By Francisco Bujan — vitalcoaching.com
Table of Contents
- Part 1 — Fights Dynamics
- Why Fights Happen
- Control Issues Are the Core of Any Fight
- When You Fight, Your Relationship Is Under Attack
- Clash Between Energy Realities
- Why a Psychic Battle?
- Fighting Is a Natural Instinct
- What Is Wrong Then?
- Underlying Dynamics Triggering Fights
- Fight Triggers
- Shift From Fighting to Constructive Communication
- How to Learn These New Skills?
- If Your Partner Irritates You
- Get in Tune With Each Other
- Don’t Let Life Challenges Negatively Impact on Your Couple
- Control Free or Control Freak?
Part 1 — Fights Dynamics
The first step is to understand the dynamics of fights.
Before you design a new ground for your relationship, you want to analyze the underlying dynamics which bring you to conflicting tensions with your partner.
In the next few pages, you will discover why fights happen in your relationship.
Why Fights Happen
Fights happen because there is a conflict for power.
You have two mind sets: yours and your partner’s one.
These two mind sets do not match.
They clash.
This can happen anywhere, any time with anyone.
So why is it creating such a challenge within your relationship?
It creates such a challenge because this is the person you live with.
When you have conflicts at work, you take off in the evening and can relax at home.
Now, when you have conflicts at home, where do you find the space to relax.
You simply can’t.
You get stressed up, more and more tense and build resentment and aggressiveness towards each other.
The reason you fight is because you don’t manage to solve the power struggles in a different way.
Again, the dynamics are very simple: You want something.
Your partner wants something else.
You fight to win.
You fight for your mind set.
You feel pressured.
You feel challenged and cornered.
You react by defending your territory and your mind space.
Control Issues Are the Core of Any Fight
Control is a natural given power.
When you are born, you are given the power to control what is yours.
Your thoughts, emotions, feelings, beliefs, actions, attitudes, time frame, personal space and belongings are all yours.
Your most basic human right is to have control over these aspects of your life.
If someone tells you what to do, what to wear or what to think, they already steal a basic human right from you.
Now, when you partner with someone within a relationship, something new happens: you start calling someone else “my partner”, “my husband”, “my wife”, “my boyfriend” or “my girlfriend”.
This is where the problem rises at first.
It creates a natural “sense of belonging”.
Now, what does this partnership mean?
Does your partner say something like: “From now on, you are the one who tells me what to do and when to do it. You have the power to direct my thoughts and feelings and I surrender my own will power to your will” Of course not!
What you partner says is: “We partner in a space of mutual respect. I stay master of my life but we create a new entity called “us”. I transfer part of my individual power to our relationship so that we can live and evolve together in harmony” The moment your partner believes he has the right to tell you what to do and how to do it, he crosses the line.
He can suggest, he can guide and he can propose you alternatives but you stay in charge of your actions no matter what.
Your attitudes, beliefs, time frame and other aspects of your personal integrity stay yours, always.
The moment someone steps in your territory and steals your right for self determination from you, you react and fight back.
You fight for your freedom of thought and action.
You are and stay in charge of your life!
Of course, it works both ways.
The moment you tell you partner what to do without him giving you this right, you are already abusing your power.
You can say that you do this in the name of your relationship or in the name of protecting your children; you still take away his power for self determination.
If you end up fighting, it is the sign that a part of him reacts and does not want to give you the right to control any part of his life.
Control is a very powerful force.
It is useful and needed in society.
Now, it is as well a weapon which can turn against your relationship.
Most relationship fights and break ups happen because of control issues.
When a couple breaks up or divorces, all they are saying is: “This relationship became too limiting. I need space!” The moment you fight with your partner, you are saying something similar: “I am loosing control and I don’t want to. I will fight to stay in charge of my existence and express my will power”.
Of course, you work together in a relationship and this means sometimes that you accept someone else’s opinions and ideas and even put slightly aside your individuality in the name of the relationship.
You will see later how to still make it work.
The first goal here is to unveil these power dynamics and understand why conflicts happen.
Control issues are in the core of most relationship fights.
Can you see how it works?
When You Fight, Your Relationship Is Under Attack
Your relationship is under attack. Your couple’s foundation lacks power and this creates inner tensions. This is a battle for your couple’s survival.
Fights can drain the relationship. They can drain love and destroy harmony. You have two options:
- The first one is to let it be. Sooner or later you’ll feel a breaking point or simply keep reproducing a dead end loop which destroys your life The second option is to take serious action and do whatever it takes to solve this.
This is what this book is about. You want to find new weapons to defend your relationship’s space. What I want to say might surprise you: what you need is better fighting skills.
The reason you fight is because you lack power and effective fighting skills. Fighting is an emotional response. It is your best shot at trying to defend your territory. You and the couple are stressed up. You are under attack!
These attacks can be internal or can as well be external pressures from work, friends, society, in laws, etc. The pressure comes as well from the material and financial side. A huge amount of couple fight over money for instance.
Ad to this demands from your partner or children and you get the picture. So much of you that wants your attention. Fighting is your emotional response to all this pressure. it comes from a need to protect your mind space and personal space. What to do? Here are some key strategies to handle fights:
- Do whatever it takes to break through! You already took a step when buying this book. The next step is to take action. It takes 1 to 3 months to design a new ground for your relationship. Follow the strategies and apply them!
- Stop blaming your partner. Sure, he is not perfect. He is still the one you did chose. When you blame, you attack. He responds. Don’t attack! Don’t blame! When you attack, you create a gap between the two of you. You are partners on this battle, not enemies!
- Be masters of your relationship. When it comes to decisions, make sure you are the ones who have the final word. It is your space. It is your territory. Don’t let anyone else overpower you.
- Create dialogue! Dialogue and diplomacy are the real alternative to fights.
Clash Between Energy Realities
Fighting happens because there is a clash between you and your partner.
You have two will powers and two desires.
The fight is the battle between two different energy realities.
The words and the visible aspects of conflicts are only a small part of this battle. Inside, another battle is going which is a psychic battle. This is the real conflict. That’s where tensions originate.
Your mind is a territory.
When it gets invaded, you fight back to protect it.
Any form of irritation or tension is the result of an invasion of your mind by external energies.
Imagine having your partner playing loud music. It can irritate you because it impacts on your mind and invades your mind space. The result? Tensions build up, you get angry and attack to protect your mind space.
It is natural. It is an instinctual response.
When you fight, your two energies clash. They compete with each other for power and space.
Tensions rise because a part of you is attacking or being attacked by your partner.
Why a Psychic Battle?
A psychic battle is a battle of energies.
Your energies compete with each other.
Instead of vibrating together, they attack each other.
Psychic battles happen all the time with anyone.
It happens in nature in the competition between species.
It happens within a community of monkeys.
It happens in businesses.
It happens in sports and social life.
It even happens with couples and families.
This is what you face right now.
Suppose a conflict is waking up in your relationship.
You can sit down and talk about it or you can fight.
If you sit down, you use diplomacy.
You use dialogue and communication skills.
The goal is to create peace and harmony, right?
On the other hand, when you go for the fight, you use your fighting power.
It is an emotional response.
You use your fighting abilities.
It is an instinct in you.
You simply use your survival drive to attack your partner or defend your territory.
Fighting Is a Natural Instinct
Fighting is natural.
This is why it exists in the first place.
It is related with a instinctual need to conquer and survive.
It is present in the very core of nature.
Nature created these instincts.
Usually, they have a positive role in human evolution and in your life.
You use fighting to defend yourself and to conquer new territories.
When you educate your children, you’ll say things like: “If someone hits you defend yourself. Don’t let anyone put you down” You ask your children to use their fighting power.
You tell them to tap into this natural instinct.
The same happens with sports.
Competition is simply a form of fight with specific rules.
When you compete, you want to win over your opponent.
With fighting sports, the fight aspect is obvious.
With athletics for instance, you compete for better performance.
It is always a form of fight against an opponent or your own limits.
Fighting and competition are everywhere. They are part of the human spirit. – 20 –
What Is Wrong Then?
Fighting and competition happen within a context.
The main goal of your family, couple and relationship is to create love, harmony, peace and complicity.
The goal is to create a secure base of love and harmony.
A reasonable dose of challenge, fight and competition is not only needed, it is healthy.
However, when you fight too much, you bring the couple’s equilibrium out of balance.
You stay in the competitive or fighting mood all the time, which destroys your couple’s emotional foundation.
You and your couple need space to rest.
After a day of work, you usually want to come back into a home where there is peace, not fight.
Fight and competition already happen with work and business.
This is where you express your conquering power most of the times simply to make a living.
Working is like a modern version of hunting.
In the origins of humankind, you would go hunting to eat.
You would fight for territory and shelter.
Nowadays, we still compete on a business ground.
The main goal of business and work is first to provide food and shelter for you and your family.
All the extras come after. If you had just enough money to survive, you would first get food and find shelter.
The couple or family space has another goal: It is a nurturing environment where you are supposed to relax.
When you fight with your partner, you stay in the “conquering mode”.
You attack and challenge each other.
The result?
You can’t relax.
You can’t find peace.
Tension builds up and you simply create ongoing “fighting” patterns in your home.
Underlying Dynamics Triggering Fights
If you are supposed to be in harmony, why do you fight? It is very simple: your couple is under attack. Put it this way: Your fighting is the result of your inability to protect your couple space. Your couple is under psychic attack. You pick up on that energy individually and project it on each other.
There is nothing wrong with neither of you. You simply miss a stronger emotional power base for your relationship. Take this example: You have a very noisy neighbor. He wakes you up in the middle of the night. You two start talking about what to do.
You realize you don’t agree on what to do with it. It creates tensions. You start arguing. You end up having a serious fight about this whole issue. What started the fight is not you: It is your neighbor’s music. You simply did not see it coming. Your fight is part of a larger set of dynamics. There are other forces involved. You happen to be at the center of it. Your couple is under attack.
All you need to solve the conflict is to bring in extra power to secure your relationship’s foundation. This means protecting your territory. As a couple you need to compete for survival. You are submitted to many pressures like financial, social and performance ones. This creates a high level of stress within the relationship. This stress is imply the reflection of society’s stress.
Many of the issues you fight about are more than the fight between tow individuals: they are the fight between different sets of values, beliefs and attitudes. In other terms, the fight in your relationship is a microcosmic reflection or a bigger fight going on in society. For instance if you want children and your partner doesn’t, your fight is a projection of a much vaster battle:
- What are you friends and family going to say if you don’t have children?
- How is another mother or father going to look at you?
- Is your career going to give you enough satisfaction?
- Etc.
Society’s pressure is projected on your relationship.
If your relationship’s foundation is very strong, you manage to maintain harmony, love and respect between you and your partner.
On the other hand, if you have doubts and don’t stand in this together, you will feel small divisions growing into vaster and bigger differences.
Your in laws, friends or colleagues at work all play a role in that.
It does not mean that they are the conscious cause of your fights. It means that they often play a serious role in the battles between you are your partner.
Fight Triggers
When you fight, you tend to intrude on you partner’s territory.
You stop trusting them and push them to change, act or do something differently.
The moment this happens, it is a lost cause from the very start.
Why is that?
Because you believe there is something wrong with your partner or their actions.
The moment you partner yells back at you, it is already because they feel cornered, attacked or challenged.
The family or relationship space is supposed to be an environment which is secure and in harmony.
The moment they feel attacked, they do respond: “Give me a break! Give me space! I have been working the whole day and now, I want to relax” The situation can be different but what they says is always the same: “Give me space. I don’t want to deal with this right now”.
This is a defensive move, right?
Is it justified?
Yes! 100% yes!
You are in a home.
A home is a protected space.
It is a place where you want to feel safe.
Sometimes your partner simply does not have the energy to face extra challenges or demands.
You can talk about what you want but don’t catch him by surprise.
Create a special moment and say what you feel rather than talking about what they do or not do.
This process is described further in the chapter how to establish dialogue.
Shift From Fighting to Constructive Communication
One of the main challenges with relationship fights is: How to bring fights to a diplomatic ground?
If there is tension and the yelling gets loud, you simply want it to stop.
You want new skills to do that.
You want to shift the conflicting ground from fighting to dialogue and diplomacy.
This requires a new set of skills.
Dialogue means win-win.
It is simple. Dialogue means relationship synergy.
When you fight, you attack your partner or defend your territory.
Someone wins. Someone looses. If you had enough of that model, you want to discover a new way of relating.
Empower your relationship!
This means developing new skills. It is okay to fight when you two choose for it. Fights can be healthy and constructive. However, when you two are victims of your own temper, it is time to find a new set of effective strategies.
What are they? They are a new mind set. It is a new relationship vehicle that you create.
This new relationship vehicle is dialogue. It is communication.
How to Learn These New Skills?
It is very simple: Try, practice and experiment.
Establishing a new communication style with your partner is not something which happens overnight.
You need to give it time, space and invest yourselves in it.
It is like any other skill.
You need time and space to practice.
What does it take?
If you invest 30 min a week, you’ll be able to deeply reshape your communication style within 1 to 3 months.
I guarantee you that this works.
All you need is two partners willing to take the steps.
You believe that you come into a relationship with all the skills you need? Wrong!
You often need to learn new ones along the way.
Relationship skills are not something you train at school or at the gym.
It is something you usually learn from scratch reproducing the models of those around you.
It is 90% instinctual.
You might have read a couple of books on relationship success or talked about your couple challenges with a counselor.
Usually, that’s about it, right?
Your instincts are powerful.
They already know most of the answers.
Something in you knows all the right moves.
Now, when you want to create harmony, you need to trust those instincts and wake them up.
Hard to believe, but fighting can become a comfort zone.
You simply keep on reproducing the “fighting model” because you are used to it.
The challenge is actually to shift that model and establish a new behavioral set in your relationship.
This means that you want to step beyond your comfort zone and communicate in a way you didn’t do before.
This is a significant shift!
It puts you under pressure because you need to integrate new ways of thinking and new behaviors.
However, the results are so thrilling and exciting that it is truly worth doing whatever it takes to discover those new skills.
If Your Partner Irritates You
Irritation is the real challenge. This is where it often starts. Suppose you start a fight without a reason. The trigger will often be that you feel irritated by one of your partner’s actions, ideas, beliefs or attitudes.
Have you experienced it? Irritation happens because your mind is invaded by an idea or energy you don’t like. Irritation is the result of an attack on your mind. Irritation is the way your emotions react to this attack. Attack is a strong word but the mechanism is always the same: Something challenges your emotional space.
Because you live together, you partner has greater access to your emotions. When you stand on a common ground, this sharing of energies creates love and happiness. When you stand on different grounds and have different ideas, attitudes or behaviors, your emotional body is challenged. Irritation is like a flame burning you on the surface of your mind. When you feel irritated, you want one thing: space!!! You want to fight back.
Do you recognize the pattern? You come back from a party. Your partner is driving. He makes an insignificant comment over one of the guests. It irritates you. And you respond in an aggressive way. He attacks you back and that’s it! The self destructive spiral takes over and you end having a big argument over something insignificant.
The real reason why you fight is because your minds are clashing. Deep inside you disagree on an energy level. You are simply not in tune. What to do about it? You have two possible strategies to handle such situation:
- The first strategy is to use this trigger to grow apart. Irritation is the visible part of something deeper. Maybe you wanted to break up a long time ago. He is on your way for you achieving your dreams. Your irritation is simply your way of expressing a deeper frustration. You can listen to your need and create space or even break up. Listen to your deeper needs and do something about it.
- The second strategy is to empower your relationship. This means stimulating the binding force, learning to communicate better, letting go of little things, etc. This means that you develop new relationship skills to help you tackle irritation.
Can you see how this works?
Let’s focus on these two strategies.
Get in Tune With Each Other
If you want to stay together and not be irritated by your partner’s attitudes or actions, the goal is to stimulate the binding force between the two of you.
This means that you get in tune with each other.
You learn how to be on the same wave length.
The emotional body of the relationship is like an intelligent entity.
Imagine an open space.
This is your relationship.
The goal is to empower the emotional foundation of your relationship.
When you get married or make love, this is what you do: you nurture the binding force. If you decide to buy a house or have children together, you establish a partnership.
Again, you empower the foundation of the relationship.
You can partner for life. You can partner for a short period of time as well.
In reality, there are two type of forces in relationships: those who bring you together and those who draw you apart.
When you fight, the destructive power takes over. If the fight is purely destructive and draining, it is a force which splits you and draws you apart, right?
What you want is to connect with another force which will bring power to this situation and either dissolves the fighting need or turns the fight into a constructive exchange.
There are ways of stimulating the binding force between you and your partner.
Anything which brings you on a same wave length does work.
Don’t Let Life Challenges Negatively Impact on Your Couple
negatively impact on your couple Fights are often the result of an external pressure.
- Problems at work Business crisis Insecurity and self esteem issues Material or financial crisis Pressure from friends, children, ex or in laws.
- Moving house or rebuilding Etc.
Don’t project this challenge on your couple.
Limit the challenge to its real size and don’t let it create a snowball effect.
Suppose you face a challenge with your business.
You come home. You are irritable.
You start a fight over something insignificant.
Instead of going that way, you can hit the gym and get rid of the extra frustration you feel.
You need to be aware of these pressure dynamics so that external challenges don’t negatively impact on your couple!
Got that?
This is one of the key dynamics to understand if you want to stop fights and manifest harmony in your couple.
Control Free or Control Freak?
Most fights are related with control. Suppose you are a woman and you want something from you partner. You feel like you are doing all the work at home while he wants to have a drink with his mates. You catch him just before he leaves! He reacts. He yells at you. You fight. He slams the door and leaves. No one is guilty! It is essential to realize that in such situation, you are both wrong and both right at the same time. You are both following your instincts and responding to your needs. It is your role to do so. When he decides to go for a drink, he responds to a desire to be with friends and chill out. It’s normal. It is reasonable. It is a human need. You respond to the need of having a clean house. You need support. You need help. Again, it is reasonable and human to do so. The moment a fight starts is the moment you try to influence or control his actions. That’s the moment he responds. The trigger is: trying to control someone else’s action. Your partner’s human nature is trained to protect his territory. His territory is his mind, personal space, actions, time frame, belongings, beliefs and emotions. This is what belongs to him. As an individual you are given the human right to have control over these. Sometimes you do delegate your power:
- It happens with work: the organization you work for has some influence over your work. You accept that in exchange of money, someone else is given the right to tell you what to do. It happens with parents: they are given authority over their children to protect their growth and security). •
It happens as well to a certain extent with couples: you make concessions.
I repeat this again: When you are born, you are given the right to control what is yours.
Your actions, beliefs, time, personal space, mind space, emotions, etc. All these are yours.
You are as well given defense mechanisms to defend your territory.
If someone tries to steal your car, you’ll react, right? “Hey this is mine!”
Society and natural instincts give you the power to have control over what is yours. You have laws protecting those rights.
In a relationship, you have some transfer of power happening. This is a common agreement. This agreement says something like: “We live together and have a relationship and therefore we accept to make some concessions and transfer part of our individual power to the relationship” When you step into a relationship, you can sometimes commit a very basic mistake: Tell to your partner what they should do or believe.
Something in you believes it is your right to tell it to your partner. I believe it is usually not.
The rule number one must always be: respect your partner’s space.
If you feel disagreement, get together and establish dialogue.
You don’t attack. You don’t yell. You don’t challenge. You simply say something like: “I face a challenge with something in our relationship. I would like to sit down and talk about it. When is a good time?”
Then you follow up with establishing dialogue.
The basic mistake is to believe that you are given the right to control someone else’s actions in any way. Any individual always stays master of their actions. It is necessary. It is healthy and empowering. The moment you want to control someone else’s actions, you disempowered them. This is why they will react or build up resentment.
The number one relationship killer is excessive control over each other. Excessive control in a relationship kills life force. It kills harmony, love and sex drive. In fact it kills the very essence of a positive and healthy relationship.
You want one simple thing: replace control by freedom!
Most fights are related with control and power issues. Someone who reacts does so because their space and freedom is invaded in some way.
They feel emotionally trapped and yell to defend their territory.
If you need something from your partner, attacking him is not the way to go. Dialogue, diplomacy are the qualities you need to develop for your relationship.
You want space, freedom and win-wins!
Minimum control! Maximum freedom!
Can you see what I see?
