#49: How To Stop Fighting In A Relationship In 20-Seconds Or Less

Hey, thanks for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

Hey, welcome to the Love Shack. It's a little place where we get to get together, explore fresh perspectives, eavesdrop on juicy conversations and uncover the mysteries that nobody talks about. But absolutely influences our relationships. If you are struggling with your special someone. This show is dedicated to helping couples rescue their relationships and we do it with people from around the world. I'm Stacey Bartley and I am here with my co host and lover, Tom. Together for the past decade, we have been teaching and mentoring couples with the sole purpose of helping us, all of us, create and experience what we refer to as love for a lifetime. I mean, after all, that's what we're looking for, right? Something that's going to last the long haul. We, we do that in our relationships, both with ourselves and with others, using sound principles and skills. So welcome. It's great to be here with you today.

Absolutely. I always appreciate you gifting us some of your most precious resource, which is time. Thank you again for joining us inside the Love Shack. Whether it's live, whether it's on your favorite podcast place, where you download your podcast on our YouTube Live, Facebook Live, it's amazing what technology can do. But no, bottom line is thank you. We. I know, Tom, you say that every time we have an exciting episod and it's, it's. I can't. That's all. My, my lips are locked. I can't share anything more.

I bet if we were to go back and listen to all the recordings, we would hear you say, yeah, it's our favorite, favorite day of the week.

We, we love and ever again, our intention. All kidding aside.

Honey, come on, go ahead. I don't need to give it away.

Today, Stacy and I are going to be going through a very, very significant and important framework and a brand new resource that we have for free. How to stop a fight in 20, 20 seconds. And that's not being cliche, that is real, ladies and gentlemen. So grab your favorite beverage, take a pause and really dig in with us. And, and, and this is going, this is good stuff and it's a great. We, we're drinking our own coffee. We're right there with you. We got.

We're going to share a personal story about our relationship of a fight that we had not that long ago so that we can look at it, we can dissect it and we can break it down. I like to use examples from Tom and I's relationship. Even though we have many client stories that sometimes we feed in. I prefer to honor the confidentiality of our clients. And so we use a personal story every chance that we get so that you can also see that we're also on this journey with you, that we're just humans. And as I jokingly say, not really to my clients. You know, we do this because we need it more than most. It's a refresher course and a teacher for us again and again and again. And we're constantly trying to feed it through our relationship.

And I'll just let everyone know it's all Stacy's fault. This fight we're going to refer to, but we'll act like, of course. Just kidding.

So, speaking about fighting, I mean, do you ever feel like all you and your partner are doing anymore is just fighting with each other? It probably goes something like this. You go round and round having the same argument, and instead of resolving anything, you both just feel really crappy, regretful and lonely. It's an amazing thing when we look at fighting, it doesn't really take us anywhere good. Sure, there's the outliers where all of a sudden something pops out that's needed to be said for a long, long time in a fight. But unfort, unfortunately, in order to get that little gem, we have to get through all the stuff that breaks our hearts, that causes us to feel like the relationship doesn't matter, that we don't matter, or that your partner isn't in a place where they can show up for you. I can't tell you how many clients I see individually that say, stace, that's never going to work. My partner won't do that. My partner's not capable of that. And I say, well, okay, I understand that you've come to this conclusion, but what do you say we give it a try? And so we come to these conclusions about ourselves, about our partners, about what our relationship is capable of. And unfortunately, we live by that. Whatever it is, we will adhere to that belief because that's what we do as human beings. A fight is a place where either someone has said something that hurts your feelings, or maybe you've been the one that's said something that's hurt somebody else's feelings. And the eventual aftermath of any fight, if we look at it, is regret. Because it's all almost like the regret is more painful than the fight that was happening or taking place itself. And have you ever felt like roller coaster ride is happening? Like you get on to a conversation and out of nowhere, all of a sudden you're on this roller coaster of a fight and you don't know where it's going to end or where it's going to take you, but you don't feel like there's anything you can do about it. That's really indicative of a fight as well. So today in the love shack, Tom and I are going to share his personal story. We're going to dissect it down so that you can understand that there is actually a progression of a fight and then we're going to show you how absolutely you can stop it in 20 seconds or less. So stay with us. We'll be right back.

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Working with Stacy has been life changing in a very magical way. I wanted to work with Stacy when I left a long term marriage because I didn't want to repeat any of my relational, how would you say, unhealthiness. I'm so amazed how she is taken her experience and wrapped it into her own program. A program that is designed specially for you, for anyone that moves forward with her. She's unique, she's profound, she's magical. She has a love for others that is unmatched and it would be a gift to yourself to work with Stacy.

Learn the simple three step system to rescue your struggling relationship by registering for Stacy's brand new free workshop. Reserve your seat by going to stacybartley.comworkshop.

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On the ears, good for the soul. Alternative Talk 1150.

Welcome back, everybody. Tom and Stacy Bartley. We are your hosts of Love Shack Live. Thanks for spending some time inside the Love shack today for a very, very significant conversation. How to stop a fight in 20 seconds or less. It's real. Honestly, it's real. I promise you, by the end of this episode, you're going to know it's simple. Not necessarily always easy, especially when we start, but it, it's not hard. These are not complicated processes or words we say many times. It's simply the sequence in which we say them is the dramatic difference.

And it doesn't start with, hey, we need to talk. That's not a great setup, right? That's going to almost ensure that you're going to absolutely hit a wall of defensiveness. So what do we do before we start to talk about the solution? Let's talk about what a fight is and the progression of a fight. It's important for us to understand that because it's only then that we can start working and understanding a fight. Otherwise, we feel like we're kind of jumping on that roller coaster ride and we have no idea where it's going to take us and we have no idea how to get off. Right. Have you ever had that feeling as you jump onto a roller coaster ride? You're kind of a little nervous. You're like, okay, I'm not quite sure what the experience is going to be here. And then in the middle of the ride, you had no idea. You have, you can't, you can't get off. So you just have to let go and let it take you wherever it is you want to go. That's kind of how we feel about fighting, isn't it? Like, like once we get on that ride and once it starts taking on progression, we have no idea what to do and how to abort it. And then we just get the leftover result, which is never good. Let's just think about that for a minute. Has a fight ever given you an epiphany about, ah, okay, I understand now. I get it.

And again, we're not disregarding that. Maybe that immediate dopamine hit that you get for, you know, maybe how you sense, you know, I, I showed him or I showed her. And again, please understand, don't go anywhere. We're not advocating and going to teach you how to be, you know, a doormat. That is not at all what we are talking about. There's simply more effective ways to navigate this.

And you don't have to just wait until the end of the roller coaster ride and then try and clean up the aftermath where everybody feels regretful, regretful because of the things we said, the way we showed up, the things that we did in the heat at the moment, reacting to whatever was going on. Everybody feels crappy at the end of it and nothing was really ever resolved. And so then we make it up that, okay, we can't talk about that, we can't go there, that was horrible. We're never going to do that again. And so all of a sudden we create these emotional prisons or places in conversation that we can't go because they always, the minute they come up, take us to the same old place that we don't want to visit. And so I want you to understand the progression of a fight today. But we're going to do it through our own story. We promised in the beginning that we were going to share a story of something that happened for us recently. So a, you know, we're human beings and in our relationship we struggle with the same things that we teach. The difference is we can just get through it quicker because of the skills and the tools that we have mastered and practiced thousands of times.

And I would bet we're going to continue to practice thousands of times.

Why? Because we're different human beings and we make messes. And we make messes. We're mess making machines. It's not about not making a mess, it's about knowing how to clean them up. So here's the, here's, here's the layout. We have a wonderful tradition where when our grandchildren have a birthday, we invite them to come up and have what we call a sleepover. They actually sleep over at our house. We usually do an activity of their choice and go to a restaurant of their choice. And it's an opportunity for us to spend one on one time with our grandchildren. And it's really a time that we generally look forward to, except for this particular time where we had a granddaughter sleeping over, unbeknownst to me. And this is important, we'll highlight this on the progression. Unbeknownst to me, Tom was not filling it. Tom was not really filling the party. And later it comes, he looked like he was. He was playing along like he was and that everything was fine. And so of course, as tradition has it, the granddaughter is going to choose the restaurant and we're going to schedule a time her and I spend the day together while Tom is doing what he does best work. Just in the spirit of full disclosure, is it okay, babe, if I. I disclose the fact that you're kind of a workaholic?

Yes.

Okay.

Absolutely.

Okay, good, good. Okay. So Tom's very much a workaholic. Anything you want to add there?

Very intense, ladies and gentlemen. Okay, let's be adult, like, and get things handled. No, I mean, I. I'm blessed and grateful. Out outside. In addition to supporting our wonderful body of work, I. I'm blessed and grateful to say I've been a very successful real estate appraiser for 20, gosh, almost 25 years now here in the greater Sacramento area. It's a lot of pressure, a lot of deadlines, very intense.

So our granddaughter and I spent the entire day together, her and I, which was glorious. While Tom had the agreement and the commitment that he was going to work for the day, and then he was going to meet us downtown, our little town, for. For the restaurant of Cerise Choice. So the time comes, and Siree and I are at the restaurant, and there's been several communications via text. And even when we left the house about, are you coming? Are you coming? Yeah, yeah, I've just got this 30 minutes.

30 minutes. 30 minutes.

Let me just give me another minute. I'll be right there. I'll be right there, I'll be right there. And so Cere and I go ahead of him and we're sitting down at the little restaurant and even order him a beer, right? And he's. I'm now texting him, are you coming? Are you coming? Are you coming? Are you coming? And then there was this moment in the texting where I realized he wasn't coming. Not because he didn't say he wasn't coming, but I just realized he was going to play this out like he wasn't coming. He wasn't going to show up. And it was the having to tell my granddaughter that grandpa's not coming, that was the tough part for me. And that was the part that really incited the emotional, like, upset inside of me. Like, man, okay, this isn't okay. Because then my granddaughter goes places like, why aren't I as important as work? Why aren't I as important to. You know, he made it for so and so and so and so and so and so's birthday, right? What about me? And we know that we go those places as human beings, right? And so that's where my heart started to go, which only fired me up about Tom and thinking, how could you do this, right? After all we do and love of our family and contribution, and this was planned and it Was laid out and. And you knew. And I tried to be as, you know, accommodating as possible. You didn't make it. And by the way, this is a new thing for us. I had never not had Tom make it to a party, to a gathering, to a dinner, to anything that he had committed to do. And so this for me and my experience personally was a whole new level of like, what's going on here? So needless to say, my granddaughter and I completed dinner and I tried to, ha ha, as we do, play it off like it's okay. And she's loved and she's appreciated and.

I made her down there. Like when you guys.

You never made it down there.

No, I did. I made it down there. But it was, it was after you guys had long finished your dinner.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it was, it was quite delayed.

And at this point in time, I was unhappy. I was very unhappy. And so we weren't going to handle this in front of her. Right? We were trying to do our best. I was trying to do my best. I'll speak for this personally, to handle my upset with us, you know, adult, like, as we try and do. And we had the sleepover and it wasn't until the next day when our granddaughter was taken home. And I remember very much you chime in here too, babe. I remember folding clothes. And he was. We weren't talking. There wasn't a whole lot said. We'd kind of like just let it simmer for a minute.

And actually we had more family coming over that night as well, which was also very much pre planned.

Just.

I will just say both of these were very, very pre planned. So there was no suddenness of like this engagement, if you will, this, this scheduled time with family. But we had, you know, my brother and his partner coming over again, long time scheduled that next night. And this is not a lot of time, not a lot of time to recover.

We have a big family, so. And we'd love to interact with our family. So this happens quite frequently. This isn't something that's odd either. So I remember I was folding clothes and it just happens to be in the same space that Tom is at his desk working. And I noticed that the more I saw him working, the more fired up I got because I'm. I'm angry that work seems to sometimes trump things that I feel are more important. Right. Like our family, like relationships, like communication, those kinds of things. And now, as you guys know, I mean, Tom's a very engaging, wonderful guy. If you can peel him away from work. And at this point in time, I still hadn't said anything. I'm still trying to figure out how to show up, say what I need to say, and I can't take it anymore. I'm to the point where I'm like. As we talk about being. I'm at my max. I can't take in any more thoughts or difficult emotions. I can't stand him standing on my emotional toe any longer without saying something. And because I had waited so long, I got teary. I started to cry, and I said, what happened last night is not okay. That. That is so hard for me to wrap my head around, Right? And Tom immediately stopped what he was doing and. And turned and faced me and said, tell me what's going on now. We'll go back and we'll point out some key places here. But that was one. I'm just going to put a little arrow right there. And he just let me share what was on my heart and what was hard and what was difficult and what hurt my feelings and where I was at and what was playing out in our body of work, what we call our movie. There was a place I was living, and I had connected some dots, and I was hurt because of several things. And he immediately stopped doing what he was doing because he could tell I was really upset, and he just turned and faced. And let me say so. And by saying so, of course, then he had a lot of emotions about what was being said, and he felt misunderstood and unappreciated. He felt like I didn't understand where he was coming from as well. And that was true. And so, thankfully, because we have skills and we've practiced these things, I was able to give him the opportunity to talk about why this had happened.

And.

And then there was this wonderful moment where we cleaned up a mess, which was what? You take it from there?

Oh, yeah. I would say, you know, 15, 20 minutes. And again, we had a. A timeline again, because, you know, we try to be respectful of everybody's time because it is our most precious resource. I always open the show with that. And it's true. That's the only thing that we don't have any. You know, it's a finite resource, at least in this incarnation or whatever our belief system is. But so we had other people, and even Stacy had mentioned maybe we need to tell them it's not going to work out. I said, no, I. I don't think that would serve any of us. I think we can get through this. And. And so, no, I Mean when I could tell that Stacy was very upset as she shared. So again the greatest gift that any of us can give anyone in my opinion is our time. It. Our true attention. Excuse me really it. You know our presence is a present that is not cliche. Think about it because it's. Think how often we don't feel like we're heard, acknowledged and appreciated. So I could tell that this was really. And I was. I was a hot mess anyway myself. So I again I stopped what I was doing. The greatest thing any of us can do is look someone in the eye, put our device down and truly give someone our attention and presence right there will change the game. And yeah so we both. Because again we drink our own coffee and we've developed these practices and frameworks for ourself first first and then we teach and mentor our clients. We each gave ourselves the opportunity and permission and safety to share from our hearts without judgment, without interruption. And we discovered a lot of things about both of us and what like Stacy had sure. What was going on in our movies and I was just a hot mess and I take on a lot of responsibility and yes I'm very intense work wise come from a family of great, you know, responsibility and loyalty and integrity and again there's balance in everything. And just was trying to dig ourselves out of some situations that just, you know, we all have these perfect convergences. I guess the Gus, we like to say Gus God, universe and spirit provides us to master lessons and there we go. And it just, it converged at the inopportune time.

Well and help people understand where you were. So I've. I've shared where I was at. Right. I've shared what.

Yeah.

So really me. So where were you looking back is.

I. I just should have said babe, you know what? I. I just don't have it in me.

What was the conflict that was happening inside?

Well, I was torn because I wanted to continue doing what I was doing. You know when you were. When you're writing an appraisal it's a very, very technical analysis and report and there's so much time intensity. So I really just wanted to get it up, get that one off my plate rather than stop and interrupt and. But yet I was torn because again I have great love and appreciation and gratitude for our family and so I had made a commitment. I take those very seriously to our granddaughter. And so I was really torn but I just didn't have the emotional bandwidth to do them both. And really should have said babe, you know what? I don't have it in me. Can you please, you and our granddaughter just go on your own and I'm just gonna, you know, when you come back, I'll be ready to then participate, but I'm not gonna be able to make the dinner.

Yeah. So did you, when you were pushing it back into the 30 minutes, another 30 minutes, another 30 minutes, did you really think that you were gonna miss it?

You know, I mean, it's, it. You know, in all fairness, I don't. You know how it is, babe. Sometimes when you're in the throes of these appraisal analysis that you don't exactly know what you're undertaking. And it's just. Excuse me, you're, you're, you're, you're in the weeds and we're going to go through this acronym. And, and, but, but at what point.

In time did you realize you weren't.

Going to make it or make it very late? Probably with the first or second text.

Yeah.

You know, but again, because. Didn't want to disappoint you and our granddaughter. You know, but that's key.

I, I really wanted to help you kind of disclose that, because that's the key. We don't want to disappoint the people that we relying on us. And so we know that we're not going to make it, but we keep saying that we're going to. And, and it's, and it's not malicious, which is how it felt for the person sitting down there at the restaurant table. It feels malicious because we're like, come on, man, we had an agreement. We had a time. I don't know how much more I can like, prep you or help you or support you, and you keep telling me you're coming and then you don't, and then you don't, and then you don't, and then you don't, and then it's done and then it's over. And like I said, there's that moment where I'm like, you're not going to make it.

And it would have been so much, just so much easier and simpler and cleaner and about one tenth of the emotional, you know, unrest. If I would have just come clean and followed my intuition and come clean and said, baby, it's just, it's just not there. Even though I had already agreed. You know, again, these are, you know, boundaries and, and things are. We use the garage door analogy. You know, I mean, you know, they're malleable, they move, you know, but the importance is disclosure and sharing when they do move.

So I want to give you the progression of the fight, and I'm going to go back to our story again and again and again so that you can see the progression of the fight. We can actually point it out and you have something to kind of hopefully take away and see in your own life, these progressions. Because fights don't just come out of somewhere. They don't. And unfortunately, fights happen because we don't disclose where we're at or we don't know how to stop them or both, because they all of a sudden pick up intensity, and we don't know what to do then, but just get on board or try and get the heck out of Dodge.

And again, excuse me. We're talking about things, ladies and gentlemen, that are happening in nanoseconds, emotionally. So it's very fast, it's very furious, and it's very scary. So we're going to do everything we can to impart and encourage you and share with you how you can slow this process down.

You know, it's important that we slow down. The more we start spinning up, the more we need to slow down.

Stacy will say, honey, or are you reeling? R, E, E, L I, N G. Reeling. Yes, I am reeling.

And it's time to slow down and take a breath, which is very counterintuitive to what we think we need to do. We think if we speed up, we're going to be able to get ahead of it. We're going to be able to figure it out. Right? If we just say this one more thing, this one more word, throw out this one more piece of evidence, we're going to get ahead of it, and somebody's going to go, aha, I see the light. You make so much sense. Thank you for that.

It's never been my experience, never mind either. And I don't think it's everybody, anybody's else, if you really can be true and honest with yourself.

So the first step of a progression of a fight is something happens. I like to say people step on your emotional toe and it hurts. And you're aware that there's something that hurts, and you're not so sure, maybe even in that moment, why it hurts. You just know it does. And the first thing that happens when something fires off like that is I withdraw. Okay, we're going to go through a.

WEEDS acronym, so W, E E D S. And the first letter is W for withdraw.

And we're going to pull back, whether that's physically pulling back or emotionally pulling back. So the minute Tom said he needed 30 minutes. As we were heading out to the restaurant, I. I can look back and see in that moment, I emotionally pulled back. I left the house saying, okay, you better make it. Which probably made him feel like even more so. He couldn't disclose the fact that he was probably not going to make it all.

The pressure intensified unbelievably with every. With every five minutes. I mean, we're talking about a 10x.

Very well said, babe. It's so true. So I left looking at him like. Like this.

Not really the look that I often revere about my lovely wife and partner. That's not a good one.

Yeah. So immediately, not only me but him are pulling back. We're withdrawing. It's like, okay, we're not disclosing. We're pulling within. We're cutting ourselves off. And there's an emotional withdrawal there. Right. It wasn't a. Okay, I look forward to seeing in a minute. Okay. Right. I'm excited. This is going to be great. It was a. You better show up. Okay. That was my emotional withdrawal and his too. He looked at me and I could tell that as we walked out of the door, he was really grateful we were gone. So that's withdrawal. That's. Now we're into progression. I'm sitting down there at the restaurant with my granddaughter and I'm texting him. 10 minutes has gone by. Where are you? I thought you were going to be right behind us. And now he's turned to buy something. He wanting to buy some time. Things are going to now progress to the E of Weeds.

The first E. You want to tell.

Them what it is.

The first E is escalate.

Things start to escalate inside of yourself. Like, I swear I'm sitting down there.

Thinking, oh, if he texts me one more time, I'm going to cancel her cell phone.

If he doesn't make it, I swear I'm gonna be so upset, like. And then you're talking. You're trying to do the flip side of that, which is kind of talk yourself down. Right. It's going to be okay. Right? I'm gonna order a beer for him. He's telling me he's coming. He's never not shown up. It's going to be okay. Just take a breath and.

Why is it invariably when you're under that kind of pressure, nothing is going well? It's just like, you know, you speed up the pass the car and you get in front of them, and then you reach the red light and you just, like, the car's Right behind you didn't do all that good to speed up.

So true. And it is a. And it is a fascination as things start to escalate, that other things start to go.

I mean, Gus, you know, God, universal spirit, we always say, has an incredible sense of humor.

And this escalation happens within us as we get more and more plugged in. It can also happen within our communication. Right. If we're communicating and Tom and I weren't at this point in time, but if by chance we were. The voices go up, the words, and the intensity goes up, and everybody can feel it. It's like an ether in the air where. Okay, this is picking up speed. Here we go. And this is about the time in the roller coaster ride. We go, oh, keep your arms and hands inside the cart. I have no idea where this is going to take us. All I know is I'm on board because I have a lot to say. I have a lot of emotion. I'm not quite sure what it is, but, man, I can tell you I'm getting plugged in. So let's go. Let's rumble. Okay.

Absolutely.

And all of us will try and stay engaged in this moment. I say all. 99.9% of us will. Right. Try and stay engaged.

And quite frankly, we don't. We don't know what else to do.

We don't know what else.

We don't know what else to do.

And then we get to the second E in weeds and the second Ian.

Weeds is a fascinating place that is expose and. Or explain.

This is where I try and expose your weaknesses. This might be where I start pulling out some. Some communication that sounds a lot like, come on, you did this last time. Let's not do it again. Right? Hey, we all know that this is a thing for you.

We've talked about this many times.

Get your fanny down here. Let's go. Pull yourself away from the screen. Would be my communication to him. And what would be his communication, babe? What would be your communication?

You don't understand all the pressure I have. Please give me a few more moments, for the love of God.

Yeah. And then we try and start explaining our. With our evidence. This is where we bring in evidence. We love our evidence. And I want you to understand with evidence, we can support anything, any belief or emotion that I'm feeling. I can provide evidence for to very under. It's very important that we understand this.

Would that be in the technical. You're the. The psychological science geek. Would that be confirmation bias?

Absolutely. Confirmation.

One point for Tom look at you go. Okay, yeah, no kidding aside. Yes, we.

You can.

I mean, come on. All of us. We can. You can. You can find evidence for whatever the mind and the brain are looking for. We can.

So my evidence is obviously, I'm sitting down here in real time. You've promised to be here and you're not here. And you've said you're coming three times now and you're still not here and your beer's getting cold. And at this point in time, I'm starting to flip a lid, so to speak, turn into a very hot mess. And where are you?

I would say, yeah, you just. Again, you don't understand. You live kind of in. We've been accused of being living in Disneyland sometimes and, you know. But no, you pay. Believe me, I've run into some unexpected problems. Please, I'll get through this. Just give me another 10. Another 10 and another 10 where again, I should. Again. We always have opportunities to come clean whenever we want. You don't ever lose that ability. It may not be as clean as the first time. You should. You could have asked. But again, that would have really been the best remedy. And. But I. I was just literally torn emotionally between, you know, what I'd committed to and where I was at. It just, you know, I'm not evolved enough to be at two places at one time.

So after they expose and explain, we get into the demand phase.

That's D for the W E D S D is demand.

Wait a minute. Before we move into demand, there's one thing I want to say about Expose. Expose could also be the place where I'm playing the victim. Oh, you always accuse me of this. Oh, here we're going to go again. I could play the victim and expose because I'm exposing things about myself. I'm exposing things about you, your weaknesses, how you do things, the thousands and myriads of times where I've asked you to do it differently and you didn't, or I'm exposing. I know. I'm just. That's just who I am. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do about it. You know, I might play the victim in exposing my own weaknesses in order to stop this freight train or get you to feel sorry for me.

How about if could you also take on like, you know, it's obviously you don't care about me and the granddaughter.

Sure.

You know, I'm not as important as your work.

Yep, absolutely. That would be exposing your weaknesses and mine by playing the victim.

Gotcha. Okay.

And. And then Explaining is throwing out all my evidence and even the neighbor. And my mother said, and my friend said, and Stacy and Tom said, and we bring in anything and everything. We got to kind of explain why it is I'm right in feeling the way that I do. And you're wrong. Okay.

Okay.

And then it gets to the demand phase. And the demand phase sounds a lot like, oh, yeah, well, then I'm gonna. Oh, yeah, okay, well then that means you want to go there. You want to rumble. Or it could be, you'd better get your fanny down here, like right now, or else. Demand is the or else part. This is where we try and really leverage like, we've lost it. And it better be this or else.

Said another way is like, we're like, we think punishing, you know, this person, punishing the pain. Joe Polish is a man we have great respect for. He said none of us can punish the pain out of him. Because I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I was feeling horrible right now. So there was nothing that Stacy could have shared with me if she chose to go the demand route that would have made me even close to however I'd like. I was feeling like nowhere, nothing good. Like, man, what. What the heck? You are a hot mess and you have over committed. And you better write this fast, the best you can.

Well, and if somebody leverages you like that, right? You know, now as we're disclosing where we were each at emotionally, thankfully we didn't leverage, this is where. This is where the progression stopped for both of us. Okay? But had it done so because I have not knowing better done this many times in my life, gotten to the demand stage. It's this or else. This or else means that you're going to do this or else I'm going to punish you. I'm going to create a consequence. And we use things like sex, intimacy, communication. This is where we say, I can't talk to you for three days because you won't do this. You won't apologize, you won't show up, you won't. And so we're in these places where we're in the demand phase and I'm wanting you to do something before I will engage with you, tell you how I feel, give you sex. How about shopping?

How about maybe if. Maybe a special something was planned a day or two later or the next weekend. If you don't get down here next week, we're off. Next week's, you know, getaway weekend, We've heard of that too. Is off. Like, well, really Okay. I mean, so, yeah, we can get really creative, man, and we can increase the. The. The pressure on the demand side pretty, pretty creatively. I would say all of us are pretty darn good in that regard.

And just think about. We've all been leveraged like this. So where do you go in the demand phase? This is about the point. We think, screw you, whatever. Go with your bad self. I'm done. This is about the time we start tapping out. And this is where I also might say things I regret later. I'm gonna. I'm gonna come at you. Oh, you're gonna go there. Okay, now I'm really gonna let you have it.

In the gambling world, they would say all bets are off. All bets are off, all bets are off. Everything's on the table, baby.

You're gonna leverage me like that. Well, then I'm going to leverage you like this. Right. And this is where things go really awry. And there'll be a point in time where hopefully it doesn't get physical. Right. But sometimes it does. Hopefully it won't get to a place where it's completely destructive emotionally. This is. This is where I might throw out some really awful things about things in our past, or maybe I. You've exposed some vulnerability vulnerabilities to me, and then I use them as weapons. This is also where I might disclose things that I've always felt that I've always wanted to say, but it's. It's done in a very weaponized way. I never did like you. I never did think that this was going to work. I always knew that you were some. Those kinds of things start tumbling out in this demand phase, which leaves us with the S. And the S is always shame. We feel it. This is the way the grit, the regret in the aftermath sets in. Shame is the end result of us working through the WEEDS acronym. We are truly in the weeds. We are out in a place where we don't want to be. And we're all left with the culmination of shame because of how we've showed up. That's totally counter to what it is. We want who we want to be. And we've said some things that we don't really mean, we didn't really want to say, or we needed to say them, but not in that way. I weaponized some things that I wanted to say, and I know I could have said them better. I think I didn't quite know how, but I should have said them. Should have not said them like that.

Yeah, I would say that's that, you know, that aftermath the next morning or, you know, a few hours. We've all, you know, shared, said some things, perhaps behaved in ways like, gosh, I could have done a better job with that. I mean, that's just part of life, you know. So, again, it's never too late to get out of the weeds. It's obviously the quicker that we can identify we're in the weeds and start at the wood, you know, rather than we get to the s, you know.

So in our scenario, in our story, Tom and I made it to the expose. Explain. So we withdrew. Things escalated. I was trying to say, hey, come on, don't do this. You better get down here, like, right now. We're waiting. We're waiting. Do you want us to order you a beer? And I thought by ordering you a beer, babe, honestly, that would be the bait that I needed to get you down there.

That's a good one. You know, hot summer night on a. On a Friday with a cold beer is. Is a great. That was a great draw.

And at that point in time, I stopped, which is in this progression. We're going to go through it again. But the goal in understanding this progression is that as soon as possible, you stop it. Because if we don't, it's always going to take us to the same place. It's going to take us to shame, which then backhoes, the safety, the connection, the love, the. The wonderful stuff, the joy that we have in our relationships. It literally, like backhoes, all of the safety and permission out of it, little by little, scoop by scoop, until pretty soon, you don't have the safety to disclose anything anymore. And so you see couples that have been together for a long time who really are living separate lives. This is how it happens, piece by piece.

Well, yeah, I was just gonna say, well, you know, like here in the Smith family. Oh, no. Well. Oh, we don't talk about that. Oh, no, we. We don't talk. Oh, when. We definitely don't talk about that. We think, well, what do you guys talk about? It's very, very surface level. So, yeah, as Stacy shared, you're just. Actually, you're. You're doing exactly the opposite of what's needed, you know, as the longer that partners are together, guess what, the requirements for sharing go up as well. And it's usually the inverse of that. So, you know, you've got to understand.

So weeds. Let's go through it.

Yes.

You withdraw. It's the first thing emotionally or physically. We go within. We pull away. We Pull out.

I mean, that's my classic. I'm. As soon as things aren't man, I'm. I clam up like, you know, quick. You know, I'm not as talkative as my wonderful wife anyway, so that's not a good program.

You know, Tom goes really quiet and then we go, Something's in the air.

And Stacy's like a detective. She will hunt you down.

Then things escalate. If things don't get resolved at withdraw, I would say you if. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, babe, but I would say not to brag. It's not about bragging. It's about practice. I would say nine times out of 10, we resolve our conflicts right there. Minute somebody starts to withdraw, we're like, okay, que pasa? What's up? I don't understand where you're at and why you're behaving this way. Or vice versa. Let's address it right now. And that's the key. The folly is we wait too long to disclose what's not working. The fact that you're standing on my emotional toe. And we wait. And we wait because we don't want to be a problem. We don't want to create conflicts, we don't want to create fights. And then we wait until the moment where I'm literally losing it. Like, I can't allow you to hurt my feelings like this anymore. And that means that we've gone through withdraw, escalate. We're into expose, probably. And now I'm going to get demanding. And then we're going to be left with that beautiful crescendo of shame, jokingly, haha. So withdraw. And then it escalates. And then we begin to expose our weaknesses. Expose their weaknesses. Right. Use it against them. Or bring in my plethora of evidence and explain why it is that I'm entitled to feel the way I feel. And you should acquiesce and just agree with me. I'm wanting to also feel heard here. And if that doesn't go well, then I'm going to get to the point where I'm leveraging. And unfortunately, we go there because we don't know what else to do. And this is fortunately for Tom and I, we stopped it at expose and explain, and we were able to clean up the mess. We get into demand, then we are left with the culmination of shame. And so, in understanding this progression of a fight, what I hope for you as our listener, is number one right now. Take a look at how this plays out in your own life. Look at your last fight. Did you notice yourself or your partner withdrawing? Did you notice the escalation? Did you notice how you started to expose or explain things? And then did you get to a place where it was demanding, it's okay if you did. Most of us do because we don't know better. And then were you left with that crescendo of shame? Probably so. So the first thing is just to get familiar with fights don't come out of anywhere, nowhere. They are a progression. And the goal is, with this framework, is to stop the fights as quickly as possible. And you're going to probably at first, when you start working with this, you're going to be all the way into expose and explain or maybe even demand before you go, oh my gosh, we're doing it. It's happening, like right now. And that's okay, because anywhere you can catch it is better than not catching it at all and taking the freight train all the way to the end.

Well, and the beautiful thing is the first place we all have to realize is to understand where we're at. That's a huge. Don't underestimate how powerful that is. That is a great place of the first awareness, because otherwise we're just going to continue doing what we've always done. So you have to understand, oh my gosh, I'm in the I'm demand and I'm really close to shame. Beautiful. I mean, again, not to dismiss what you're going through, but we first have to understand where we're at. And then what do we do immediately? What we do is we pause.

Now we're going to give you the remedy. Regardless of where you find yourself in this progression, it's important that the way to stop it is to slow down to pause. And it's so hard. It sounds so easy. It. I can say it to you in one sentence, but the emotional experience of it is so painful. Like, because you think that that one more word, that one more piece of evidence, that one more comment that that leveraging thing that I'm going to use against you is going to work and you're going to finally see the light. No, doesn't work like that. Has it ever worked? Just. Just ask yourself, has it ever worked? No. And it probably never will. So it's best we don't go there and stop it, just pause. And what I want you to do instead is if we can pause it sooner rather than later, we can step into actually serving up the remedy, which is the Ability to end a fight in 20 seconds or less. How we end it in 20 seconds or less is we invite you to not only pause, but to step into a framework we call fairy dust. Now, a fairy dust is very tried and true psychological principles. I didn't make this up. But at the end of every fight, I want you to also evaluate right now, what were you looking for? At the end of the day, regardless of the words that were coming out of your mouth, you were probably looking for being heard. Just understand where I'm coming from. Tom mentioned that in our story. You don't understand. I'm pulled. The pressure is not going to help me solve my problem. I just don't think you relate to where I'm at. And I could say the same thing. You just don't get where I'm at. You don't understand how difficult that is. I can't believe you would drive me to this place. This is your fault. No, it's not your fault. It's an experience I'm having, and we need to come to a place where we understand it. So we all fight to be heard. We all fight to be appreciated. Because, let's be honest, relationships, they take a lot of work. I'm putting in my best efforts. I'm doing everything I got right. And I don't feel like you're seeing that or appreciating that. And the last one is, if I don't get heard or I don't get appreciation, does any of this even matter? Do I matter to you? Does this relationship matter? Does anybody care? And those three things, if not all three, or one of the three, are not, at the end of the day, met. We are fighting for those things, regardless of what the circumstance is that we're now battling. And it's important that if we know that, then we can throw that out. We can go there immediately. So when we came home and Tom and I resolved this, it was help me understand why you didn't show up. And as I had said to you, Tom allowed me the space and permission to feel heard, and I gave that gift back to him. That's important. Right after we had paused, Right?

So you know what? It's. That's how a fight can be stopped in 20 seconds. You take that pause, you bring in some oxygen, take some deep breaths, and then you sprinkle fairy dust. And we have an incredible free resource that on the back of it. Again, these are not complicated words, ladies and gentlemen. They're simply the sequence of words we're going to show you in the download and the free resource, what we typically say and then how we coach and encourage you and mentor you to say something different. And these are not complicated words, it's simply the sequence in which you share them will literally stop that fight dead in its track. Now, it may not be resolved, but again, this is how to stop it. We've got to stop the progression, the escalation, the intensity.

Absolutely. And it stops by doing this pause and then instead of saying things like, shut up, leave me alone, you're never home anymore. What's going on? Are you okay? I'm saying things like, I want to hear what you have to say, but not like this. Let's take a pause. Hey, I want you to know this relationship is really important to me, so I've got to stop. Or hey, I got. I'm such a hot mess right now, I'm not fit to be having this conversation. I'll come back in 10 minutes. There's a free resource that I'm going to encourage you to get over to staceybartley.com forward slash, stop fight. And in this three page download, I promise it will change your life. You can use fairy dust. That is the thing to do. That is the thing to practice. As you notice the progression of the fight, the first step is you got to notice the progression. You got to understand what's happening so that you can stop it. And it's a practice. So get this download, practice with it, use it. Because it does have the power to stop the progression so that we can stop feeling the pain and the shame and the regret that typically happens after a fight. And then we can steer our relationships in the directions that we absolutely want to go, which is more connection, more understanding, more appreciation, feeling like it's strong, it's capable and it's foundationally healthy and sound.

And I would add the reason why it's so effective, just think about it. Rather than being condemned and ending up in shame with these different words that we're encouraging you to say this versus what we have typically say, you're inviting, you're asking to be invited into someone's experience. So think about, just, let's go to the physical. How about, how good do we feel? Whether we receive a invitation in the mail or a digital invitation. I know, like, oh, wow. Even if we can't make it, think about, thank you so much for thinking of me. So that's a much different experience than someone trying to condemn us and blame us and shame us.

We hope that you find that helpful. Get familiar with the just to break this down in three seconds and we. Unfortunately our conversation needs to come to a close right now. I'm sure we'll come back and have this again. Get the download. It's going to show you a lot about fairy dust, how to use it to stop a fight and then get familiar with that progression that we talked about. Withdraw, escalate, expose, demand, shame. Once I get familiar with it, then I can start working with it. And give yourself a lot of grace. You're not going to totally screw this up probably just because it's happened so fast. So you're going to get all the way to shame and it's okay. Just come back and try again. It's about practice, it's about repetition. It's about learning to catch it and see it and then you can stop it sooner and quicker with a little spray.

And if you need some help, which oftentimes we do, that's what we do. We're very good at bringing safety and permission around a situation around couples where it doesn't exist. And that's exactly what we do. So we'd be honored to serve you.

Yeah. So let's take a break and then we're going to come back and have a little bit of fun. Take a breath. Gears here. Let that all sink in. We'll be right back and we'll do.

A little follow some fun.

Here's what one of Stacy Bartley's clients says about working with her.

Working with Stacy has been life changing in a very magical way. I wanted to work with Stacy when I left a long time term marriage because I didn't want to repeat any of my relational, how would you say, unhealthiness. I'm so amazed how she has taken her experience and wrapped it into her own program. A program that is designed specially for you. For anyone that moves forward with her. She's unique, she's profound, she's. She's magical. She has love for others that is unmatched. And it would be a gift to yourself to work with Stacy.

Learn the simple three step system to rescue your struggling relationship by registering for Stacy's brand new free workshop. Reserve your seat by going to staceybartley.comworkshop.

Welcome back everybody. Tom and Stacy, great to have you inside the love shack. We're going to give you a little follow the fun.

Yeah. When you've got a morning where it's leisurely. Maybe this weekend. What I'm going to invite you to do is go to pulling up a horoscope. Now I, I know, don't roll your eyes. Some of us are horoscope, like, driven. Some of us are not. I look to think of horoscopes as like a little snapshot where I get to look and say, is this me or not me? Is this me or my partner or not? So I'm going to encourage you to inject a little bit of fun by going to. You can Dr. Google it. That's my favorite, right? Horoscopes for. I'm an Aries, Tom's an Aquarius. Pull it off. Hey, Aries, do this. Aquarius does that. These are their strengths, these are their weaknesses. And as you look at those right, either on your smartphone, if you want to be old school, print them off over a cup of wine. A cup of coffee. A cup of wine. That was funny. A glass of wine either. In the evening, when you have a leisurely morning, share back and forth about what you feel like resonates with you for being an Aries or an Aquarius. And what you think is like, that's ridiculous.

Let's have some fun. It's just some novelty. It's another way to approach, you know, where you maybe have some bridges and where you may have some things that, oh, no, that's no way.

Well, more importantly, you're sharing yourself. Like, I relate to this. Oh, I totally do this. That's totally me. And I don't really relate to that. I think that's a bunch of hooey. Do you see me do that? There's a lot of really fun conversation and connection and sharing that can come about if we use this horoscope as a way to kind of interject it in there. So let's. Let's spread a little fun now. Or spread a little fun. Right?

We spread some fun. Now I'll spread a little bit of love.

This is a wonderful woman that's going to be a guest on our show.

Next week, if you're listening.

Yeah. And she talks about being in your body and expressing with your body and feeling comfortable with that. And her little bit of love that she had to spread and share with all of us today is. And she has such a sexy voice.

Hello, my name is Jay Siren and I'm a sensuality coach. I'm looking forward to being inside the love shack with Tom and Stacy later this month as a guest. The thought that I'm having today that I'd like to share with you about love and relationships is that though time and energy are finite resources, love is not. So where you feel it in your Life, Acknowledge it, elevate it, and celebrate it in all of your relationships, romantic or otherwise. I look forward to being together again with you inside of the love shack.

Man. Isn't that sexy? I mean, come on, babe. That's a sexy voice.

Yeah. I'm looking forward to our conversation with Jay. It's going to be great. I mean, come on. So sensuality for me, sensuality, it's the all, you know, it's the full expression and the experience of all of our senses. I would. I bet the root word come, you know, seems to have similar. Similar letters.

And as we know, we all always end our show with a song. And today's song is Luke Bryan's Do I. He says, do I have your love? Am I still enough? Tell me, do I or don't I? And can we give it one more try? And that's usually what we want to know at the end of a fight, isn't it? We want to know, do I have you? Do I love you? Do you love me? Can we give this another try? So it's a perfect fit for our song this week.

I love you. And I will give another try. Even after our fight that we shared.

I know. Me too. You can access that playlist on any of our places where you find our podcast. It is a shop. Shopify, a Spotify playlist. And we have a song that's related to every single episode.

And why do we do that?

Because we want you to feel.

Feel.

We give you some things to think about and then we give you some places where we want you to feel. And our incredible engineer right now is giving you very cool video of this song. You've got to hear it if you're watching it.

You betcha.

So it's time for us to say goodbye. That's it for today's love shack. Thank you so much for being here inside of the love shack with us where we have conversations about love, sex and relationships. We're dedicated to talking about the things that you want to listen to. So if you have a conversation or a topic that you would like us to speak about, please don't hesitate. Hesitate to reach out to us.

And I can't overemphasize. Please use Grab that free resource. You know, we put a lot of time and thought into this and it's really what we feel is really going to move the needle, you know, so. Stacybartley.com forward, slash, stop, fight. You spell Stacy with an I, S, T, a C, I.

And a special thank you to Jay Siren today for spreading some love. She's going to be so good. Don't miss her. Come on back next week and join us for additional ways to improve your relationship. And by chance, if you found value in today, which I hope you have, and being here with us, take a moment right now and reach out and share this podcast, this episode with somebody that you know could use that progression of a fight, could use that download. We're here to support you in any way that we can on your love, sex and relationship journey. You can find everything at Stacy Bartley and may we suggest we you begin with that resource we talked about. We're Tom and Stacey Bartley, host of Love Shack Live, together with our incredible engineer, Eric Rider. Thank you so much for being here with us today and spending some time with us inside the Love Shack.

We will see you same time, same place next week.

Get your download.

Thanks for joining us today in the Love Shack. We hope you came away with something that made your toes tingle. To learn more about everything you heard on today's show, go to stacybartley.com podcast Love the Show. Help us spread the love by sharing the show with others. Okay, everybody, time to go. We gotta close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week, though and join us for another edition of Love Shack Live with Tom and Stacy Bartley.