Revisiting a Rocky Moment
Hold Me Tight: Revisiting A Rocky Moment
Have you ever conducted a post-mortem with an ex? You know, that conversation with an ex-lover where you both find out what went wrong, and where and why your relationship reached its time of death. It can be an incredibly informative and insightful conversation – if it’s not overrun by intense negative emotions from both parties, as is the case for conversations you can have with your current partner, whether through relationship counselling or just on your own!
One of those conversations is the one where you address a previous scuffle, unpacking and understanding why and how that disconnect happened. The purpose of this conversation is to make sure your life together is as meaningful and fulfilling as possible, but it’s much easier to do for people who feel secure in their relationships. According to Dr. Sue Johnson, those who do, find it to be second-nature to stand back and reflect on what’s going on with their partner, even going so far as to take responsibility and ownership over the part they played in the process.
It's almost a circular relationship – those who feel secure in their relationships find it easier to dissect and de-escalate the conflict, but in order to get to that sense of security, you have to be able to deal with conflict in that way. That’s how your relationship will be able to build a sense of emotional safety, you just have to keep in mind two fundamental elements of de-escalation:
When one partner responds poorly to their counterpart’s attempts at conflict resolution, it can be deeply painful and emotionally threatening to them
A negative reaction can be a last-ditch attempt to deal with fears surrounding attachment needs
In order to have a productive conversation with your partner in the middle of a screaming match, you need to be able to understand and share each other’s fears and insecurities that are driving the argument in the first place. In the same stroke, both parties also have to be able to accept what the other person is saying, taking responsibility for the role that they played in contributing to the conflict – a core tenet of emotionally focused couples therapy.
Of course, being able to de-escalate a conflict in this manner can be an incredibly daunting task, but here’s a quick exercise you and your partner can do to practice!
Together, pick a recent unsettling (something not too serious) incident from your relationship, and write it down concretely – what tangibly happened and its concrete result. Try and write it from a third-party perspective, watching the incident unfold. Similarly, write out how you contributed to the incident – what you did, what you said, in what order, from the perspective of a fly on the wall.
Add in your feelings – how you both felt and why an emotional response was elicited by either one (or both) of you. Share your responses with each other, and hopefully you can agree on a version that satisfies both of you. With an open mind, ask each other about the deeper feelings that might have been going on for your partner. With this genuine curiosity, see if you can find out what’s going on beneath the surface, and confirm with your partner if your ideas are correct.
Once you’ve finished with that difficult situation, try and imagine an alternative reality where the conflict ended in a way that strengthened and re-affirmed the bond between the two of you. What actions would you both have taken to get to that place? How would the result be different – for your relationship and for the two of you individually? How would you have felt differently about one another?
Once you feel ready for it and you’ve done a few “practice rounds”, try running the same exercise with a deeper and more serious conflict. Soon it’ll become second nature, and you’ll both be able to address conflicts like this in the moment. You’ll find that your relationship becomes less hostile, and you’re more able to disagree without it turning into a screaming match. You’ll even learn a lot about each other that you didn’t know before! To learn more about how to interact with each other in a way that strengthens your bond, reach out to Relationship Counselling Toronto to see how couples therapy can best support you and your partner.
