivalent and how it can do sometimes irreparable damage to relationships.

Fighting is a normal part of relationships. When one of my kids started dating, she shared a profound and hard-learned observation with Louise and me: “You don’t really know somebody until you’ve had a fight with them!”

Entire books have been written about this, with the classic being The Intimate Enemy: How to Fight Fair in Love and Marriage by Bach and Wyden. Most, though, boil down to one essential piece of advice: when you fight with your partner, make sure you don’t inflict real and lasting emotional wounds.

When you get to know somebody, you discover the things you can say that will irritate, bother, or even anger them. Arguing logic or differences of opinion is normal, and even trying to clobber your partner with something you know they dislike hearing is not uncommon. Conflict is one of the many ways we work things out in relationships, and often one of the quickest.

But if you live with somebody long enough, you’ll also learn the things you can say that will emotionally wound them. It’s the equivalent of kicking somebody in the crotch: it really, really hurts. And this is where relationships get destroyed.

Interestingly, you may not even know — out of the entire catalog of things you can say that will get a rise out of your partner — which are “fair fighting” and which are “hitting below the belt.” There are a couple of reasons for this.

The first is that each of us has a different “belt-line” when it comes to what’s a fair fight and what’s hitting below that line.

For example, Louise can tell me that I’m acting like my father (meaning it as an insult) and, while that sort of comment is typically an irritating way of avoiding the specifics of the discussion, it doesn’t wound me. But if I tell her that she’s acting like her grandmother (who was famously cantankerous), it wounds her deeply.

I have no idea why this is for her, and it really doesn’t matter: what counts is that I’ve learned something I can say that hurts her, that cuts deeply. So I avoid saying it, even if I’m thinking it, because that would be hitting below the belt.

But there’s a giant Catch-22 here.

One of the big problems with trying to honor a commitment to “never hit below the belt” is that some — probably most — people are reluctant to tell their intimate partners where their belt-line is.

There’s a simple reason for this: by telling somebody how they can truly and deeply wound you, you’re handing them a frightful weapon. It takes a lot more trust than many people have — and a conscious intention (most people never even think in these terms) — to decide to reveal that level of vulnerability.

The famous therapeutic hypnotist, psychiatrist Milton Erickson MD (whose work is at the foundation of much of NLP), once told a story that went like this (I’m paraphrasing/quoting from memory). He once had a patient who came to him and said:

“I know I should be eating more vegetables, particularly healthy ones like spinach, but I hate spinach. Can you hypnotize me so I’ll like spinach?”

“Sure,” Erickson said.

“Can you make me like it enough to eat every day?”

“Of course,” Erickson replied. “That kind of thing is easy.”

The man pondered it for a moment and then said, “Forget it.”

“Why?” asked Erickson.

“Because I hate spinach!” the man said emphatically.

Louise and I refer to this as “the spinach story”: it’s what happens when people are unwilling to trust a big change-type step in their lives that could have positive impact, because “I’ve always done it the old way.”

Ever since we learned this, decades ago, whenever one of us hits a “below the belt” nerve, the other will simply say, “That’s below the belt.” And that conversation never gets revisited, even if a particular “belt line” seems silly to the other person.

It’s important to be explicit about this, because most of us do what NLP calls “mind reading”: we assume we know what’s in another person’s thoughts or emotions. But the reality is that we’re each unique, and a comment that rolls off one person’s back may deeply wound another.

So, when your partner lets you know where their belt line is, believe them and respect it.

Which brings us to the second big problem intimate couples confront throughout their lives: “gunny-sacking.” This is when you’re upset by something your partner did or said (or didn’t do or say), but you don’t say anything about it and instead let it fester.

Things that get gunny-sacked fester over time, typically lead to a syndrome where seemingly small things begin to produce large, exaggerated reactions. These responses can be mystifying: “Why’s she so upset I didn’t replace the toilet paper roll?” for example.

What’s really happening is that the gunny-sacked “hurt” is driving a reactivity that then turns small things into big freak-outs.

The easy solution is straight out of couples therapy 101: never go to bed angry. When you’re hurt or offended, say so at the time (if practical) or as soon as possible. Never, ever carry a hurt, upset, or anger overnight.

The final story in this realm is how relationships break down over time, usually in a way that leaves one partner shocked and in pain, not realizing what happened or why. It’s a fascinating insight into how we both “couple” and “un-couple” over time.

We’ll get to “uncoupling” — and how to recover/restore a relationship that appears hopelessly broken — in a future article.