What is Healthy Conflict // Hump Day Q&A

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You know what time it is, sweetie?

It's hump day. Q and A time.

Hump day.

Q and A. Hump day.

Q and A. Welcome to the Naked Marriage Podcast. Hump day Q and A. We love answering your questions. So every Wednesday we're dropping a special podcast episode focused on one of your questions. You can submit your own marriage related question online@nakedmarriagepodcast.com or by sending us a message on Instagram. Aveandashleywillis. We've got a great question today, so let's dive in. I came into marriage not knowing what healthy conflict looked like growing up. My parents marriage was full of domination, explosive anger, bitter resentment, and a lack of honest communication, all of which I've seen in myself as a wife. And in turn, my husband has felt dominated in disrespect. And this needs to end now. How can I break the cycle of what I learned from my past and fully embrace healthy conflict with my husband? Man, this is such a great question.

Yes.

First, I'm going to let Ashley dive in. But first off, thank you for writing this in. Thank you for your courage and your honesty to, you know, to confess this is an area you want to grow in. And so many people relate to this. You know, Jimmy Evans, when he, he has a great illustration he uses in his talks where he has people raise their hand, he says, how many of you grew up in a house where there was a dominant parent, a dominant spouse, whether it was your mom or your dad that kind of dominated in that marriage relationship and a bunch of hands go up and he said, now of those who just raised their hands, how many of you would say that dominant relationship had a negative impact in the marriage and in the family? And almost every single hand that raised the first time raised the second time, saying that dominance always creates unhealthy dynamics in the relationship. And so you're recognizing this. Because the hard part is, even if we recognize something is unhealthy, our default mode is to just do what we saw growing up, even if we know it's unhealthy. And so the first step is recognizing it. She's recognized that she wants to stop it. So, sweetie, where does she start?

I think the place to start is giving your spouse permission to tell you when you're doing these things.

Oh, that's good.

And, and, you know, we've, we, we know what this is like. We've walked through this ourselves, and we've worked with a lot of couples who've walked through this. And I do think you have to say that the spouse that grew up that way intends to go to the default mode of explosive anger, resentment, you know, unhealthy fighting, so to speak. You have to give your spouse permission to say when you're, when you're crossing those boundaries. And, and this isn't to put you in a parent, child dynamic. So please don't get me wrong here. It's, it's nothing like that, but it's saying, like, listen, when I fall into that mode, I am giving you permission to say, sweetie, listen, you are starting to sound like that parent that you don't want to sound like you're starting to do those things. And you told me it was okay when I told you, and I know you don't want to be this way. And when you say it calmly like that, and you're like, listen, we talked about this beforehand. I'm not trying to nitpick at you, but I know you're not wanting to go down this road. It can stop it in its tracks, and, you know, it's something that it'll kind of stop it before it gets worse. Because I think a lot of times when, when you're used to a household where someone is just flying off the handle all the time and, like, has, you know, goes off to reckless abandonment, like, with their anger, and it's like, it's just this horrible thing that just gets worse and worse. But when you can very calmly, you know, when you see kind of them ramping up, you see, you know, if your spouse is the one that tends to go to that place of anger and you see them ramping up and they've already given you permission to say something, kindly say something. And it might even be, you know, grabbing their hand gently and saying, sweetie, that you're doing what you said. You don't want to do. Let's. Let's wait till you calm down a little bit, and then we'll. We'll talk about it. Now, speaking of calming down, the worst thing you could say is calm down.

Right. It never helps anybody.

It never helps.

Never helps anybody.

But speaking kindly and saying, maybe you even have a word. I mean, it could be as simple as, like, a code word, like a safe word. Like a safe word.

Philadelphia.

Serious. Yeah, it's getting crazy. Philadelphia. You know, whatever it is. But, I mean, it's just those things that, you know, is not going to ignite your anger, but is going to extinguish your anger and be that little reminder, that gentle reminder. And gentle being the biggest word I can tell you right now, because we don't want it to cause more arguing, but a general reminder to say, we're getting heated here. Like, we're going into a place where I know you don't want to go.

And.

And it's just that way to kind of remind you. And over time, by doing this exercise, over time, you'll stop doing it because you'll have had that gentle reminder, even if it's a look. I mean, again, you guys need to talk about what that thing is to kind of get you to extinguish that anger inside of you or that bitterness or resentment. And that way you're not repeating what you grew up with. Because I do think there's so many things that, you know, for those who've grown up in a household where there was a dominant parent, you know how toxic that is.

Yeah.

And it is, like, the biggest fear to repeat that. But like Dave said, our go to is often how we were raised. And so it does take being very intentional about how we do address, you know, hot topics in our marriage. And it's so good when we have our spouse on the same page with us to give us that general reminder, that look, that word, to just say, oh, we're getting it. We're getting into that territory. And that way, you know, we have to look at it as they're just trying to help me here and help us. This is not an attack on me. It's because that's how I was raised. That's where I tend to go. And I want to stop this cycle.

Man, that's good stuff. Learn to recognize the signs, the triggers that are leading you there. Practice ways to calm down. Talk about these things. Not in the heat of the moment, but talk about them when you're both.

Calm or even write it down.

Yeah, write it down. One other quick thing about this, if you will, Google F5 marriage tornado and our David Ashley Willis. We've got some videos and some articles that kind of relate to this cycle of conflict and how people fall into it, how to get out of it where we can talk about that in more detail, because this is a, this is a big, big issue and we've, we've talked a lot about it because it is such an important issue. But thank you for that question and I hope my beautiful and brilliant wife's insights will help you because if you'll put what she said into practice, that will make a big difference.

Thank you all so much for listening to today's episode of Hump Day Q and A. We love getting your questions and we want to answer your questions. So if you go to nakedmarriagepodcast.com you can submit your question right there. Or you can follow us on Instagram Ave and Ashley Willis and you can give us your questions right there by giving us a dm. So we'll catch you next time on Hump Day Q and A.