Episode 107: 6 Ways to Repair Your Relationship After an Argument

Welcome to the Loving Truth podcast where it's all about finding clarity, confidence and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host, relationship expert and certified master life coach, Sharon Pope. Hello loves. This is Sharon Pope and this is the Loving Truth. Today we're going to be talking about you as a couple are going to argue. But my question is, will you repair after an argument?

That's the big question. Because arguing is going to happen naturally. You can't live in this close of proximity to another human being for decades and see eye to eye all the time. And sometimes, frankly, you're just going to get on each other's nerves. So arguments and upsets are going to happen. The question is, do you repair after that upset? So I want you to think back the last argument that you and your spouse had and I want you to think about how you showed up inside that argument, what some of your go to's were, and how your partner showed up inside that argument.

Okay, so for instance, did you come at your partner with anger and frustration, maybe a little bit of entitlement or self righteousness? Is that sort of, did one of you sort of take that approach? Did you shut down? Did you stonewall your partner, which just means basically walking away and refusing to talk about it? Did you create distance between the two of you by pulling away? Did you give each other the silent treatment?

That's another way of approaching upsets in a relationship. Another way is just to pretend, give this polite distance between the two of you and pretend like this upset didn't even really happen. We just fake it, right? Some people do that. They just sweep it under the carpet and they pretend that it's not still there, that they're not still carrying it. But on some level they are. Maybe you retaliate and fight back.

Like you get into your head about like, well, they hurt me, so I'm allowed to hurt them back. It's a little bit more of entitlement, right? And when I'm hurting, then it justifies bad behavior on my part to hurt back. Some people will try to control and manipulate the situation. Almost no one who does that, however, will ever see it as trying to control or manipulate. But certainly it happens where someone is just trying to get you to see it their way.

And they'll do that by using shame or guilt or blame. Those are all manipulation tools. Maybe you kitchen sink your partner, or maybe they do it to you where you've stored up, you know, the last 800 resentments that you've swept under the rug and not talked about. And now you're going to bring them all up and you're like, well, you did this and you did this and you never do that and you always do that.

And you give them the litany of things that no one can possibly wade through. That's what's called kitchen, sinking it. Or maybe just complain, nag, maybe you cry, maybe tell him how wrong he is all the time, right? So I want you to think about, like, what is your go to when it comes to upsets inside your relationship and how do you feel about that? And just answer honestly for yourself.

You know, this isn't. Your answer is not going to be on the nightly news or something like that. When it comes to upsets inside of our relationship, we would be horrified if it was recorded and put on the nightly news for everyone else to see because we don't bring our best selves. And mostly that's because we don't think about those upsets or how to handle those upsets outside of when we're in the midst of them and our emotions are running really high.

So look, relationships are always going to be in some version of a state of harmony where we're feeling really connected to one another. And then we get to a place of disharmony where that connection is broken because there's some upset and then repair, right? And so if you don't go through the repair process, then that break that happens between connection and disconnection or harmony and disharmony, it's like there's that little break that we never repair, we never heal it, and so it never comes back together.

And any one of those is probably not enough to end a marriage or end a relationship, but you get enough of them. And now that break turns into a very, very wide distance between the two of you because we don't have good hygiene around just coming back and repairing after an upset. I think of disharmony inside of a relationship, much less like I think about pain in my body.

When there's pain in my body. I know, huh? Something's wrong. Like last week, my left shoulder was really hurting me. It's interesting. I'm at an age where I hurt myself while I'm sleeping. So my shoulder was hurting. I was like, oh, something's wrong. So I had to rest it, right? That was the repair process is to not push it. So those upsets doesn't mean that the relationship is tanked.

It doesn't mean that the relationship is the wrong relationship. It means it's a relationship. Any relationship, particularly the closer you are, the more you are going to rub up against one another's soft spots. But we need to get better at learning how to repair. So first let's just talk about what is a repair. Essentially, it means confronting and talking about whatever the issue is and working through it together as a couple so that you can heal that break and make their relationship better.

Get back to a place of connection. And if your goal is not to get back to a place of connection, then, my friend, you are not yet ready for a repair conversation because you're still trying to be right, you're still trying to win or justify your bad behavior. But if you ultimately want to get back to a place of connection with your partner, this is what is needed, is being able to talk about it and come to some kind of resolution.

It doesn't mean that you have to agree. So first let's talk about why we avoid repairing when there's been an upset. So I think that the biggest one that I see is people trying to keep the peace. So they have an upset and they don't want to make it worse. And so they might stonewall or create distance or walk away or whatever, and then they're just trying to keep the peace.

But what they do is they create a war within themselves because it feels like self betrayal. You were hurt and you're not allowing yourself to express that hurt and get any sort of healing from it or even let your partner know that they hurt you in some way. So some of us, we avoid doing the repair because we're trying to keep the peace. And that seems like a good strategy.

Short term, the problem is the long term impacts of when you consistently don't repair and don't heal in those places of disharmony. It creates a very considerable disconnection between you as a couple. And it's really hard to overcome. So long term is a horrible idea. Short term, it seems like a good idea as a way to avoid it. Sort of like. Well, short term it seems like a good idea to eat this pint of gelato.

Long term, maybe not so much, right? Sort of the same thing. Another reason is it's just easier to avoid it, right? It's easier to just put it off, not deal with it and go distract myself with something else. I'll just Netflix and get in my jammies and go to bed early, or I'll just have another glass of wine, or I'll just reach for the gelato, right? Whatever it is that we're using to distract ourselves, sometimes it's just easier not to in the moment.

And that's why we choose to not repair. We get a little lazy if we're really being honest. And the last thing is our ego hates it when we do this repair process. Because part of the repair process is owning your own stuff, right? Taking responsibility for your role in the creation of this upset. Because it is never 100% of the time your partner's fault. There might be a few times where it's 100% their fault, but it's never 100% their fault.

100% of the time that's not a real thing. So we've got to be able to take accountability and responsibility for our own choices, actions and behaviors. And our ego hates that. And our ego hates it when we have to say, like, I was wrong or I could have done that better. So that's another reason why we avoid it. And I think being able to just see why we avoid it can help us to then change that pattern and the way in which we engage.

Now I think that we've got to be able to talk about what can happen when you don't repair. So let's get real specific. When you don't repair, then all those resentments, those little breaks I was talking about, those resentments just pile up. And any one of them are not big enough to blow things up in your marriage. But you stack 100 or 200 of those on top of each other and now it's meaningful.

And with each one of those resentments that you're carrying, it's like a little bit more distance between the two of you. And it's so subtle that you almost don't even notice it when it's happening until it becomes this big gaping hole that exists between you and your partner. The other is that when we let our hurts fester, see, we think they go away if we ignore them, if we sweep them under the rug, if we pretend we think they go away, they don't.

They just fester underneath the surface and eventually they're going to come out. And because they've been festering by the time they come out, they usually come out with a lot of anger and force. And that's not terribly helpful to creating connection and harmony inside of a relationship. The other thing though, and I think this is more of the long term impact, is we lose faith in each other in being able to come through really difficult, challenging situations.

We lose faith in us as a couple to be able to come through challenging situations. We know intellectually life is going to keep Lifeing life is going to keep sending us challenges. But if I don't believe I can get through them with you, if I don't think I have a partner who we can, we can do this walk together, then now I don't trust that we're on solid ground.

And that's when people start to give up on their marriages. So a little bit of upset inside your relationship, I want you to know, can actually be helpful. We're going to debunk some theories here. I think we come into marriage or relationship in general thinking that the fewer the upsets, the better or the best relationships are for people who never argue or who never fight. And that is never true.

Okay? So I think that a little bit of upset can be really helpful because it really does give you an opportunity to understand your partner better. And as long as you look at it through that lens and you approach it through that lens of I'm going to understand you more deeply because I'm going to realize what you care about and why you care about it. Because the only things we get really upset about usually are things that we care deeply about.

And so if there's an upset, that means one or both of you cares deeply about this topic and you don't see it the same way. But if you can look at it as, huh, this is an opportunity for me to understand my partner and maybe even myself a little better. Like, why am I so upset? Why does this mean so much to me? Why do I care so much about this thing that isn't my business or whatever.

Right. It is an opportunity to understand your partner and yourself a little better. So a little bit of upset is actually helpful to your relationship. Now. So there is a guy named Ed Tronik who is a, an interpersonal neurobiologist who knew that that was even a job title. Interpersonal neurobiologist. But he essentially understands the brain and how we interact in interpersonal relationships. And he calls this the 7030 rule.

And it basically says, much like a baseball player who gets on base three times for every 10 times he's up to Batman is a great baseball player. Well, the same thing is true here in that you can have a healthy relationship even with 70% disharmony and 30% harmony, as long as you repair. And that's the key. You can have that much 70% disconnection, disharmony, 30% of the time, harmony connection.

I swear I had to read that five times because I was like, surely I'm not understanding this correctly. It should be the other way around like 30% upsets, 70% were solid. No, his study said you can have a healthy relationship with up to 70% of disharmony as long as you repair. Because it's the repair that makes us stronger. Sort of like when you go to the gym and you're trying to build muscle, every time you create a little tear in your muscle, that then when your muscle heals, it makes it stronger.

This is the same sort of thing that's happening. So here are some tips to think about in terms of how to repair. So the first is speak from your experience. When you are conveying an upset to your partner, something that you're frustrated about or would like to have changed, just speak from your experience. Use I statements, right? This was my experience when you did this, I experienced you in this way.

It just makes it harder for someone to argue, right? Because when you are telling them about themselves, well, that's really easy for them to argue because you are not them. You're making assumptions about what they're feeling and what their motivations are and all that kind of stuff. Now just talk about your experience. Stay in your lane. Speak only from your experience. And that will sort of give guardrails to this upset and disconnected conversation.

The second is you gotta be willing to take responsibility for what's yours. This is adulting 101, right? Of I get to make choices, but I get to live with the outcome of those choices. So we've got, in these upsets, we've got to be able to take responsibility for our choices, our actions, our behaviors, how we showed up, the assumptions we made, the expectations we had that went uncommunicated.

Like, what is our role in the creation of this particular upset? And sometimes you can find that by just thinking, what did I make this mean? Whatever the circumstance was that I got upset about, whatever the situation was, what did I make it mean? And you can even say that to your partner. When you said that I made it mean this, that's you taking responsibility for your role in this.

The next thing I would say is you have to be willing to listen without justifying or getting really defensive. And that's on both sides of the equation. If you're going to have a productive, mature conversation, then you can't get defensive and you can't just come up with justifications for bad behavior. We've got to just sort of own what it is and be able to speak about it from a very grounded perspective.

The other thing is one repair at a time so you know how your partner will Bring up something to you, and then you're like, well, you did the same thing last week. Or you did this other random thing. Like, let's say, I don't know, I'm making this up here, but let's say that you have an upset that you bring to your partner about how they committed to doing something around the house, let's say three weeks ago, and it's still not done yet.

And they're hanging out on the couch, they're on their phone, they're not doing anything, and you're just starting to fume about it. And so when you bring it up to him, he's like, well, you know, you didn't do the laundry last week. Like, he'll bring up something else that seems related and seems relevant. But it's not okay. When it comes to these repair conversations, you gotta deal with one thing at a time.

And so that's when you just gotta say, like, look, I'm glad to talk about your upset, but after we're done talking about my upset, one thing at a time. It's the only way you can get through real repair conversations. The other thing that you're going to need is a big dose of self regulation. You need to be able to be grounded in who you are. You needed to be clear in your thinking and what your intention is, and you need to not get triggered.

And so in order to come into a repair conversation, you need to be able to regulate yourself so that you can be grounded and intentional and just not get triggered and go left of center and make turn this into something bigger than maybe it needs to be. Okay. You need to be able to speak directly and assertively. And ladies, I'm talking to you here. Direct and assertive is not the same thing as aggressive.

I'm not asking you to get angry and start yelling and raging and all this stuff that you hate to be on the receiving end of. I'm saying be direct. Be thorough in what it is that you're trying to communicate. Don't make them try to read in between the lines because you're just so afraid to say the words. Direct is clear, clear is kind. Use that language, okay? All of this, all of these conversations, it doesn't mean you have to agree with your partner.

It doesn't mean you have to agree with their experience. It doesn't mean you have to agree with what they made it mean. But if you're going to repair, then you have to be able to hear them about what their experience was and about what their feelings were. Because to them, their feelings matter. And if you love them, then act like it. Let them know that they're like that you are interested in what they're feeling, even if you don't agree with it.

Validate their experience without you necessarily agreeing to it. This is how we can be in productive conversation with someone that we don't see eye to eye with, but we can still be in relationship with. We don't have to agree on every single thing. We don't have to hate someone who sees something very differently than we do. And then the last thing, and I don't think that this gets enough time and attention.

But essentially, in these repair conversations, you need to tell your partner what they can do to make it better, right? If you're the one that's upset about something, give them the breadcrumbs, give them the roadmap here. Tell them what they can do to make it better. And if your partner is sharing an upset with you and they haven't told you what you can do to make it better, ask darling, what can I do to make this better?

That's all you have to say. And then tell them, right? Don't just leave it up to chance and don't make them guess. Be clear. What can your partner do to make it better? Now the last thing I want to say is because I know there are some of you out there that are like, well, my partner doesn't do any of those things. He doesn't self regulate, he doesn't use I statements, he gets into blame in justification for his behavior.

He doesn't do any of that stuff. So I guess I'm just screwed. And we'll never have a repair conversation. That's not true. You can have a repair conversation and you can lead him, you can lead the effort, but someone's got to show up and be the adult first. Someone's got to be the leader in this. And so if you're using your partner as well, they don't have any of those tools.

So therefore I'm not going to learn any of those tools. Well then yeah, if you take that approach, then you are screwed. You will never have these repair conversations and every time there's an upset, you guys just grow further and further apart and then we know how the story ends. But you, if you become skilled at having these repair conversations, then you can direct someone else in the, in the midst of that conversation, right?

Let's say that you bring up an upset and they're like, well, yeah, but you did this last week, right? And they're trying to kitchen sink you and throw some other things in there. That's when you can just go, no, we're not. I mean, I'm glad to talk to you about those things, but we're going to talk about that after we're done talking about this. We're going to do one thing at a time, and right now we're talking about my upset about this particular situation.

That's what I mean about leading the conversation. It only takes one of you to create real change in the dynamic, in the way in which you communicate, but it does take at least one of you. It doesn't require both of you, but it does take at least one of you. So don't use your partner as an excuse to not get skilled at having these repair conversations. All right?

I hope that that is helpful for your next upset. Keep in mind, upsets just give you that opportunity to understand yourself and your partner more deeply and that you can have a healthy, loving relationship with lots of upsets as long as you repair. Until next time, take really good care. If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a Truth and Clarity session with a member of my team.

On the call, we'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage. Go to clarityformymarriage.com to fill out an application. Now that's clarityformymarriage.com.