We all have our fresh hopes for this year, right? and perhaps one of your dreams is to teach yourself and your family how to manage disagreements in a better and more loving way?
What? are you asking that fights can not be pleasant? Mmmmmm, let me see what is the answer...
If you accept the basic premise that conflict is a way of learning about what has to be changed in your marriage, and not about "winning wars," then we are on the same page... Following this, then, we look at fights as a wonderful opportunity to get to know what the other side is now thinking, experiencing and needing.
Because, in the bottom line, all fights are about some frustrated needs. Needs for love, recognition, support, company, advice, tenderness....the list is endless. And we don't know how to express our needs in an efficient way; either because we are ashamed or humiliated for "having to beg for something the other is supposed to know about us and provide without our asking..."
So we initiate a fight, which is nothing out of the normal ways people behave. Everybody considers having a fight the good way to have some solution for hidden needs. The problem in love is that, as much as you fight for having your own needs solved, you attack and destroy the same relationship you need so much!
To avoid being carried away by hostility, anger and frustration, and end up insulting the person you love most, is that some researchers have offered a neat plan to be able to fight without rancour or excessive acrimony.
It is called FAIR FIGHTING, and it provides a set of norms or rules to follow when having a confrontation with your loved one. Remember, the point here is not to "win," but to preserve the relationship by having the two sides listening to each other needs.
Care to get a look at the method? It is described here:
