Lewis Howes and Baya Voce discuss moving couples from destructive conflict to healthier patterns. Baya introduces TAR—Truth, Agreement, Responsibility—a framework for disagreements where each partner's perspective gets heard. They emphasize emotional regulation before repair conversations and practical skills like speaking one at a time and active listening.
Chapters
Where I used to approach every breakdown or conflict is how could I get through this as quickly as possible? Back to peace, back to safety, back to harmony, back to back to soulmate energy versus power struggle energy. Right. How can we just go back to the way it was in the first month was so easy and fun and amazing. Can't you just be that person again? Like, it was like, who are you? What is going on? You weren't this way for the first six months of knowing you. Now this, like, hurt, wounded little girl is crying every other day and yelling at me, well, what? This isn't who I knew. So you're like, you're going through an identity shift of a relationship where you're like, what is this? There may be seeing something in you that they said, oh, you weren't doing what you used to do. Whatever it is. Right. We're both not doing something. And then you're in this power struggle. You're just thinking, how do I get back to soulmate energy? This feeling of soulmate, which also I don't even agree with, but because I think it's a. You know, it's interesting. My wife, she's a very famous movie actress in. In Mexico, and she's over 40 movies and she was the rom com queen in Mexico. So every movie she did was a rom com for many years. And it was number one box office. And she grew up in the Disneyland rom com. This is how relationships are based on cultural. She didn't see that with her parents. Her parents have a very healthy relationship. But she grew up kind of in this movie scene, living these stories and kind of embodying this in her own life as well. And she had to really heal and realize, like, it's not about you complete me. It's like I need to complete myself and create wholeness within me. Then we can create interdependence when we're both creating this wholeness next to each other. Right. It's like we can both continue to grow next to each other. But part of it is like the approach to conflict. We. I think both parties need tools, but we both need to approach conflict with saying, instead, I used to want to create peace. I wanted to create harmony, or I wanted to win and I wanted to be right. It's like, you're wrong, I'm right. I know you're weak right now. I have the answers. Like, my ego is so big also. Right. It was like I just wanted to win.
Yeah. Welcome to all of us.
Right? Exactly. But then when I got into the Relationship with Martha. Early on, I was like, the only way I win is that we both win. And if one person loses, then we both lose. Yeah. So we both need. So it was. My approach was like, how do we both win when there's conflict? How does the relationship win? How do I win? How do you win? How do we all win? Because if there's one loser and one winner, then everyone loses. And life is not about win, lose. It's about win, win. And that's something I've learned in emotional intelligence workshops that we've both been through. And it's really about approaching conflict with me to that mindset. It's not always easy to do. Even today, even with the tools you still have to approach it with. It's not about me being right, you being wrong. How can we both win here?
Yeah. Just speaking of mindset, I actually think there are three things I think about that when approaching conflict that are really important that I think we've gotten kind of wrong or we haven't been taught. I use the acronym TAR basically so that I can remember it, but it's truth acceptance, or, excuse me, Agree, truth, agreement, and responsibility. Now, truth, you're saying, win, lose. Oftentimes we want to fight for the truth. We want to fight like you just yelled at me. I wasn't yelling. I was just speaking loudly. Yeah, yeah.
No, you weren't.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going too fast. I was going five over. Right. If we're fighting the truth, we are fighting a losing battle, period, Full stop. There is no truth in relationship. There are just two people who are having their own experiences. And you live in your world, and I live over here in my world. And as long as we're arguing for the truth, we're both gonna lose because the truth doesn't actually exist. It's so important to know this because we often think that we need to, to the second point of the mindset shift, agree with one another. Now, if we think we have to agree, then we think your truth has got to be right, and then my truth has got to be wrong. So how does that work? That doesn't. That's not an equation that works out. So. But if you don't, if you know that you're not arguing for truth, what we're arguing for is your perspective or my perspective getting heard, seen, and validated.
Yes.
The way to do this is one person has got to go at a time. You cannot go at a time at the same time.
Try. Try doing that with a Mexican family.
Oh, God.
They all speak at the same time.
At the same time. This is by, by the way, simple. Not easy.
Simple.
Not easy, everybody. This is. This. It's super, super tricky.
You have to really listen. Even when you feel heightened emotions, you have to say one. I'm going to listen. You're going to listen. We're going to create an agreement around who's listening.
Yeah.
And without interruption.
Right?
It's like, it is hard.
This is hard. This is.
This is.
It's like we, we. We. We don't really realize how challenging these skills can be to put into play. Like, we need so much repetition for these to. So listen, you're gonna. You're gonna go one at a time. You're gonna say, it's your partner's turn. They're gonna say something that pisses you off, and you're gonna jump in. That's gonna happen. Like, we just have to know that that is going to happen as we're practicing this. This is a lifelong journey here. But the move is to know who's most dysregulated, and that person should get repairing first. So first, before ever entering into a repair conversation, you're. You. You need to both at I call it, do nothing. Like, go into your separate sparring corners and like, drink water, take a bath, phone a friend, talk to a therapist. Do whatever you need. Put your feet on the ground. Like what? Whatever. You need to start to ground a little bit to. To start to regulate. Once at least one of you is, you know, regulated at like a. On a scale of 1 to 10, like a 3 or below, then you're ready to have a repair conversation. Then you're ready to render, ready to go in.
They say the number one skill is.
Emotional regulation, and there is no way around it. You cannot escape this if you want to have a meaningful, intimate relationship. There is no way around this. There is no truth in relationship. There are just two people who are having their own experiences. And you live in your world, and I live over here in my world.
