The Married And Naked Podcast - Marriage Secrets Revealed
Hosts Tammy and Joel Greene bare it all for the sake of marriage. Sharing all the tips and tricks that have helped them maintain a (mostly) happy marriage of over 26 years.
This is more than a discussion about their marriage. This is a guide to help every couple reach their "happy ever after."
Let's get naked! For more marriage tips, advice or to ask us a question, go to https://married-and-naked.com
The Married And Naked Podcast - Marriage Secrets Revealed
3 Ways We Fight Fair - Episode 69
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After 27 years of marriage, we have learned that fighting is not only inevitable but it’s actually an important part of a healthy relationship. The key isn’t trying to avoid disagreements altogether, but learning how to navigate them in ways that bring us closer instead of tearing us apart.
In this episode, we open up about our journey of learning to fight fair, the mistakes we’ve made along the way, and the powerful shifts that turned our conflicts from destructive battles into opportunities for deeper connection.
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Welcome to the Married and Naked Podcast. I'm Tammy, founder of the blog Married and Naked, certified sexuality coach and speaker.
Speaker 2:And I'm Joel, tv host, motivational speaker and the guinea pig to the lessons you're about to learn.
Speaker 1:We're high school sweethearts, married over two decades, and we're on a mission to help you create the marriage you desire and deserve. Let's get naked. Welcome to the Married and Naked podcast. Hi everybody, I'm happy to be here with you. How are you, sweetie?
Speaker 2:I am good, I'm happy to be here with you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. You just got me some chocolate because my brain is feeling slow and sluggish. I really needed a pick-me-up, so thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I really wish we can show everything that happens before we hit record on the podcast. There's a lot going on.
Speaker 1:Mostly me complaining.
Speaker 2:I mean, I wasn't going to say that I wasn't going to call you out, but one of the complaints was very justified. We record this in our extra bedroom and we had two flies come in this room and we're bouncing off the window in the mirror back and forth for about 20 minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is such an annoying sound, it is so bad.
Speaker 2:We got rid of it and then my son came in to help us with the technical stuff and he let it back in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our son's been setting up our podcast for us. I'm tired with the technical stuff and he's good at it. He's incredible at it he really is. It's really nice.
Speaker 2:It is, it is.
Speaker 1:And he does it for free.
Speaker 2:So far, so far.
Speaker 1:For now.
Speaker 2:I was thinking about today, like the season we're in. He starts his senior year of high school in two days which is crazy. And then, a week from that, we celebrate our 27-year anniversary Crazy. And tomorrow I'm literally getting specific about all the days we're actually going to do a walkthrough to his potential college for next year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, not sure I'm going to survive all this change. That's college for next year. Yeah, wow, not sure I'm going to survive all this change.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of change. Yeah, our daughter's moving out soon, so this is wow.
Speaker 1:It's just going to be you and I here soon. It's going to be you and I. What on earth are we going to do?
Speaker 2:We'll actually be married and naked. There you go, sorry.
Speaker 1:I just want to make sure I work it in there somehow. What do you think we'll do? What is your thought? We're still a ways away, by the way. I'm very focused on myself and how much.
Speaker 2:I'm going to miss them yeah.
Speaker 1:That's where I'm at. I'm sure we'll get to the Married and Naked stuff. Before that I got to get through the sadness stuff. I think everybody handles it differently but I've had a lot of people I've talked to that have, that are having the time of their lives. You know others that are having a real hard adjustment or I think, more likely, you kind of have a hard adjustment and then hopefully evolve into just enjoying that time in your life, which is what I'm hoping for.
Speaker 2:We waited several years to have our first kid, which was cool. We got to be without kids, we got to travel, we got to do a lot of cool things, and then, obviously, you parents out there know that kids change everything and for the next it's been what 23 years for us Like. Now you're starting to think, oh wow, we're going to go back to what we were before.
Speaker 1:Question mark question mark. You know I think it's impossible to go back to what you were before. Question mark question mark. You know I think it's impossible to go back to what you were before. We've changed as human beings, but I hope that we get to look forward to, you know, a new time we've never had before Freedom that comes with being older and more financially secure. Before our daughter's financial insecurity and I don't feel like it was a time of like freedom. Let's go travel and all that. We didn't have the money to do that kind of stuff. Yeah, the travel we did, we did it on a very, very tight budget and now my hope is that we do get to travel a lot and really explore the world without time constraints. That'll be interesting to not be running our life around a school schedule. But it also makes me sad, you know. I look at all the people buying school supplies for their kids and our son has never been interested in shopping for clothes or school supplies. He could really care less.
Speaker 1:He's had the same backpack for three years. He does not want a new one.
Speaker 2:I have to beg him to get him a new pair of shoes. Yeah, it's just Once a year.
Speaker 1:It's just not his thing, yeah. So once my daughter graduated, I didn't get to do that anymore. I'm not going to get to do that anymore. So that makes me sad looking at people going shoe shopping or school shopping. So it's a weird adjustment already and our kids are still at home, but I can't even imagine when they're gone. But I do look forward to having a sense of freedom that we don't have now. I definitely do.
Speaker 2:Having your last kid enter their last year of high school is pretty-.
Speaker 1:It's our last year of high school too, that's true.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's so true. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're switching gears here. Let's get down to what we were going to talk about today, and what I thought we would talk about today is three ways that we keep the fighting fair. You know, fighting in a relationship is a really big issue for all of us. We all, you know everybody fights. We've had times in our marriage where we fought almost every day, you know, and other times where the fighting is very sporadic and sparse. Through the years, we have learned how to fight better. I think one of the things I learned most in marriage is I thought that the goal would be to learn how not to fight. I thought that was the goal. If we could just stop fighting, then everything would be better.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I've learned, like that's not the goal, not destroying your marriage Because back in the day with us we were fighting so dirty, so ugly that it was tearing our marriage apart. Those fights were tearing our marriage apart and the progress we've made is well. We made a lot that have affected whether or not we're fighting, but really we have learned how to fight so much better than we used to. We still fall into old habits all the time and they can still be kind of ugly, but I feel like it's night and day from how we used to be because of some certain strategies that we do to make our fighting more fair.
Speaker 2:I remember early on when we were a married couple and I don't know who they were, why they were in our lives, but I remember this couple saying we never fight. They had been together for some time and they never fought. And I was just like, whoa, how, oh my goodness, how do you do that? Wow. And then you know, as time goes on and you grow wiser and I'm thinking like, is it good? That you never fought Makes sense that two human beings are going to disagree about certain things.
Speaker 1:So I thought it would be good to share some of the things that we have, we do implement or we do work on. When we are in the midst of fights, I always felt like people who don't fight do I don't know if I trust them.
Speaker 2:You know, someone is going to send you a message saying hey we've never fought.
Speaker 1:The thing is, two people are not going to agree on everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're just not. And if you're not fighting, what does that mean? Does that mean somebody is just always giving in, yeah, or are you just so far above everybody else where you just know how to compromise on every single thing? And I mean, I'm sure there's some that are out there like that, but for the most part, fights is just a normal part of marriage and it shouldn't be made to think that there's anything wrong with your marriage. If you're fighting Now, if the fighting is tearing your marriage apart.
Speaker 1:There's definitely some work that needs to be done, but we're going to fight. We disagree. We grew up differently. We fought about how to raise our children and we fought about everything sex and money, and I mean everything. We've been through it all and I think that that's a very normal thing. I think what I would like to do is just normalize that fighting is normal and that's okay. It's not to be like those people that say, oh, we never fight, you know, but to be like, oh, let's learn how to fight so we can get through this effectively and honestly. I feel like the fights that we have are really what help us grow.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I feel like the fights that we have are really what help us grow For sure, especially since we've been more effective in our arguments, like we can grow so much from an argument now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think it starts with me blaming you for everything first of all, and then we move from there. So you, I'm pretty sure it's all your fault. Yeah, I mean it's you. No, no, let's make this straight.
Speaker 1:You are responsible for all the in let's talk about three things that we do to help us fight fair. The number one thing and I I'm going to say this over and over, you've heard me say it over and over but I think the number one thing that is important to us in our arguments is being able to lay down our defenses.
Speaker 2:It's the hardest thing too.
Speaker 1:It is the hardest thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because when the defenses are up, literally nothing gets accomplished. It just will circle and circle and circle and circle. Somebody has to be willing to lay them down, and ideally it's both of you to be able to get to the meat of what the discussion or what the argument is actually about. Because For me, my go-to has always been to put my walls up and to immediately fight my side and to figure out how to win. That's what I thought. I just got to figure out how to prove my point enough so that you can see my side, and then everything's better. But until you can see my side, I'm going to keep fighting my side, and all that did was keep us in a perpetual cycle of conflict.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's funny, cause when I think about our fights nowadays, usually they start off with like oh, I think we're being defensive, I think you're being defense, I think I'm being defensive, you know what I mean, versus arguing, arguing, arguing and then, like then pointing out the. I think we usually pull out the defensive word pretty quick.
Speaker 1:Because we now know that if the defenses are up, we're not going anywhere.
Speaker 2:You're not wrong. It is like the one, the biggest thing that's definitely helped shape our fights.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about what defensive being defensive means.
Speaker 1:Like. What does that actually look like to me in my mind? Instead of hearing what you're trying to say in my mind, I'll be like plotting a path or an argument, before I can even hear what you're saying, because I'm in my own head trying to say no, he's wrong, this is what I'm going to say. This is what I'm going to get ready to say. This is how I'm going to prove my point. This is I'm going to say. This is what I'm going to get ready to say. This is how I'm going to prove my point. This is, I'm right. And everything you say is just going to hit my wall of defensive and bounce right back off to you. I don't know if that makes any sense, but nothing can get through because I've got this wall of uh-uh, I'm right and I'm going to prove it to you, and I can hear it now in my head, or I can hear the words that come out of my mouth. I feel it in my body. I'm feeling really tense and I'm feeling this need to like fight and I have now gotten much better at realizing okay, I've got to calm that down, I got to shut this voice off in my head and I got to fully tune into what you're saying and put all my crap aside. That's what being defensive is and what it looks like to lay it down.
Speaker 1:And it is incredibly difficult because I didn't even know I was defensive before. I just thought this is just how it's supposed to be and of course I'm going to tell you how I feel. Of course I'm going to tell you my side. But it came off in such a way that didn't allow anything else to come through. And now I can really physically feel it, I can hear it and I can work really hard to shut it down, and if I can't do it, then I need a minute to like gather that within myself, to to lay it down. Did that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it made sense.
Speaker 1:What about you?
Speaker 2:You said something in there about feeling it in your body and I think for me, when I recognize I'm being defensive, I do feel it. I feel this humming. It's a feeling I get first, and then I start ruminating over the well, I'm going to bring this, I'll make sure I get this. So I'm not really paying attention to you just like you're saying.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I truly try to be in touch with that feeling. I truly do it. Like you said, it's not a perfect science. We we fall into old habits all the time. But one thing I do know is we come out of it a whole lot quicker than we ever did before, and sometimes we don't even fall into it. It just you know we'll have a snap thing. And then next thing you know, you're like oh wait, a minute, I'm being defensive.
Speaker 2:I need to chill out, okay, so and which I think I, if I'm not mistaken, you're going to say the second.
Speaker 1:Tell me.
Speaker 2:Number two is about being accountable. So if you're not being defensive, if when I'm not being okay, what am I doing here?
Speaker 1:Tell me what accountability means.
Speaker 2:So accountability for me is that I'm literally turning, I'm looking into a mirror and I'm literally saying to myself what am I bringing to this problem? What am I doing to cause this argument? How am I causing this argument or contributing to, Contributing to this argument? What am I doing? Not, what are you? The whole defensive thing. So if you can get past defensiveness, calm down and recognize either that feeling you have or this you're creating all these, you know, rebuttals, not listening to your partner. If you can pause all that, the second hardest thing for me is okay, what did I do?
Speaker 2:Why is this happening? What did I do to contribute what's happening right now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not blaming yourself. It's different than blaming yourself, but it's recognizing that in every argument there are two sides. Two of us are coming at it and each of us are probably approaching it in ways that aren't necessarily helpful. So, by being able to stop for a minute and be more introspective, rather than pointing the finger because certainly pointing the finger, this is another thing we'll say all the time too pointing the finger will get you absolutely nowhere. Yeah, that's the defensive, that's blame, that's this is on you. I'm going to show you how I'm winning. This is your fault. That's not going to get you anywhere, no matter how righteous you feel about the situation. It's not helpful. So the only thing that we found that is helpful is to shut all that down, like enough of that doesn't get us anywhere. So instead we're going to be introspective and we're going to ask ourselves what are we contributing to this argument? That's not helpful. What have I done to contribute to this escalating or to contribute to him feeling defensive or feeling hurt?
Speaker 1:I may have said something that was hurtful, or I may have raised my voice. I may have said something that was hurtful, or I may have raised my voice, or I may have blamed you for something like what can I look at and be more introspective and say, okay, I can take accountability for the fact that I yelled at you and that was not helpful at all. Or I can take accountability for the fact that I didn't hear you. You said you wanted to be heard and you don't feel like I'm hearing you and I'm gonna take accountability for that and I'm gonna work on hearing you better. That kind of stuff is what we mean by accountability. It doesn't mean that people get this confused all the time when I say this You've been messaged about this all the time, yeah.
Speaker 1:Anytime I talk about accountability, people are like, oh okay, so I'm just supposed to sit back and let it happen. No, that's not what I mean.
Speaker 2:That's being defensive, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's not what I'm meaning at all. It doesn't mean they win. It doesn't mean you take all the blame. It just means let me look at myself, let me ask myself what am I doing here that's contributing to us not being able to find our way out of this, or contributing to him being hurt, or contributing to him being angry? How can I then approach this in a different way? Because it's not getting us where we want to be. It never, ever equals. It's all your fault.
Speaker 2:And would you say, the third way that we help fight fair is being naked while we fight.
Speaker 1:No, we don't do that.
Speaker 2:No, we don't Dang it, man. We need to try that. We've talked about it before. We need to try it.
Speaker 1:I don't think I would ever want to just like strip my clothes off. It's not funny when you're fighting. It's not funny.
Speaker 2:We wouldn't know. How would we know, honey, honey.
Speaker 1:I think the other one that has been really big for us is remembering that we are not fighting against each other. We're trying to fight against whatever the argument's about Meaning I'm not fighting against you, I'm not fighting you. When you and I were able to like dig down and realize that most of our fights aren't really about the fight. They're about things that are much, much deeper than the fight. For instance, if you are late somewhere or you're making me late somewhere, and then I get angry and I come at you you're making me late.
Speaker 1:Why do you do this to me all the time? Instead of me coming at you. Blaming, it's more helpful if I recognize, okay, what's really happening is me, is I'm feeling panicked, that they're going to be mad at me, that I'm not there on time, that I'm going to reflect as being like a bad friend or a bad sister, when I can realize what's going on inside, rather than saying this is all your fault. You did this like being again more introspective. But what is? What are we really fighting about here? If that makes sense.
Speaker 2:No, that makes total sense. I see what you're saying. I was questioning it when you started it. Now I'm like, oh no, you're absolutely right. In fact, I said that defense was probably the biggest shift in our relationship when it comes to fighting, and I'm thinking this might even equal that it was several years ago, when you were. You had brought to the attention that the main reasons why we fight, we each have an underlying reason for what's the word you always said.
Speaker 1:It's the thing that most gets triggered when we're arguing, right yeah.
Speaker 2:So you always said that there was something that gets triggered in us when we're arguing. And yeah, so you always said that there was something that gets triggered in us when we're arguing.
Speaker 2:And for me it's a specific thing, for you it's a specific thing and it really helped me recognize that when we're fighting or when we start to disagree about something, that underlying specific thing was the thing that I had, the thing I had the most fear about which is line. Specific thing was the thing that I had. The thing I had the most fear about was which is what, for me, is not feeling loved, feeling like you know I'm not going to love you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, You're not going to love me. And for you it's usually mine is triggered by not feeling like I'm enough. Yeah, and that's when my defenses will kick in. If I am triggered and feeling like I'm not enough, then I got to prove and fight that I am enough. And you prove and fight that you want to make sure nothing is threatening my love for you yeah, threatening your feeling of being loved.
Speaker 2:I want to just preface this. What we're saying took a lot of deep diving and everybody's is different.
Speaker 1:This is just our own recognition of what's being triggered within us.
Speaker 2:But it took a lot of deep time to get to this. But once we got to it and we sat with it for a while and then we would have fights and then dissect the fight and then it kept proving back to the same thing and I'm like, oh, this is weird.
Speaker 1:To where now we can. I mean, this doesn't always show up, but sometimes, when we're in an argument, we can say oh, I can see you're being triggered and thinking that I'm not going to love you. That's not what's happening here. I do love you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's not a threat here.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Or you saying the same to me, which can really help. It can really help diffuse an argument when you feel like, oh, I'm seeing you, I understand this is what's happening to you and it's okay, we're safe, let's talk about the thing that we actually need to talk about and then suddenly you don't have to be so angry and defensive and you can calm down and we can actually address what needs to be addressed. It's great at diffusing an argument and making your partner feel very seen and heard.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. This one didn't happen until later on. This is only a few years since we've been dealing with this. What do we call this? You need to call this something.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I don't know. But I do know that most arguments are not going to be about an argument. They're going to be really about something deep down like an unmet need or a fear. About something deep down like an unmet need or a fear. That's what's being triggered. It's not about, like, the dishes or the mess in the house, or it's not about sex, or it's not about money. It's about something underlying that that's making you feel afraid or that you're not getting your needs met and when you can really identify those and be able to talk about those, what a different conversation you can have and to recognize with yourself. Oh, that's things being triggered in me. I need to let that down. I need to say, hey, you know what I'm feeling like. I'm not enough when you're telling me that that thing's being triggered in me. I need you to reassure me that I am, so that we can move on and discuss this in a healthy manner.
Speaker 2:This diffuses, like you said, our fights more than anything, because I can recognize how you're being defensive, like if I bring something to you, and I can recognize you're being defensive when I like, if I bring something to you and like you're recognized you're being defensive, and then I'll literally can say, hey, tim, this has nothing to do with you not being enough, like I want you to hear that it's not, it's not this, and it literally just like. You see your shoulders, your body language, everything, and then you're like oh yeah, I'm being defensive, I'm sorry, you know what I mean. And then all of a sudden it goes into accountability and then we work through whatever it is we're doing and I'm just saying for you you've done the same for me multiple times.
Speaker 1:It gives you a lot of compassion for the other person too. When you can understand that you're feeling scared, you know you're feeling worried, you're feeling like you need something that you're not getting. That gives me a lot of compassion for you rather than keeping me in this angry state, if I can get to the place of really understanding you. That deep compassion can lead us a lot through these arguments and now I understand. All three of these things are incredibly difficult. We fail at them all the time. We have big blowout fights where we hurt each other and tears and we stomp away and all that. But the good news is that, because these are there now, we do always find our way back to them.
Speaker 2:Quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, usually. Yeah, let these three things help lead you through your arguments and really, if you are paying very close attention, you'll understand that the work in the arguments and getting them under control and making them healthier and fighting fair have to do with you. You have to be willing to do the work in order to improve the arguments. Even if your spouse isn't willing to do the work, I understand that you doing your own work is most often going to have a positive ripple effect in your marriage, Not you saying, well, I'm going to do it, so you have to do it. You got to do it, joel, because I'm doing it. I'm not being defensive, so you got to not be defensive, but to really understand that the work starts within Work on your own defensiveness, work on your own accountability, work on really getting to understand yourself and what's being triggered and how you can approach those things differently, and it's going to help you fight so much more fair and have much healthier outcomes from these arguments.
Speaker 2:That's it Okay. I love it.
Speaker 1:That I guess we'll do it for today. We had a lot, a lot said. I hope it all made sense and that you got something out of this. This is truly what Joel and I are always working on in our arguments, and it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be progress. Thank you so much for being here today. No-transcript.
