Episode 128 - Fighting

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hey everybody michael gunger here before we get into today's podcast conversation i just wanted to tell you about something new that we're doing within the religious community and it's kind of come up in response to the isolation that so many of us are feeling right now with the coronavirus and all the uh social distancing and us being cooped up in our houses and um so we've started these like online rooms basically kind of another version of the sunday things we've been doing this thing called the sunday thing where we all get together on zoom and talk about that week's topic from the podcast and that's been super cool which you should join one of these weeks by the way if you haven't yet it's really really fun um but that's been so great that we were like could we figure out how to keep some of this community connection going and we really like the face-to-face thing that you can do with zoom uh through the week for people so we've got people that are meeting throughout the whole week now in these little zoom spaces and we want to even make it cooler because it's been cool this week um you know little conversations on marxism or dance parties breaking out in the different rooms sort of spontaneously but we want to get you involved in making some of these online spaces to meet together more creative more um more enriching so i think there's a lot of potential within this audience we have a lot of creative beautiful people that with all sorts of different kind of skills and passions and you know i was thinking about burning man i went to burning man this last year for the first time and just looking at the calendar of burning man is an inspiring thing just to see all the stuff that's happening uh within this community while you're there all these different and it's not put on by some centralized organization like burning man gives you the space to create something um and so we're like could we have an online space can we utilize the online space and sort of traffic and people coming through the website and through the podcast and all that to allow you to create the kind of community experiences that you'd like to be having right now especially right now as we're all cooped up again um are you a yoga teacher that would like to have some online yoga classes with some people are you somebody who would like to host an open mic night or a karaoke night or her uh storytelling or whatever you have a one somebody on twitter said that they wanted to have a korean spa experience uh you know whatever the thing is that you would like to create we want to give you an opportunity to do it of course with the values of the liturgists which are respect and consent and uh not trying to preach at or fix each other but to show up authentically and respectfully yes uh but then have some fun like get creative and if you want to be part of this and be a part of creating some of these experiences we're going to make it pretty easy at first um i say it first because we're just kind of playing this by ear as it goes and it might we might find a need to make it you know more organized in the future for some reason but we're just gonna kind of like cr treat it like a community center and we're gonna have a sign up sheet where you can tell people about what you're gonna be doing in these different rooms and sign up for a slot um to host your conversation on our dogs or cats better hopefully we'll be better conversations than that but you know what i mean uh your thing so if you're interested in this and getting involved or just checking it out and seeing what's going on go to the liturgists.com that's pluraltheliturgists.com community and uh check it out get involved join us in some of these rooms get weird have fun okay hope you enjoyed today's conversation everybody hope you're all being safe and responsible and feeling loved because you are welcome to the allergist podcast everybody [Music] welcome to the religious podcast everybody my name is michael gunger i'm here with my partner hello what's your name my name is lisa gungu thank you for referring to me as your partner who is also your wife some people are like why do you guys refer to each other as your partners i do both i say husband and partner i'm not a witch i'm your wife i'm not a witch i'm your wife but yes hi hi today we're talking about fighting are you sure you want to talk about that are we going to fight when we talk about fighting i hope not but it's coronavirus time everybody's locked up in their homes responsible people are locked up in their homes and uh we had other things scheduled to be released other podcasts that are great that we will release in the future but for some reason it felt a little bit like i don't know to really get into some other subject that's not pretty related to what's happening right now it felt a little uh strange yeah this is what we're all thinking about ignoring yeah is being locked up in our houses uh worrying if everything's gonna be okay so we're thinking about what can we talk about around that that's affecting all of us and uh on the family thread today my mom was talking about it's all the kids i'm sure you guys are fighting all being locked up in the house i thought that was interesting and i just know people are on edge like i talked to a friend the other day i never liked getting arguments with friends but there's like a weird strange wait you never come away you've never gotten arguments with friends who do i get an argument that's not true look at this already fighting my and i would guess that like anyone listening to the podcast if they know you at all had a question like turn their head a bit going is that true i guess it used to happen more but oddly enough we wait sorry first of all you should finish what you were going to say you had an argument with a friend yeah which there was just obviously a lot of pent-up feelings and energy some of you are by yourself and you might be jealous of people being able to fight with other people at this point because you feel totally alone but some of you are cooped up with people if not already over the coming weeks and months there's gonna be some fighting yeah we were not joking about it i think i made the comment like i wonder how many relationships we'll break up yeah or how many will be mended through this like the forced men mending that has to happen or if they're just like i can't do it anymore yeah it's interesting how we fight with the people that are closest to us the most you know just like usually fight with strangers on the street yeah you have more grace for them i was just on face time with two of my dear friends it's for face timing talking about this whole quarantine and how it's affecting them and their relationships and one girl was doing really great and she was alone she's alone in her tiny apartment i mean she's fine she has a lot of work to do on her computer and she has no one there to argue with and the other girl is married she's also an introvert this is a good time for introverts yeah and then the other woman was having a really difficult time she has two young kids and uh it's a tumultuous time in their marriage so we were talking about that and talking about something that you and i often talk about which is the stories that we have attached to each other if you want to talk in terms of spiritual practices i think it's all a spiritual practice but what has been one of the hardest things and the best things for me to see my ego is my relationship with you because you are i have the most story attached to you than any other person right now and so we get we kind of pin hole or pigeonhole um pinhole pigeonhole yeah which i don't know what that means i know what a pinhole is yeah it seems like it we what is a pigeon hole have you ever seen a pigeon go into a hole where do they sleep but we well yeah we can like project our own selves onto each other but also like we get into these patterns and i know you from all this is what michael normally does in this situation i know what you're going to do and some of those stories are 20 years old yeah yeah and so like you can even if you want to change sometimes the other person that your relationship with the very fact that you you know they're projecting it's like you can't really it's hard for you to change it's the very reason why we go back to our child selves when we're with our families because those are the patterns that we created and we know that they know that's how we used to react and then we're like i can't help but i'm just reacting this way and so you and i do that you can do that with each other i feel like we're getting better i feel like we are fighting lester in this quarantine yeah we are yeah but that's been funny with us i feel like any time it's just us if we go on vacation we rarely fight it's when we have to like navigate how to have a very complicated life with children and responsibilities and friends and all this other stuff yeah that's when it gets most complicated for us but we've learned some good tools along the way of being married for 20 years we're not professional we're not therapists we're not counselors we have nothing official to offer any of you nothing nothing official but experience and a lot of experience yeah that's all we have is our story and a lot of a lot of self work but yeah we're not professionals by but our therapist regularly compliments us you know what guys we just want to let you know we've received multiple compliments from our therapist which i think means we are qualified to give it that's what we're doing we're taking that compliment from a professional and we're extending it to make ourselves seem like masters yeah of fighting uh well we just want to talk about it kind of share with you our experiences and uh some things that we've incorporated into our relationship through the years [Music] you know the image that came to my head was like a productive cough oh my god which is a lovely image a productive cough oh that's what fighting is a good like you can fight in a way where that's that dry cough it just feels like it's just hurting and nothing's happening or you can fight and you really get some of that out i think it's a great that's great imagery thank you and i think it's relevant to the coronavirus oh my gosh we're just like how could we tie it all back every word i say it needs to be tied back to the corona virus it's relevant um okay let's let's get into this okay so i think one of the things that comes up when we think about like why we're fighting with the people that that have the most story attached to us the most history i think it kind of shows a lot of times that what we're fighting about when a fight starts happening is rarely probably what we think we're fighting about like sometimes our fights are trying to figure out what we're fighting about yeah i was just gonna say like where it takes a turn is we go down the rabbit hole where we start fighting we kind of start fighting about the fight yeah and then we get lost in the weeds or it just evolves and that when that happens when we're like really start missing each other is when a productive conversation turns into like an emotional whirlwind of a fight and that was that that was part of the conversation i felt the other day with the friend it was like wasn't totally about what we were talking about it was also all the stuff that's happening right now and that's kind of what we're talking about we're not necessarily even conscious of it though in that moment it's kind of like just feelings on top of feelings on top of feelings and when you're in a fight you just you feel activated you feel angry you feel sad and it's but it's starting like this whole cocktail of emotions and you kind of lose sight of what's actually happening yeah the thing i find so fascinating is that all the non-verbal yeah that's also where i feel like we can get really lost in the weeds yeah because we i mean i'm just gonna jump on a limb and say and and i would think you would agree with this i read you really well you're a witch um well i think we can agree that i'm a wish i was hoping you'd say i'm not a witch i mean what i know but we already said it thank you i know what it is call back i'm not a witch on your wife there there's there's did it work i know i know i know i knew it wouldn't work i was trying to like overuse it to try to get a laugh but i don't know how many times more you'd have to use it before it was funny i'm not a witch i'm your wife i'm not a witch i'm your wife not a witch i need a three i needed three more and then it was kind of funny i'm not even laughing like i'm laughing i'm like slightly embarrassed at myself right now like what are you doing stop it's not funny okay so what was i gonna say oh and oh and this oh it used to make me so so i would feel not make me i'll i'll rephrase i would feel so much anger because i'm the only one that could do the feeling of the anger you weren't making me do a nice non-violent communication thank you i would feel a lot of anger when i perceived that i was reading you correctly and you would say that i wasn't but i think sometimes you didn't even really know what you were feeling and think you never tried to just like ignore it trying to make it okay and i'd say what's wrong that's nothing it's fine something was wrong but you were saying in the moment it's fine i've forgotten it but i could tell something was up so like i'm reading all these nonverbal cues and that would just it seemed like it would just like frustrate the hell out of you but now you're tuned in now too to my energy and that feels good but i now know what you felt because sometimes i'm like i just want to walk through the kitchen and not have michael go what's up [Laughter] i have to like clear all of it all my own energies before i walk through the kitchen i know michael's gonna fucking look at me and be like what's wrong and i just don't want to talk about it right now and i can't lie like neither one of like we're not yeah we're not good at lying to each other which i'm really glad yeah i'm not very interested in it either yeah i'm not interested in being a good liar but but you're a better liar than i am am i i think so i don't know we could fight about this we kept for a life fight what if that was that you know whenever i'm trying to like be sneaky it's well no yeah i i feel like fails it's not that yeah i feel like it's not that your line you try to be this is yeah one thing about you it's like you try to be sneaky to try to find a loophole i'm like you are being the sneaky son of a gun real slick tongue know how to use those words you use words well [Laughter] um wow we gotta i don't i don't know what we're talking about you wanted to walk through the kitchen without feeling that i was reading your non-verbal oh we were talking about like where things yeah turn for us and sometimes it's just the very subtle non-verbal cues that we're giving each other we're so tuned into each other that like sometimes we just don't let it go yeah and and that can that points to like the ego's love of being right i know i have to win i have to know i'm right and i need you to tell me and a lot of times the fights can just become about that yeah i just need you to admit you're wrong i'm right and that's an ego party yeah so some of the things that have been helpful for us have been some systems that help you identify patterns in the ego like the enneagram that was very helpful i think for understanding patterns not only in the other person but in yourself of like the the kind of defenses that you tend to go into the type of coping mechanisms that you type that you tend to go into i think it was these passed past glad you got my attention for that now see what that was was passive communication passive aggressive communication that's not what i was joking but okay you know what i mean i know what you mean we don't need that kind of communication though we don't need it especially if you're going to oh do i know passive aggressive if you're going to be cooped up with somebody in a coronavirus household coronavirus household wait like are you talking to just the people with coronavirus talking to you what is a virus keeping it relevant to the times you may want to not do you may want to avoid little communication jabs that are a little even like yeah that little that little thing i just said i mean i wasn't really bothered but it was it still was a little pokey like [Music] and maybe we should be careful of those in times like these you know you should be careful with that you should be careful we're in a coronavirus household you don't know what's gonna happen no but you're right there's a kindness like i mean we should always there should always be a kindness but like especially now yeah oh i was talking about the enneagram and then there's this other thing called instinctual drives that has been helpful for me this year a lot it's kind of an enneagram-ish thing but it's built more for um like your work habits and stuff and lisa and i work together so that was really helpful for us as well kind of seeing some of the specific nuances of how you tend to work well and these kind of things where you're just like learning about your patterns you know so one of the things that came up for us last year in our fighting and recognizing some of the patterns was when i get defensive as an enneagram five i tend to kind of put out prickles it's like i need my space don't encroach on my space protect yourself with those persons yeah and i feel like i protect myself with it and that's the structure of the ego the wound for for me and then for her as an enneagram too it can be more like a glue so mine was the prickles of the goo the goo goo not the glue not the clothes the glue yeah her feeling like something's wrong and then moving in to try to help and fix it kind of in the most unhealthy times kind of glomming on to a situation and so you've got the prickles and the goo like trying to defend and it just turns into it can get can get bad yeah it can get bad because then it can like create its own cycle like yeah i need space come here come here i want to move i want to move in and help fix whatever is wrong or not even fixed just like hold let me just hold you and that's like not the right time so then if i feel the prickles enough then i'm like cool peace out um i don't want to stick around and then that's just a cycle yeah so those things there can also be there's an other side of that though is you can easily because you learn about each other's patterns you learn about your own patterns but then you can use that in ways like if you if you have the other person's number and you use that against them then it's actually worse like it's not if she pulls out that prickle card now while we're in the middle like if i say you're being prickly yeah and let's say i'm not being prickly and you in my mind and you pull it out now there's this well no that's not now and you might be like i know you this is no and that might make me mad yeah you know me how about you just pay attention to me right now and see what's happening yeah yeah you know and then so you can like yeah nobody wants to be boxed in yeah saying i know you this is what you do what you do this is the pattern you do yeah so it can make it worse [Music] maybe we can start moving towards like how how we can recognize this when that the pattern of moving from conversation and even disagreement into fighting into that place where it's like we're not maybe communicating we're not being heard we're not hearing we're just kind of emoting now at each other and it's just kind of sliding into all sorts of places now we're talking about your mother and now we're talking about what that thing that happened 10 years ago and now and we're just kind of in this ambiguous emotional space that often isn't the productive cough that's a really gross analogy but it works you want to be the productive cough yeah so how do you start recognizing when you might be sliding into that more destructive wave i think i just i can feel i can feel it two places i mean i can feel it in my body like i feel tightness in my chest and when i feel that i have to give myself space just to relax because if i'm on the defense and feel like i need to protect myself it's really difficult to engage in any kind of helpful conversation but even that like to me the most helpful thing has been doing individual work to know like if you don't feel safe within your own body you're not going to feel safe with anyone so the times i've felt most triggered and most um like our fight is just chaos and i don't know how to get out of it and everything seems hopeless because i just i didn't feel okay on my own so now that i feel that i feel like i can get engaged in conversations with you and know that no matter what like i i'm okay so there even if i start feeling it in my chest sometimes i'll just tell myself like you're okay there's no threat here and i'll just remind myself because my i feel my body's wanting to go into like fight-or-flight mode but i feel that's where i feel i can feel it here and then i can almost feel like my reasoning my logic folding in on itself and it's where it's when i start distrusting like you'll say something and the first sometimes the first inclination is like oh yeah but then there's this thought that comes in that's like wait did you really trust you really trusted what he just said and i'm like wait yeah wait should i not oh my god like this it's this like intense feeling like someone's out to get you and someone's out to trick you i mean not even just someone like this person that you love they're trying to trick you and that's such a terrifying feeling and that's where things get bad for me if i start distrusting the words that someone is saying if i feel like there's not authenticity which but for both of us on that id thing that you just mentioned we both have really high authenticate scores and so even if energetically i'm feeling like someone's not being authentic i it can it can like derail the conversation and that's what turns into an argument but then what i've been doing is reminding myself that i'm okay and then seeing just taking the time to see what it is that i'm projecting or is it them that's trying to find a loophole or am i very often we are only seeing what's inside of us so these are like the patterns i go through in my head as we're having a conversation that i feel like is like slowly devolving into an argument and though yeah those have been really helpful tools for me to just be able to pause so even sometimes we'll verbally say that to each other like hey i just need to pause here for a minute um and we used to not do that we used to think like we had to plow through a fight remember we were like you can't you can't leave the room you can't i mean we have a lot of rules we we couldn't call each other names or we still we don't call each other names we don't cuss at each other which we've been breaking a lot or not at each other no it's just like just cussing in an argument and we've broken that lots of times a lot of times oh god but um yeah we've got some doozies we've had some doozies but even in that like we could talk about that unless you were wanting to steer a different way but like how do we communicate our anger in a healthy way because i can i think even that that's a good tool in the tool in the tool belt so i have these tools to help me listen to my body and know what i'm feeling but also there is a time for anger and i don't think we do that well as human beings it's i think there's a place for angry that we can be angry but it not really harm someone else i mean even it's hard though it's hard yeah especially certain certain wounds certain personalities that uh get more activated by anger if they had maybe an angry dad or you know whatever um yeah that was me yeah like when yeah feeling the freedom to be able to to experience all the emotions and know how to do that well is something that we work on a lot of i think for with our own selves and even with our kids and like how do we how do we find a way to experience the full gamut of human emotions together but express them and uh experience them in ways that are not destructive for ourselves or others and that can be tricky and so some of these these little tricks like don't call each other names we've i found that if we're cussing a lot during fights it can tend to ramp up the emotions yeah so that's why we kind of have like just just don't use cuss words yeah uh and occasionally we don't follow that one but we follow the other ones yeah uh yeah and that's that's been helpful taking a break when you need it and just asking for it and giving each other that space to be like okay that's been really helpful for me finding out that not everyone gets over things at the same speed our therapist okay our therapist never it's hard to get her to laugh at things like she's she's a badass but she straight up laughed at michael so this will sound this is this shows you how dumb i can be so i [Laughter] she was upset about something and i apologized and and it kept for me it kept coming back up so we went to the therapist office i was like it's been like four hours four or five hours since this thing happened and she still just keeps wanting to talk about it and the therapist laughed in my face i think then she she laughed and she thought you were like being sarcastic yeah she goes you're not being sincere are you [Laughter] and we've tried to get her to laugh several times but she hadn't and then she finally laughed at that and it was perfect i was like ah enough said enough said therapist yeah and i mean that's when oh wait go ahead but i mean that's like i get i get over things quite quickly you're not full human you call yourself the alien so this shouldn't be a surprise i'm just like give me two minutes tops like if the world ends give me two minutes to breathe for a minute and then okay yeah we're good and that can be disconcerting to a human being totally like we've been in you'll see all of a sudden i'll start getting angry and let's take a few moments of breathing i'm like okay and you're like it comes across kind of crazy sometimes it feels real creepy yeah cause like now i'm actually totally fine and i had just been super angry like 30 seconds ago yeah it can be uncomfortable for the witness very uncomfortable so i've had to learn like different time scales of what it takes to get those emotions out of the brain or out of the body or whatever yeah but but i think also a lot of us were taught that like well you say sorry and then that's it and so i mean we've had that discussion like you'll say i said i'm sorry and i'm going uh okay but but it feels like my body like i'm i'm like my arm was cough and i'm still bleeding and sorry yeah this isn't helpful all the cortisol and all the chemicals yeah it's all rushing and i like how um one of amelie's teachers put it i think we talked about this before a while ago on the podcast but like it's like when you squeeze out some toothpaste onto your hand you can wipe the toothpaste off but the residue is still there so like someone can say oh i'm sorry like i'll take that away but the residue of the pain is is still there and maybe this would be a good time to bring in i was actually talking to hillary um about this oh she just texted back and she said it's totally cool to share real nice people so there was something something was kept coming up for me and i had it was actually in this pretty like triggered state i was pretty panicked and hillary was like trying to get me back in my body leading me through some grounding exercises and then i just felt really angry because i was like why does i don't want this feeling to keep coming up why is this happening i keep i feel like i'm forgiving i feel like i'm letting go am i and i just felt like i was you can like turn on yourself it's like i'm a bad person for not for still feeling this like pain i feel still feeling like the residue of the toothpaste you know so this is something that hillary said she said when we keep when we keep coming back to things and there's a there's a list first one is sometimes even after an apology the behavior persists so our body is telling us it's not over another reason we keep coming back to things is sometimes the anger is telling us there is a thread that is underneath the unhelpful behavior and we have to see the link because every time we brought it up it was the specific things but not the real issue or the cord that ties them all together or another one is sometimes when we're angry and the other person apologizes it becomes about them and we disappear in that and that is a kind of other hurt so we need more time to explore and have them listen to and be curious about our pain that one was interesting for me because like i think i resonated with that not that it was not that it's like other people who specifically are like trying to cover up my pain but i can recognize if like i'm arguing with someone if i'm arguing with you and then or i say hey this really hurt me and then you feel sad and you cry all of a sudden it's like a switch is flipped and i'm just i just want to care for you and make you feel better instead of say just give space for my own anger and pain it's like the sorry and the sadness covers up and makes it any all of my anger disappear which i've thought is a good thing to me i'm like oh yeah it's all gone that's fine but i'm not actually sometimes people don't actually receive the apology they need or even just the space to be heard and someone to say yes okay i hear you but that's that's my own thing i can that i've finally been able to recognize that's my pattern that i feel like i have to move in like as a two and help heal help someone else because my me expressing my pain has hurt them so i need to in turn fix their pain and so then i don't really get the space that i need so something else she said was sometimes it can be helpful to stay with the anger as an experience in our body so just track sensations without trying to direct it anywhere and i've been trying that it's been really helpful instead of trying to ignore it like i feel like i just don't want to oh and that's like right that's like creating the suffering because i don't want what is happening and then that's like this suffering spiral so i've been just tracking the pain where i feel it and just like saying thank you to my body for feeling that and letting me know that something is up trying to survive yeah another one is sometimes the anger is a protective part of us that is rising up but what needs the attention is the hurt part that needs space to grieve we can try tracking with the sensations of grief or sadness in our body and then sometimes we just get stuck and need to do emdr or just help our body uh release it like such a there are other times it just can get the trauma the anger can get stuck in our in our body and we do different practices to release it so i think those all were really helpful for me yeah those are great thank you [Music] i do think a lot of this comes down to communication most of us are bad at communication well yeah because how do it's amazing to me that we can communicate about anything that's what i've learned yeah that's true you're trying to exp you're trying to communicate an inner set of body sensations into concepts that are going to translate and it's just it's a low resolution low resolution we're having fundamentally different experiences yeah we're trying to communicate that with with words and all of these words are loaded with different experiences like how often have we just come to realize the one word we're using we don't agree on what the yeah we had a fight at christmas time it wasn't us it was my my sister-in-law yeah so my sister and uh my family so they had a well not to tell the whole story but it was basically what was the word the word was i was kind of like mischievous it was see and i thought it was kind of like crotchety is it rascal no he's uh it was something that they used to call my gran my great-grandfather andre henry henry and so so my sister posted a picture of lucy and said she's andre or someone no no someone else commented and said oh she looks ornery like her aunt and my sister commented back and said ah i think she got that from her daddy and then someone in michael's family got really upset by it and they were like michael's not hungry at all i think you are blah blah blah blah blah and so it ended up to where like they blocked each other on facebook thanksgiving was it thanks for christmas yeah thanksgiving thanksgiving and so my sister comes in and tells us this and we're her and i are laughing and i was like what i can't believe that all just happened and michael are laughing and and then i finally was like the funny thing is michael is on me i was kind of like and then he frowned at me and he was like that's not nice and i was like wait a minute what do you think this word means and he's like that means you're like a crotchety yeah like grumpy crumpy person and i was like no it means you're like mischievous and fun and playful and like and michael's like that is not what that means and we looked it up and sure enough that's not what it means like michael was right but then but then i looked up again later oh that's right and in some places in the midwest they use it in that other way that i use it growing up but and it's just an example of like how every word carries connotation carries history carries how your mom used it like that was so funny because her mom was there too and all of them were going yeah it's fine the two the three siblings and her mom got like no that's the means mrs i'm like i think you're all wrong yeah that's right we were all we were all right depending on where you lived we were all right uh but that's communication so yeah and that's not to mention all the poor ways we communicate just because not just because of the nature of language but because of the brokenness on wounds and like passive aggressiveness and not knowing what we want and then not communicating what we want all the ways it's just it gets real messy and so like how can we communicate in a way i think if we understood each other um i think that personally this is what almost all fighting comes down to is communication because it's like the uh i use this as a point but um what is that or orson scott card book that where he it's like he goes around the character the no but basically the guy goes around and um speaks for the dead speaker of the dead oh yeah and like says all the truth about them and if you like it you kind of hate it at first because this is he says all kinds of bad things about them but then the when you get to kind of completely know them you love them because you you see where it's coming from all that all those stuff was coming from and i think if we actually could see where each other are coming from fully yeah we would all love each other but we miss each other and we don't we misinterpret where they're coming from and what was intended and so some communication strategies there's three that i wanted to talk about that have been helpful and one of them particularly for me is that passive thing so like direct communication and a part of this is because that id thing my coach i have a executive coach that was bringing me through some of that stuff and she was telling me that her daughter has the same id or similar ones as me and her friend had an id that was similar to somebody that i was having some some problems with in my life like couldn't get on the same page and there's a story she's like her daughter was in the car chewing some gum had some gum and the friend goes oh what kind of gum is that and the daughter goes spearmint she's like oh cool is it good yeah it's delicious [Laughter] she wants the gum see and lisa heard that before he knew that i would've she's telling me the story the coach is telling me and so the coach looks at her down and goes i wonder if she wants some gum she goes oh do you want some gum so i'd love some here you go while i was hearing that story it did not occur to me that the other kid wanted the gum yeah i was like oh she's a yeah that's information yeah yeah so that sort of communication for a lot of i mean some people are more dialed in to the subtle passive ways of communicating and it's easier to read between the lines and some of us have no idea what the hell you're talking about literally like no idea you think that person probably thought that other kid probably thought she actually asked for a piece of gum yeah yeah in her mind that's the kindest way yeah like some people they feel like it would be rude to be direct like my family it was all about passive aggressiveness yeah like that will be kind of funny and cheeky about it that like smooth things over and so if i would do that with you oh my god that like you hated that and i couldn't understand that for the longest time you're like just i would rather you say it and even if you like want to be mean about it yeah but i was like no but that's if i put like a joke in there that's better and that's like our how our whole family was like just be be direct what yeah direct communication i'm a big fan of it i'm a big big fan of it like and i am i am too now yeah it's the way to go it's helped us a lot yeah i think too i get why you're trying to make each other feel comfortable but it doesn't work like there's stuff under the surface and then it's just kind of like we know we're not talking about the real thing it just kind of creates this weird dance and mask yeah between each other so like direct communication finding and avoiding as much passive and passive aggressive communication as possible it's been extremely beneficial for me yeah so even there was something that was said like the direct communication even as simple as like was it last night you're you're like it was a joking you're like are you going to want to have sex with me again and i was like i would prefer you to say hey i'd like to have sex with you rather than like making it about me like yeah something that i'm doing just say what you want instead of you're trying to make a joke of something you think i want or don't want yeah just try to make a joke about it like just no don't put that on me what do you want yep correct and uh i appreciate you bringing that oh baby so like what you're talking about is this reminds me of a time when oh just last night oh what a coincidence we're not experts folks but it's fun that being experts because they're like i say that it's fun but but i feel like we can joke about things like that the like if we were both therapists there's things we couldn't share about yeah it's true so that's true but i also you need them all also i was able to recognize the truth of what you were saying that i was like oh that was passive thank you yeah yeah i didn't realize i i felt like i was being playful and flirty but saw that it was being a little passive yeah and so i i actually did appreciate you saying it yeah um okay so that's one one little thumbs up recommendation thumbs up communication direct communication active listening it's so easy especially when you start fighting to like just get what's on your mind queued up while the other person's talking yeah but to listen and then when it at some points if it get if it gets too heated we've made like intentional decisions to like slow it down the conversation okay you tell me what you're saying and i'm gonna repeat it to you this is what i hear you saying and that sometimes just like slowing down the pace of a conversation and making it so that you know what it was actually communicated and repeating it back can be a really helpful way of getting back to a similar page where you're not just like totally on opposite pages trying to talk about what you don't know what you're trying to talk about so active listening really working on that and then that non-violent communication thing that i alluded to earlier sometimes when it's gotten if it's really we're missing each other we've tried to employ some of these little tricks that we've pulled from other people in books and fighting through the years where it's like okay have a more formal situation like okay so there's a there's a book about non-violent communication but it's taught as a four-step process usually so observation feeling need and request so the observation part of it is basically you you try to speak as objectively as possible so rather than saying when you asked for sex passively it's like when i heard you say you know speaking of as objectively as possible see even still putting it on me like i heard you say this yeah so observation being like as distanced from the emotion as possible and just owning your own sense of observation this is what i observed and then feeling your own feelings about it so not you made me feel guilty for asking sex for sex in a passive way but like i felt sad that you needed to communicate in a way that wasn't direct with me kind of but focusing more on your own feelings about it rather than what actually happened what you think they did you know what it reminds me of what boston legal that that lawyer that the no no the judge who always like wanted people to say in my perspective yeah yeah and everyone's like why do i have a person of course it's my perspective but there's even even that like a lot of these things it's like sometimes it's exhausting and it's funny and it's nice to let a little steam out by like making fun of how we talk like this feels like very like it's it is so healthy and so careful very different than like what i grew up with um so sometimes it's just like fun to make fun of it but yes it's needed because that really does set a different tone you say in my perspective rather than no this is how it is yeah you go no you can't just make a declaration of like how it is for both of us yeah and also focusing on your own feelings that's not something that the other person can argue yeah because you're not making any accusations you're just simply observing and then saying your own feelings about what that observation what kind of feelings were elicited in that observation and then from there you can speak to the need which is like you know i need to feel safe to communicate with you in a way that's true for me and that doesn't feel like i'm hiding or lying and communicating that need my need and then any requests from there and a lot of times that can be requests for communication i would request that you tell me more you know directly when you're feeling like that so that i can hear you you know um and when you go about it like that it's it's so much harder to get into the really bad cycles yeah where you're totally on different pages yeah and you're you're just demoting at each other where you're actually let's get down to what's actually happening here in me and then i can communicate that from where i'm coming from you can be that you're coming from we can find a way to get back yeah same plane yeah and the thing that like really trips us up is or has been tripping us up i feel like we've already gotten better at it is when we say i hear you saying this and you're like that's not what i said and i'll go but you just said you're like no that's not what i said what i said was blah blah blah okay this and so we get in this loop of like what's the exact words that you said we just like started picking apart no you said we've recorded our conversation several times cause like i know i know a lot of you out there have felt this way like you start to feel crazy you start to feel crazy and then the ego or whatever it is is trying to like you feel unsafe again and you feel like what is this you want to protect yourself and try to make someone else the enemy because you start to feel crazy you don't want to be the crazy person so they must be crazy although i have had times i'm like no i i must i must be crazy because i i thought i just heard this and they're saying they didn't say this but what's been helpful for us that we've that we've uh our wonderful therapist has brought to light as well so a lot of times it's even like the spirit of what we're trying to say she's like i see you guys getting caught up like yeah words are important but you're really getting hung up on the exact words i think i was like oh yeah we are yeah i see that now like we don't need to get into those muddy waters like we can believe or another good tool is like believing the other person is for you because in a fight you can really start believing they're not for you so like that pause you talked about you can pause center yourself and just remember we're for each other this person's for me they're not against me and how can i even be for them yeah that's good and there's also purposeful positivity that can give some buffer for some of that that stuff sometimes like sometimes the conversation i've noticed if we haven't had enough positive interactions um where we feel like you know if we've just just been in a zone we're getting stuff done we're kind of like in co-parent co-worker co-everything zone but not we haven't had much time for you and me it's much easier for little things to turn into bigger things than they need to be so like sometimes really focusing on having positive interactions positive saying positive things to each other earlier in our marriage we used to do this thing every night where we would think of something that we loved about each other before we go to bed heard like a couple things and say that and just say them i love this about you and i love what the what you did today this i love thank you for doing that thing today so like expressing gratitude expressing love expressing compliments things that are just like putting gas in the tank uh when you know there's going to be some cost you're there's some high mileage driving right now everybody being cooped up and so as much as you can put reserves emotionally into each other and some positivity some compliments expressions of gratitude that might soften the times when you really need to put the petal to the metal oh my gosh the petal to the metal is that like a 80s or 90s phrase i haven't heard that one a little very long time yep it's hard work relationships are hard work and it's also really fun and wonderful and um but you're with any one person for long enough you're gonna run into some ego wounds somewhere along the way and what i'm trying to practice even in fights is i i used to think that there would be a time where i just was like zenned out and wouldn't have the emotions and like that was the that was that was the place to like get to just be cool with whatever but like letting the emotions come you're gonna feel sadness you're gonna feel anger you're gonna keep feeling all the emotions probably even more if the more like conscious and aware you are you're more aware of every emotion but becoming the witness of the emotions instead of the reactor to it i like the imagery of like you can feel the wave but are you gonna go under the wave and feel like the depth of it or are you gonna like sit on top of the wave and just be like crushed by it and swirl around and round and round and round uh but it is it is a practice to be the witness and not not that there's like a place a thing to attain but like what i would what i would like in my arguments with anyone is the ability like the jedi power to not just react to their anger like just see it as the story happening and let them just even if someone's just like unleashing their anger on me i can just witness it and experience it and not fight back with the same weapon that they're using you know yeah to be a space in which all emotions are welcome to to be in yeah yeah i always do that with you every time every time i'm just the witness uh you're the only one who gets mad in our fights thanks babe we better yeah and if anything yeah just we're here for you all we've had some doozy fights i don't know if that makes anyone feel better feel good we've had some fights we're together we're here got some good ones all right well i don't know why i thought that would be encouraging it might be hey you guys know what we fight i think it might be a lot of people like i don't know i guess it's always i love i love hearing about my friends fights yeah i think it's really funny to hear like their reactions yeah when you hear about your friends fights there's the comedic relief you're all like oh okay we're all doing this thing yeah okay cool i'm not i'm not the only one so yeah well thank you for being on the program oh my gosh my partner which wife opened wife you're very welcome my alien vishnu that doesn't really roll off the tongue very well good enough okay okay everybody love you fight fight fair be nice like me the nice guy [Music]