How To Lead Through Conflict - A Man’s Guide

All right, team, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Connor Beaton here today we're going to be talking about how to lead through conflict in your relationship. Now, this is specifically a guide for men. And if you are interested, I also have a free guide for you that is in the description below called how to Lead in a Relationship Man's Guide to Leading in a Relationship. So check that out. You can click on that. It's a free resource for you, and tons of guys have found that to be very valuable. So let's dive in. The first thing that I want to say, I've said this time and time again, I'll say it in case you are new, because I know that 74% of you are not subscribed. So maybe get on that, whether you're on Spotify or YouTube. But I'll say this again and again. Choose a woman that you are willing to do conflict with. Choose a partner. Whether you're listening to this as a man or a woman, choose a person that you are wanting or willing to do conflict with. I dated too many women that I didn't trust, and when conflict happened, I just kind of checked out because I was like, I don't trust you. I don't trust that you're interested. You have my best interest, the relationship's best interest in mind. I also dated women that I didn't respect. And so when conflict happened, I would just disengage or, you know, I wouldn't act in a way that was how I wanted to be aligned with my own values or ethics. And then I also dated women that I didn't want to stand up to because I didn't want to hurt them, and I didn't want to cause them any pain. And. And all of these caused all kinds of issues. And so ideally, you know, leading yourself in a relationship and. And being able to lead in conflict in any capacity, which I'm going to share four or five steps here that you can take with you that I have seen to work really, really well for every single man. But ideally, you are with somebody that you're willing to do conflict with that you trust who you respect. Um, and it's not about them showing up always in the way that you exactly want. You know, it's like when we get into conflict with. With our partner, with our person. You know, when you get in conflict with your girlfriend or your wife, sometimes they're not going to act the way that you want them to. Sometimes they're not going to be super grounded. They might yell sometimes they might get loud. They, you know, might be a little harsh. They might shut down. They might be anxious and loud, love bomb you or pull away or fawn or try and placate and just, you know, sort of appease you. But it's not about them sort of behaving or acting in the way that we think they should all the time. That is going to lead to a whole bunch of challenges in a relationship. It's really about, do I, for the most part, respect and trust who this person is in our relationship and life, but do I trust and respect who this woman is and in conflict with me most of the time. Right. And that is her being able to sort of see her part sometimes, her being able to own how she may have contributed to some of the dysfunction. Not constantly, just like, you know, passing the buck on to you and blaming you fully and vice versa. Right. That you are also somebody that someone else would like to go through conflict with. You're not a wild raging a hole. You're not yelling, you're not calling names or, or threatening, you know, constantly threatening to leave the relationship or weaponizing, you know, love and intimacy, those types of things. So all of that said, the first thing that we need to know is choose a woman that you're willing to do conflict with and be a man that a woman would be willing to go through conflict with. Because the reality is that genuinely, some of you guys are men that women would just never trust to go through conflict with. You collapse, you don't stand up for yourself, you become extremely aggressive and hostile. You shut down entirely and don't talk to them for days, and that's on you. So, yes, choose a woman that you want to do conflict with, but also be a man that a woman would want to do conflict with. And that's what we're going to talk about right now. So, number one, leading in conflict in your relationship. How do you get through some of these things? The first thing is your nervous system sets the tone. So because of a lot of dynamics in relationships, and specifically between men and women and heterosexual relationships, your nervous system as the man is going to play a big role when conflict happens. Normally. Okay, not always, but as a sort of general rule, normally, because you are the bigger person and capable of more aggression, capable of more, let's call it, physical harm. And so your nervous system is going to carry a little more weight in terms of the tone when conflict is happening. So when an argument unfolds, depending on where you're at, if you're grounded, you might be able to create some containment. If your girlfriend or your wife is starting to get like a little, you know, a little aggressive or she's kind of like attacking you, or she's starting to raise her voice and, and maybe get louder and louder because of your ability to ground and leverage your nervous system. And you can create some containment and set the tone. If you are collapsing, shutting down, you're scared, you know, you're retreating, you're yes, ma', aming, you know, you're just placating and, and trying to fawn and please your, your girlfriend or your wife, that's going to, that's going to really impact and influence how the conflict unfolds. So if you're meek, you know, and avoiding confrontation at all costs, that's going to collapse things. And for women specifically, that is going to feel very unsafe for a lot of women when they are dating a man who collapses. When conflict happens, they don't. They do not feel safe any longer because you kind of. It's a way of like checking out of the relationship.

So the, your nervous system is going to set the tone for the conflict. So you need to know what. When you're moving into either an extreme form of upregulation, where you're moving into a space where your sympathetic nervous system is so activated and you're. The fancy term is in like a dorsal vagal mode, and you're kind of starting to shut down or rage out. You need to know when you're moving into those territories. When are you moving into the territory of losing your temper and getting loud and maybe saying something that you regret? And when are you moving into a territory of getting a case of the efforts and just shutting down entirely, or not feeling safe at all and shutting down entirely. So you kind of have to start to know what happens inside of me. What does it feel like inside of me when I move into those two places? And can I pause the conversation? Can I, you know, work with my own breath and my body to stay in the conversation, to stay in, whether it's a disagreement or you're trying to hash something out that maybe there's some conflict around in the relationship? So your nervous system is very, very important. It's not to negate hers. It's not to say that she doesn't have her own responsibility in dealing with her emotions, in calming herself down when she gets too worked up in being able to speak up. If she's a chronic shutdown person, she has her own work. But for you, it's really tuning into can I move into a grounded, centered place without suppressing my emotions, letting myself still feel what I'm feeling, and without moving into this like hyper rage place or complete shutdown. The second thing about leading in conflict specifically is that you need to have some rules of engagement. Okay? And I'm going to give you a couple of the rules that I have, bound to be very, very helpful. The rules are engagement, are how are you and the other person, your girlfriend, your wife, your partner, how are you and your partner going to go through conflict? What are the ideal things that you want to do and what are the things that you're just not going to tolerate? Right. Obviously things like abuse should not, you know, should not be tolerated. Calling each other names should not be tolerated. Moving into a place of contempt and vitriol should not be tolerated. All of those things should be a cause for a pause. They should be a cause for you to say, hey, you know what? We've moved into this place where we're now getting out into this territory that's not productive, it's not healthy. I think we need to pause. The one thing that I wanted to add in, and this is a big one for the rules of engagement when it comes to conflict, is having the rule for both of you that arguments are not about victory. Arguments or conflict or disagreements are not about victory. What can happen in a lot of intimate relationships is a kind of power battle, especially in modern day relationships. I see this a lot where there is just massive power battles in relationships. And so this is when two people are more interested in victory, in winning the argument and winning the conflict and getting their way than any type of reconciliation, resolution, compromise, you know, willingness to hear the other person's perspective and really understand it and be able to validate it. It is just like a zero sum game of I need to win and it's me, it's, you know, me versus you. So a big rule for engagement around conflict should, should be we are going to try and avoid just being right, just being victorious all the time. So these are the boundaries that you want to try and maintain. This is how the two of you are going to ideally engage, right? You're going to try and be calm as much as possible. You know, you're going to be respectful of one another. You can assume positive intent. That's a really good rule for relational conflict is assume positive intent. Because some of you will have grown up in environments where you had a parent that was, you know, hypercritical, always thought the worst, moved into like worst case, Scenario never believed you. It can feel sometimes challenging to have positive intent for the other person. So assume positive intent that the other person isn't out to get you, they're not trying to screw you over, et cetera. And if you really do feel that way about the person that you're with, that's a red flag. It's not. It's like. It's not like it might be a red flag. That's a red flag. If you fundamentally and really, truly believe that the other person does not have your best interest in mind and that they're sort of just in it for themselves, that's a red flag. Um, so we'll put that out there. So that's number two. Rules of engagement. Have rules of engagement. Number three, stop trying to fix her emotions. This is.

One of the fastest ways that I think the majority of men go astray when it comes to conflict. Um, they take responsibility, right? So you take responsibility. Oh, she feels angry. I did something wrong. She's disappointed. I need to fix that. She's sad. I need to fix that, even if it has nothing to do with me. And this can perpetuate the conflict because it starts to treat her like a little bit of a child. Like she doesn't know how to deal with her own emotions. But it also puts you in this, sometimes a position of superiority where it's like, well, I'm the savior here. I'm here to save you from how you're feeling and save you from these problems. And that can show up when you are in an argument and a disagreement with the other person that a lot of men will shift into as soon as their partner is upset, angry, sad, they're feeling something that's hard for you to see them feeling. You can find yourself just trying to resolve it or get out of the situation just because it's like, well, I don't want her to feel that way anymore. And so let me just solve this by disconnecting. Her job is to deal with her own emotions, right? Treat the woman that you're with like an adult and treat her with respect. Treat her with trust. And sometimes that can be challenging because you might have a history with somebody where they've inadvertently wanted you to save them from how they feel. They that sometimes how she feels is too much or she's got a lot of, you know, a lot of sadness or a lot of anger, and she almost wants you to save her from those things. Now, you can set boundaries around emotions. You can say, hey, listen, like, this is escalating. To a place that isn't helpful. Again, this. These are the rules of engagement. This has escalated to a place you're yelling at me and calling me names. We're not engaging with this right now, so we're gonna pause. And when you are ready to come back to the table in a grounded, calm way, then I'm happy to engage with that. Or if you're ready to apologize for saying those things, then I'm. I'm happy to engage with that. I want to resolve this with you. So. But really notice that what a woman is. And I know I'm talking about a man and woman relationship here, heterosexual relationship, but you can contextualize this for whatever dynamic you're in. But just notice that the majority of time, what a woman's looking for, especially in conflict. And this is where most of men, we go astray. Most women are looking for a deep kind of emotional understanding of what's happening inside of them, how they're feeling about a certain situation. And it's not always about some logistical thing that needs to unfold. They're actually wanting to be understood. They're wanting for you to be able to understand how they're feeling about a situation.

And for most men, a woman's emotions almost always become the mission. And we get distracted. And so she starts to feel sad or upset about something, and it's like, I need to fix these emotions. I need to solve these emotions. And so what logistically needs to happen in the relationship? What is she saying? She's saying she wants more time. Okay. She's saying that she wants to go out for a date once a week. Okay. Let me move into trying to plan that out so that her emotions can be taken care of. And this is another way of trying to fix how she feels. So we have to move away from trying to fix how she feels to deeply connecting to and getting how she feels right. That's the mission. The mission for you as a man is to be able to say, tell me what. How you really feel about this. You know, what was that like when, you know, we had that disagreement? Or what is it like for you that, you know, we haven't been going on dates because we've been so busy. What. You know, that's. That's the content. The logistical part can come after. Yes, there needs to be sometimes changes in the relationship, but what most men miss is the emotional content. And if you can get the emotional content, then the majority of the time, the relationship moves into a very smooth, easy place. If you don't have the relational content. Oftentimes we move into changing the logistics, changing certain structural things in the relationship. Like, okay, she wants to spend more time together. I got to do X, Y and Z. That can still be helpful. But oftentimes what a woman is communicating is, I want you to get how I feel about these things not happening. So that's number three. Number four. I just have two more. They're very brief. Number four is don't fall into the trap. What is the trap? You know how when your partner pokes you, provokes you? You've probably heard this called shit tests before. Don't fall for it. For example, when my wife gets stressed out sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes she'll be critical about these, like, little small things, and she'll start getting upset and critical about, like, really seemingly innocuous things and. Or she'll go into, like, hyper task mode, you know, and just start, like, going down our to do list. Like, if we don't get it done, everyone on the planet's going to die. And this used to piss me off so much. This used to irritate the living crap out of me, and it would create conflicts. I was like, what are you doing? What is happening? But it's in those moments I've realized that I could step out of the pattern. Because what she's needing is some type of connection, recognition that she's feeling stressed, an opportunity to express that she's feeling stressed. Yes, again, sometimes things need to be done. Sometimes there are some things that need to be taken care of. But more often than not, it was.

Like, she has this great saying. She's a couples therapist. She has this great saying that behind every complaint or criticism is an unmet emotional need. And I think that what happens for a lot of us men is that we hear the women that we're with complaining or criticizing about something, and we take it at face value and we miss the unmet emotional need that's behind it. Yes. Sometimes it's about the, you know, dishes that have been in the sink for two days. But more often than not, it's some unmet emotional need that we're completely blind to. Connection, love, intimacy, understanding, understanding how she's feeling, et cetera. So whatever. And this is very, very helpful, whatever her quote unquote shit tests are, whatever the poking and provoking is, start to really get a sense of when she does those things, how you normally respond and what it would look like for you to step out of the pattern. Because most guys get hooked in, and it Creates a big conflict over seemingly nothing. And you probably have seen this in your relationship where there's like, you know, you get into an argument or some type of conflict and you're like, how did this even start? This is so ridiculous and it seems so small, like, how did this even begin? That is a good sign that some trap between the two of you, whether you, whether you started it or she started it, there's some trap that happened that caused this cycle and so start to pay attention to what are the things that you're doing that poke and provoke when you're actually wanting love and connection? And what are the things that she's doing that poke and provoke when she's actually wanting love and connection? And then talk about these things with your partner. Have a conversation of like, what have you noticed that I do to start arguments or create disconnection? Those are the two pieces. What do you do and what does she do that either starts arguments and conflict or creates disc disconnection? Talking about those things and being able to resolve them in the moment can be super, super helpful and having recognition of like, oh, I'm doing that thing now, or oh, you're doing that thing right now. I'm going to step out of that cycle and just give love and connection and, and care. The last thing is lead and lead the repair. Lead the repair. When conflict does happen, when an argument happens and whether or not it gets resolved. Because research has shown that there are many arguments that do not get resolved in a relationship. And in fact there are some arguments in, in most people's long term relationships that actually just never get resolved. And we have this notion that like every, everything should have a solution. Everything should be like neatly ironed out in the relationship. And there's some things that genuinely just take couples years to kind of chew on and move through and come to a resolution of. So but when those conflicts do happen, being able to lead in the repair. Now that does not mean that you take all the responsibility for everything that's happened. It also doesn't mean that you sit your partner down and say, you know, you need to take ownership over, you know, everything that you did and what you said and da da, da. It simply means that you initiate the conversation from for repair to happen and you can encourage your partner, you know, if they've had a blowout and blow up at you and you know, clearly something happened that triggered them and they just sort of, you know, got angry and came at you, you can still initiate the pair by repair by saying, hey, you Know when you want to talk about whatever it is that happened yesterday, I'm here. Or, you know, hey, I like to repair from the conflict last night, from the conversation last night, Are you open to that? If it was an argument or a disagreement that happened with the two of you, or if you know that you were just plain in the wrong, where you just. You. You lost your temper, or you started an argument, you started a conflict, you can just be super straightforward. I would like to apologize for what happened last night. Are you open to that right now? Giving people the choice, this is where a lot of us go wrong when it comes to reconciliation is we just sort of flippantly put it out there, like, hey, I'm sorry for what happened, and we try and move past it as quickly as possible. If you give the other person a choice, and you can encourage your partner to do this with you as well. If you give the other person a choice, hey, I'd like to apologize, or I'd like to repair from what happened last night. Are you open to that? Are you open to talking about that right now? That is going to be very disarming already for the repair process. You're initiating it, you're leading it. You're creating the structure for it, and you're giving them a choice to step into that. They say, no, great. No problem. You let me know when you're ready, or I'll circle back later today. Sound good? Or I'll circle back tomorrow. Does that sound good? Or you let me know when you want to engage with that. Now, if you're with an avoidant person, that's probably gonna be never, so. So you might want to just be a little bit more direct about that, but lead that repair process. Sometimes what I even encourage men to do is, you know, and I've. I've done this with my wife before, where she. She's gotten upset about something and kind of, like, come at me out of nowhere. And, you know, I've. I've grounded. I've done all the things I just talked about and held space and. And been very, like, calm and. And in the moment, and. And then just let her go and do her own thing. And the next day, I'll come back and say, hey, I would like for you to apologize for what happened last night. And it's not a demand. It's not, I, you know, you have to do this. It's just a, you know, recognizing that something went astray. And she does that with me too. You know, if I get upset and I step Over a line. Or, you know, I'm. I'm loud in any way, shape or form, or, you know, if I'm, if I move into a place, that's harsh and I don't own it. Usually the next day she'll say, like, hey, do you wanna, do you wanna share what happened last night? Or, you know, can you, can you take ownership? Sometimes she'll say, can you take ownership what. Over what happened last night? And then that's like the cue for me to step in so we can invite our partners into an apology. You know, sometimes we underestimate, and this is what I'll leave you guys with as I'll close off. Sometimes we underestimate that when, you know, everybody does this. When people cross a line within themselves, right? And you've probably experienced this, you cross a line, you get angry, you get reactive, you, you know, you get loud, or you just shut down, you completely disconnect from your partner. And the majority of people have shame about that. You don't like that you've done that. You don't like that you've spoken to your girlfriend or your wife that way. You don't like that you've pulled away like that. You don't like that you've been reactive or childish or petty or combative or resentful. The majority of people, we all have shame about that. And so sometimes it can be very, very helpful to invite our partners in, to taking ownership for their actions when we know that they've felt shame about that. Again, it's not your responsibility to get your girlfriend or your wife to take part, to take ownership or accountability over their part. They genuinely have to do that for themselves. But you can create the opening and the invitation for them to step in and say, yeah, I'm sorry I got so reactive with you, or I'm sorry that I just shut down and, you know, tuned. Tuned you out. That, that wasn't great. So you can use some of those things, right? If you want to repair, hey, I'd like to repair from the conflict or what happened last night, are you open to that? And if you, if you just genuinely know, like, something happened and just like a tidal wave of emotion and anger and volatility came at me, you can still invite the repair. And then it's their work and their responsibility to do that. And you can say things like, hey, you know, you can even just give a look, like, sometimes I'll just look at my wife. Like, you want to say anything about last night? You know, like. And again, I know her. I'm not doing anything that's gonna piss her off or agitate her or like cause her to feel shame and embarrassed. You know, we have a good dynamic where I can look at her and say like, you want to say anything about last night? Are you ready to talk about what happened last night? And sometimes I'll say, you know, are you, are you ready to apologize for how you, you know, how you engaged last night? All of those things when you have a healthy relationship with what we're working towards are completely possible. So direct the repair, create direction for the repair to happen. So many men either sit back and wait for repair to happen or, or they try and force it and take, take sort of heavy handed action. So leave your thoughts and comments in the in, in the comment section below. Whether you're on Spotify or YouTube, don't forget to man it forward. This is a great episode that you should listen to with your person so that you can get some sense as to whether or not like what they agree with what you guys want to institute. This is definitely something that you should listen to with that special somebody in your life. So until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.