One Emotional Grenade. Two Choices. Zero Coffee: A Story About Conflict & Repair in Relationships

I nearly launched a full emotional grenade today. And it took everything I had to walk the talk!

Generated by ChatGPT. Edited in Canva.

Let me walk you through a day when I, a couples therapist, had to practice what I preach about conflict and repair in relationships.

(P.S: It was not easy!)

My husband and I had a "not so gentle" start up to a conversation. In his rejection to join me at an event I wanted to go to, he said, "I'm not going! I need and deserve to do something that I find fun!"

I felt my blood rushing to my brain! Think Anger in Inside Out!

These are some of the things I was DYING to say:

"What about me?!"

"Don't I need and deserve to do something fun?!"

"Then don't come to me when you want to do [Insert whatever activity he likes here]"

Mind you, I also hadn't even had my morning coffee - so already a treacherous time - and I only had 5 hours of sleep. It was pretty much an invitation for a war zone! (Stay tuned for my blog on HALT). 

SOMEHOW... JUST SOMEHOW.. I managed to simply "zip it".

I did not say a word, and I walked away in silence.

For the 10 minutes that followed, I continued to have mental prompts similar to the earlier ones. All filled with anger, defensiveness, and a desire for retaliation. Shortly after, he came to talk to me about it, and all his sentences were technically "I" statements - which is supposed to be a good thing. But here's the tricky part: It was - again - all focused on him, what he wants and needs, and what's important to him, and why.

With all my might - with some shortcomings - I managed to NOT lash out. Instead, I gestured STOP with my hand and yelled, "I'm not interested in hearing what you have to say right now! I've spent the last 10 minutes keeping my mouth shut from saying things that would make it worse! So I don't wanna hear it!"

He walked away - also in silence.

For another 5 minutes or so, I continued to have the same angry, defensive and retaliating comebacks in my mind, but then I found it!

I found my opening line. I found my gentle start up:

"I know you've been under a lot of stress lately, and I'm not diminishing your need to do something fun, but I want to remind you that I, too, have been sharing that stress with you. This event was something that I wanted us to do in an attempt to unplug and de-stress, together. And the way you responded to me felt extremely dismissive."

He replied, "I wasn't dismissing you. I was expressing how I felt."

"It felt dismissive to me. Like what I want or need did not matter. You didn't care to acknowledge my desire to go. You didn't think about why I wanted or needed to go; what it means to me to go; and what it means to me to go alone."

He apologized!

He took responsibility! He acknowledged and validated! And he started thinking of other ways we can address those needs that work better for him.

We repaired.

Fast Forward: He did not change his mind about going. And I did not stop feeling disappointed about the fact that I'm going alone. We also did not agree on what to do instead (I was too tired to brainstorm). We parked it.

At the end of the conversation, I said, "I'm proud of myself... For keeping my mouth shut.. And for waiting till I found the right way to come talk about it." And he went, "I'm proud of you, too."

And we moved past it without resentment or open wounds, and without pressure for the other to get past their emotions quickly already so that we're not suffering with the discomfort of it. We sat with it. And the heaviness did linger through the night.

But the next morning, it was a fresh, genuine, "Good morning" :).

A healthy relationship is not a conflict-free relationship. There will always be conflict in relationships. A healthy relationship is one where there is conflict and repair.

And no one is born knowing how to do this. We, my husband and I, weren't always like that. To tell you the truth, we were actually fairly far from that! But these are skills. And that shift is possible. Because that shift is learnable. And you don’t have to figure it out on your own.