The Best Way To Fight - Naked Quickie - Episode 51

In this episode, Joel is putting Tammy on the spot again.  His question this week?  "What is the best way to fight?"

Listen as Tammy shares some tips and strategies, that she has learned and practiced in her marriage,  for healthy fighting.

We all fight in marriage.  So, the goal is not eliminating the fighting but rather learning how to fight in a healthy and productive way.   

Whether you're newlyweds or have been married for decades, these strategies can help strengthen your relationship and foster a deeper sense of connection with your partner.

Transcript

Sometimes we only have time for a quickie, so here it is, your Naked quickie.

Welcome to the Married to Naked podcast. This is the Naked quickie edition where Joel is going to challenge me with some questions that he has come across on social media, or I've heard people ask me, and we're gonna supply you with some thoughts and ideas on. In a short form here because sometimes you just wanna listen to the quick bullet points of a podcast rather than maybe the full hour.

So we wanna honor that and give you some quick thoughts on that particular topic. So what do you have for me today? Well, first of all, I just have to say thank you so much for be willing to. Basically be vulnerable and, and answer these questions because I feel like I'm being selfish for all these years.

And anytime I have an issue with thought a que, I ask you, you're my expert, you're my, my guide for everything. In fact, that we even say it in our, our intro, like, I'm just the Guinea pig for all these lessons that I get to learn with you. So I thank you for that. So, no, you're welcome. It's, I'm scared. I never know what you're gonna ask me, so it's scary.

Well, this one, yeah, this one might be a little scary, so, oh, you didn't set that up. Good. Now I'm really nervous. Well, so this actually comes from a very recent thing. You and I did, uhoh last night. You and I were lying in bed watching TikTok. Yes. And we were looking for topics and we were looking for, you know, just kind of, we were doing some marriage research, marriage research, and one of the things that I kept seeing was, Fights.

Mm-hmm. Like how people fight. And so what I thought I would ask you is Tammy Green, what is the best way to fight? Hmm. Uh, this cannot be in a quickie. You gotta, this is a quickie, so no way. Bullet. We need to make this a full on episode, but I will give you some quick thoughts on what I think about fights and how it's worked in our relationship and the things that we've learned.

And I think one of the things that I've learned, I'll speak for myself, is that we, you and I have different style. Of fighting and those. Pretty big. So you tend to come at fights sometimes big and loud, and I tend to curl up into a little ball and retreat or I literally retreat, and those don't really work for resolving issues.

So I think it's really important to kind of analyze and understand your own. Style of arguing and something I think is most important that I've learned in arguments is that I'll talk about two things. One, I is something we're still, well, we work on both of these all the time, but one we just did an episode on regarding some guidance from Brene Brown about understanding the stories that we tell ourselves and coming to these.

Discussions or arguments by saying, the story I'm telling myself is, so sometimes the reason you start an argument is cuz you made up a story in your head about what your partner thinks or why they're bringing this particular issue to you, or whatever it may be. We've understood that. When we can pull back and say, Hey, what my head, what I'm telling myself in my head is, the story I'm making up is, and I can say that to.

It allows you to clarify and make sense of what I might be telling myself, because if I just let that go and go and go, what I'm telling myself in my head, then it could just. Go down this rabbit hole of an argument that's totally and completely unnecessary and based on untruths. So I think it's really important to analyze your own head, like what's going on in your head, making sure that you're speaking from a place of like truth and, and owning up to that story so that your partner can clarify.

That's one thing that you and I work on. The, the second thing that I think has. Really impactful and something that is extremely difficult to do is managing our own defenses. Hmm. The thing that happens in an argument is you are defending yourself. Right. That's why you're arguing. I'm defending myself against whatever you're saying.

You're defending yourself against whatever I'm saying. And if we stay in that defense, What happens is the argument just continues and continues and continues. If we're blaming, it just continues and continues. So something that works really well when we're able to, and I'm not even going to pretend this is easy, cuz it is not, it is really hard, but it is recognizing when your defenses are up and then being able.

Pull them down and being able to hear your partner from a place of more compassion and understanding rather than defense. And you know, like I said, that's incredibly difficult to do. And one of the things that takes is an incredible amount of self-awareness, and that's something we work on constantly, is trying to get to know ourselves better and better.

We have to understand what's going on in our head. We have to underst. Why are we being triggered? We have to recognize, oh, I am being so defensive here. This isn't getting anywhere. I gotta shut that down so I can truly and honestly hear you, because if I'm defensive, all I'm doing in my head when you're talking to me is planning my defense.

Yes. It's totally ineffective. So that's a strategy that we work on, is laying down those defenses and the, I think one of the other things we've talked, I mean I could talk a lot about arguments and, and the importance of accountability, but also the importance of being able to apologize and being able to own up to your own thing and say you're sorry.

For it in a really genuine way, and we work on that too. Like we look back and say, we talked about this on a previous podcast too, like we're analyzing the argument. What did I do here? What is the story I'm telling myself? How can I own up and be accountable here for my own little piece of this argument?

And then say a really genuine apology to you. Because when we can apologize that way, what it does is diminish the heat of that argument and allow you to talk on a different level. So I think the point is how do we take this heat down and make sure that we're talking from a place of love for each other and respect rather than defensiveness and anger, you know?

So if we're looking at just a quick bullet here. Some tips on fighting well, fighting fair. It is laying down defenses. It is learning to say the story I'm telling myself, recognizing what we're saying in our head, and then really being able to kind of own up and apologize for those things in a very genuine way.

That sounds wonderful, and I think you're right this, this should be a full episode. We should ex, I think we did one way back in the beginning, but I think it's time for us to revisit this idea because. I if you can't. And what we found is we couldn't get through conflict because we were just in it. We were so defensive, we were just angry all the time.

If you don't have good strategies to work through conflict, I guarantee you are going to struggle immensely. In marriage. So it's a really important topic. Absolutely. Well, Tammy, thank you so much for your wisdom, and there is another episode of a Naked Quickie. All right. Bye everybody. Bye.