Learn to break the “blame – feel guilty – return blame” cycle in your relationship.
Fighting with someone you want to get along with is often devastating, causes a lot of negative emotions, and can negatively affect many areas of your life.
The fight you had yesterday with your boyfriend or husband left you exhausted, depressed, and barely able to work today.
You feel like a rag and that means your emotional state is not at peace, it is unstable and sad.
Your mind wanders through the fights every five minutes, and while you’re not fully aware of it, you’re agreeing with the negative things your partner said in the heat of the fight.
Because your mind is too obsessed with the effects of words flying around, your energy level at work is now much lower than it should be.
Worst of all are the negative thoughts that enter your mind while you don’t make peace with him and peace is declared.
On the other hand, the negative impact of a fight with a family member on their partner can be absolutely under your conscious control.
So one solution to fights is to develop your daily mindfulness practice in which you learn to distance yourself from negative thoughts, thoughts that bring you down the next day.
With mindfulness training, you will be able to see these negative thoughts as mere thoughts, not as firm statements that represent “the truth.”
Instead of thinking that what he said is all true, these thoughts become clouds in the sky: one moment he’s here and the next he’s gone.
Thoughts float over you for a while, but you don’t take any of those thoughts seriously.
So regaining absolute control of your mind through the practice of meditation is one way to deal with fights with your boyfriend or husband, but that is one person’s effort and fights always involve two people or more.
Knowing how to develop fight dynamics with your partner is another positive approach, which can change your entire relationship for the better.
It’s a problem that involves two people and a solution that involves two people.
Fights that have a snowball effect are almost always the result of the cycle of guilt and anger (some psychologists call it rage, although that word is too heavy).
Let’s see an example of what happens.
You said you were going to do something important and you forgot to do that task.
Your partner fails to calmly indicate that he would help, acknowledging that you were very busy yesterday and understandably you forgot.
Instead, your partner starts off with accusations that you’re always forgetting everything, breaking promises, or not fulfilling your role, and may even subtly imply that you’re lazy and expect everything to be handed over to you on a whim.
You accept the murder of your role in the relationship, and although you don’t want to believe it, you’re terrified that he’s right and you deserve the blame that’s been imposed on you.
You put up all your defenses like a hard marble wall, and to stop that horrible feeling of anxiety we call guilt, to stop the fear that you’ve hurt someone (in this case your partner), you change your mind.
You “externalize” (to use the word psychologists use) and argue that the situation was in fact your partner’s fault: he hasn’t given me time to gather the paperwork or is he always pushing boring tasks on me instead of taking on the responsibility. responsibility alone.
Now you go into character murder yourself, letting your boyfriend or husband know that this is typical, that he is a cruel, fundamentally selfish person.
So the blame is thrown back. This partner, just like you, listens, believes every word you say, can’t stand to feel so much guilt anymore, and throws the blame once again on you, externalizing the source of the problem, that is, putting the blame on you again.
And so it goes, the fight never ends, and the argument is not resolved.
The problem here is quite clear: we tend to feel guilty when accused of anything and the reaction is to blame others, especially the people we love when things go wrong.
In fact, the more we are blamed, the more guilty we feel and the greater our need to externalize the problem by blaming our partner.
This cycle is what happens when you fight with your boyfriend or husband, with anyone really.
You can see this without doing any in-depth analysis of your childhood experiences, although it must be said that when your partner blames you in a tone reminiscent of the same tone your mother used to scold you in childhood, you are likely to get even more upset, feel even more guilt which eventually ends up blaming your partner with an even greater sense of urgency and anger.
So it’s not that childhood experiences are totally irrelevant, but you can recognize this pattern without spending second thinking about the past.
The good news here is that you can literally break the cycle without the other person’s knowledge or cooperation.
As soon as a fight breaks out, stop for a moment and allow yourself to recognize that you feel as guilty as if you were committing a crime (probably an imaginary crime).
Simply acknowledge the guilt, and feel it, but don’t take it too seriously (meditation can be helpful here).
Then think of some way to avoid blaming your partner.
An effort to avoid externalizing and blaming the other will create an immediate break in the situation.
The fight will end, your energy will be saved, and maybe you and your partner will be able to resolve the conflict in the future.
Typically, the focus of these fights is an exaggeration of life’s daily problems.
Write, in simple language, the heart of the problem.
It’s usually because of the distribution of responsibilities or where the money goes.
Perhaps you and your partner have been fighting a lot, one wanting to be more competitive than the other, about how much space you each have at social events.
During the day, the distribution of household chores can be successfully negotiated, the same goes for the distribution of money and the distribution of attention in a social situation.
You may not be able to finish the next fight with your partner, but you will be able to step out of the fight and examine it, watching the guilt cycle.
Once you can see this cycle operating in real interaction, you will be able to change your fighting style and tactics.
When you avoid your partner, he will dissolve quickly and won’t blame you again.
You will definitely see the cycle, that’s for sure.
It’s predictable, it’s the law of a two-person system.
I challenge any reader to write in the comments the story of a fight that didn’t escalate into the blame game.
