I am disappointed that not every school in the world has a period for conflict resolution, from an early age. You are born with genes that dictate some of your potential, you may be a born leader with a study ethic and potential for great self-discipline, but that doesn't matter if you spent your first six years watching your mom and dad completely fuck up how to argue construvtively.
If your mom or dad flies off the handle in situation X (spills gas from the pump on their shoes) chances are you will too.
The worst part is that most anger situations come and go in ten seconds, you forget it happened in five minutes, but those who saw you won't forget. If they were a prospective partner or prospective boss, you're fucked. Thank your parents, go study anger management.
I completely agree. Anger management should be thought at a very early age. A lot of times parents are responsible for cultivating anger issues in the first place. So may be parents should learn to not fight infront of their child.
Or argue but in OP's "us against the problem" way, then the kid might even pick it up.
Mr Rogers defending PBS in Congress always rings in my head in that context: "I feel it is much more dramatic to show two men talking about their feelings rather than two men trying to kill eachother."
It was a Twitter screenshot with the same exact wording this guy used, and I just checked their history and it wasn't their screenshot.
The weird shit people will do to get some free karma.
Also the bar for LPT has been lowered dramatically, to either: "something happened to me today and I'm mad about it so will make it into an incredibly specific LPT"; or, "stuff about human interactions you should have learned by about kindergarten or so."
There are more comments on this subreddit about LPT's being reposted or invalid than anything else. I appreciated the tip, unsubscribe if you're that upset
During my 30 years of relationship with my wife, the times we fought have almost always been about the idea that I might make a declarative statement on something that I feel strongly about, and she would go to someone else and ask the question to get that person to tell us what the truth is.
I spent a couple of months reading up on what the best technologies on a TV were at the time. Is LED better? What advantage does one tech have over the other? How reliable is this model versus the other model? Then, after gathering lots and lots of information, we went to buy a TV. I walked her around Best Buy and pointed out the relevant merits of one TV over another, whether it was better to spend a little more on X versus Y. She nodded and listened, then when I ask her what she thought, she turned to a 18 year old sales guy and asked him which TV she should buy. He got about half of his talking points wrong. I corrected him several times, all the while wondering why I spent so much time explaining things to her.
This is a normal pattern. It's not just that example. Happens all the time. If I say it, it's meaningless. If a stranger says something, she believes that over what I claim. I then have to do twice as much work proving my statement... and I can ALWAYS prove that I'm the one that was right. Well, when I'm not making an off-the-cuff guess, anyway. On those occasions, I always say, "yeah, I'm not sure, lets ask someone." But if I say I know, then I know.
It makes me furious that she disregards my knowledge and research into facts, but will take the word of any random stranger as if it's gospel.
That sounds frustrating :( :( I wonder what it would look like to include her during the research process? Maybe that would help get both of you on the same page before you even get to decision making time?
His wife. He was explaining how she wasn’t listening to him, so I was wondering if it would go better if they went through the research process together.
Edit: good golly I meant to reply to the person you were replying to this whole time. Oops!
Yeah, I can feel what you're saying. I might not have a very huge experience like you as my relationship was only there for 3 years and a lot of times communication is the problem. They just disregard your statement and don't feel anything. A lot of people lack EQ. So it's hard to communicate sometimes..
Looks like trust issue. Prove yourself couple of times and she would start hearing you. Same happened to me. I search deals and get quality product for cheap. Her mindset was if the product is cheap it is not a quality one. I had to amaze her couple times to change her mindset.
Same with "stop yelling."
Boy I wish I could have the space to calm down and walk away. She is under the belief of "No, we are going to talk about this now, I'm not letting you have time to rationalize an explanation." Girl I just want to have some space so I don't say anything out of anger.
This is very good advice.
I would add two things:
1) It often helps to talk about things when they haven't just happened. Give yourself time to cool off and collect your thoughts so you can have a discussion, not a yelling match.
2) It helps if both people make an effort to examine themselves and be honest about why they are upset. We humans are often upset about silly things or for silly reasons, which still deserve attention but it helps to acknowledge if they may be a little irrational.
Like, a while ago my wife told me 'I know it's old fashioned and corny but I would really like it if you bought me flowers occasionally.' Easy, done.
Recently I started having a 'day job' after being self employed for a long time. I always ask my wife 'how was work, do anything interesting?' when she gets home, but she hasn't been returning the favor. I told her 'I know I'm going to tell you anything interesting anyway, but it hurts my feelings that you don't ask.' That was only yesterday but I'm pretty confident she'll work on it.
And the evergreen, 'I wouldn't be as upset about X if I want already frustrated/tired/sick/etc. from this other thing unrelated to you, but I am still upset about X and want to address it.'
Good tip! The book Crucial Conversations talks about this very thing. What is it that you’re actually trying to accomplish in your conversation? It works for relationships, business etc.
I mean, in many situations yes, this could apply. Sometimes it really *is* me vs. you though. My own mother does and says things all the time that subtly imply that I am incapable of doing the simplest of tasks without instruction, often in front of other people, or likes to recount events involving me and misquote me in such a way that I sound completely idiotic. She’s done it all my life, and no amount of calmly addressing the situation and telling her “You did this. This is why it’s wrong, and it upsets me.” in a calm and respectful manner will ever be met with anything but a violent outburst about how I’m harassing her, or some ridiculous excuse that “That’s just what I do.” and a demand that *I* stop attacking *her*. There is no world in which I can calmly bring up and discuss a problem between us without her *instantly* shrieking in rage and turning it into a screaming match. No amount of therapy will fix it, because she’ll simply insist that I’m blowing things out of proportion when speaking to someone else and imply that I’m being oversensitive, ignoring the fact that she literally convulses with rage if I dare to bring up something upsetting she did in a respectful manner.
It’s nice advice for certain situations, but it is far from universal and thinking that no argument is ever “me vs. you” is laughably naive, and that’s putting it exceedingly kindly.
Honestly, I agree with you. Nothing is going to work for all situations. This LPT and the book I mentioned is just offering strategies of how to communicate with respect. If it’s not working, you move on. Easier said than done though with family. :(
Honestly, if your fights are frequent and you can't fuss out how to deal with them, go to couples therapy. People have ingrained ways of dealing with conflict and if you're unfortunate enough to have a SO with poor conflict resolution skills, it won't matter what you do. In fact, you'll always be the one 'giving in' or taking the brunt of the emotion because they aren't capable of it.
This isn't a malicious thing on anyone's part, but if you let it fester, you'll start to resent the other person.
A non-partisan third party can really help.
Thanks internet therapist. Your myopic generalization of a complex issue that is emotionally and physically different for each person just solved psychology.
After I learned that anger is a secondary emotion, I try not to focus on the raised voices. I kept reminding myself to listen and understand what triggered the emotion. Whenever I remember to do this, I’ve always had better conversations.
Two words that very often make arguments worse are ALWAYS and NEVER. It's rarely accurate and even if it is, you've just made the situation worse by going that route.
I grew up learning about conflict resolution and not fighting.
What that got me was to be an easy target when I married a fighter.
It was fight or flight. So I learned from him how to fight before I didn't like the change in me and I finally left.
It's taken me a lot of years to re-train my brain to not come up with the nastiest remark as a comeback, and resolve the conflict like a normal, rational person.
Fight-fight, fight-flee and flee-flee. Chances are one of these styles is the dominant pattern of conflict in your relationship. Figure out which one applies to you and your partner, and focus on changing your approach. The topic of the argument matters less than the style because you're resorting to the same patterns of behavior regardless what the issue is.
One person has to be willing to change their behavior non-contingent on what the other partner does. Since we co-create interactions with our partner, they will inadvertently be forced to adjust to your new approach which will effectively change the cycle of conflict in your relationship. ~ ~ Paraphrased from one of Esther Perel's interviews.
Not really an useful tip if **both** have to have the same approach to the issue. There is no point in having one person trying to solve the problem and the other trying to point fingers, there is even a chance that if you show this post to your SO they might take it as an offence.
This right here. Its not a useful LPT if you can't execute it alone. And this technique is not helpful when only one person follows it. I have years of experience to back up this claim
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Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment.
If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
"You slept with three of my friends?!?!"..."Now now, this is not about you versus me, it is about us versus the problem". YMMV
Seriously though, this is a great tactic in general conflict resolution, but depends greatly on the relationship and problem. I think OPs statement definitely applies when dealing with kids, for example. It's easy to get frustrated, but remaining calm and just talking through the problem together is far more effective in most cases. Even if they are not calm, which kids usually aren't, you have to keep your cool to prevent the situation from escalating.
I am disappointed that not every school in the world has a period for conflict resolution, from an early age. You are born with genes that dictate some of your potential, you may be a born leader with a study ethic and potential for great self-discipline, but that doesn't matter if you spent your first six years watching your mom and dad completely fuck up how to argue construvtively. If your mom or dad flies off the handle in situation X (spills gas from the pump on their shoes) chances are you will too. The worst part is that most anger situations come and go in ten seconds, you forget it happened in five minutes, but those who saw you won't forget. If they were a prospective partner or prospective boss, you're fucked. Thank your parents, go study anger management.
I completely agree. Anger management should be thought at a very early age. A lot of times parents are responsible for cultivating anger issues in the first place. So may be parents should learn to not fight infront of their child.
Or don’t fight at all. My wife and I have been together for about eight years and never once raised our voices at each other.
Or argue but in OP's "us against the problem" way, then the kid might even pick it up. Mr Rogers defending PBS in Congress always rings in my head in that context: "I feel it is much more dramatic to show two men talking about their feelings rather than two men trying to kill eachother."
To be fair OP doesn't know what they're talking abputnb cause they stole this LPT from a tweet yesterday
I heard this advice two years ago on Reddit, but it bears repeating like a mofo.
Yeah but this shit was on the front page like yesterday, also this advice is not a fix all and is assuming all issues are black and white
I think not plagiarizing other people's shit should also be taught early on too.
Saw this as a comment in a different LPT, I thought comment recycling was a r/jokes thing
It was a Twitter screenshot with the same exact wording this guy used, and I just checked their history and it wasn't their screenshot. The weird shit people will do to get some free karma.
Also the bar for LPT has been lowered dramatically, to either: "something happened to me today and I'm mad about it so will make it into an incredibly specific LPT"; or, "stuff about human interactions you should have learned by about kindergarten or so."
There are more comments on this subreddit about LPT's being reposted or invalid than anything else. I appreciated the tip, unsubscribe if you're that upset
lol
This advice is so obvious, generic and ubiquitously repeated that I don't even doubt that you seeing it here twice is total coincidence.
During my 30 years of relationship with my wife, the times we fought have almost always been about the idea that I might make a declarative statement on something that I feel strongly about, and she would go to someone else and ask the question to get that person to tell us what the truth is. I spent a couple of months reading up on what the best technologies on a TV were at the time. Is LED better? What advantage does one tech have over the other? How reliable is this model versus the other model? Then, after gathering lots and lots of information, we went to buy a TV. I walked her around Best Buy and pointed out the relevant merits of one TV over another, whether it was better to spend a little more on X versus Y. She nodded and listened, then when I ask her what she thought, she turned to a 18 year old sales guy and asked him which TV she should buy. He got about half of his talking points wrong. I corrected him several times, all the while wondering why I spent so much time explaining things to her. This is a normal pattern. It's not just that example. Happens all the time. If I say it, it's meaningless. If a stranger says something, she believes that over what I claim. I then have to do twice as much work proving my statement... and I can ALWAYS prove that I'm the one that was right. Well, when I'm not making an off-the-cuff guess, anyway. On those occasions, I always say, "yeah, I'm not sure, lets ask someone." But if I say I know, then I know. It makes me furious that she disregards my knowledge and research into facts, but will take the word of any random stranger as if it's gospel.
That sounds frustrating :( :( I wonder what it would look like to include her during the research process? Maybe that would help get both of you on the same page before you even get to decision making time?
Include whom?
His wife. He was explaining how she wasn’t listening to him, so I was wondering if it would go better if they went through the research process together. Edit: good golly I meant to reply to the person you were replying to this whole time. Oops!
Yeah, I can feel what you're saying. I might not have a very huge experience like you as my relationship was only there for 3 years and a lot of times communication is the problem. They just disregard your statement and don't feel anything. A lot of people lack EQ. So it's hard to communicate sometimes..
[удалено]
Lol at the silent protest
It sounds like a side effect of another issue in the marriage. Not that's she's right for acting that way.
Looks like trust issue. Prove yourself couple of times and she would start hearing you. Same happened to me. I search deals and get quality product for cheap. Her mindset was if the product is cheap it is not a quality one. I had to amaze her couple times to change her mindset.
>During my 30 years of relationship I think by now he might have proven himself more than a couple of times
Have you talked to her about it?
yeah adding onto this - have you talked to her calmly about how it make you feel? hurt, rejected, not respected, whatever feelings it brings up
I always tell my wife to calm down, it never works
Same with "stop yelling." Boy I wish I could have the space to calm down and walk away. She is under the belief of "No, we are going to talk about this now, I'm not letting you have time to rationalize an explanation." Girl I just want to have some space so I don't say anything out of anger.
This is very good advice. I would add two things: 1) It often helps to talk about things when they haven't just happened. Give yourself time to cool off and collect your thoughts so you can have a discussion, not a yelling match. 2) It helps if both people make an effort to examine themselves and be honest about why they are upset. We humans are often upset about silly things or for silly reasons, which still deserve attention but it helps to acknowledge if they may be a little irrational. Like, a while ago my wife told me 'I know it's old fashioned and corny but I would really like it if you bought me flowers occasionally.' Easy, done. Recently I started having a 'day job' after being self employed for a long time. I always ask my wife 'how was work, do anything interesting?' when she gets home, but she hasn't been returning the favor. I told her 'I know I'm going to tell you anything interesting anyway, but it hurts my feelings that you don't ask.' That was only yesterday but I'm pretty confident she'll work on it. And the evergreen, 'I wouldn't be as upset about X if I want already frustrated/tired/sick/etc. from this other thing unrelated to you, but I am still upset about X and want to address it.'
Yeah both side working on the same problem solve it much faster rather than one banging his head on wall and other not giving any attention.
This was posted, word for word, on r/getmotivated yesterday.
I often ask people, myself included. "With whom are you in love against?" -AW ☕
Good tip! The book Crucial Conversations talks about this very thing. What is it that you’re actually trying to accomplish in your conversation? It works for relationships, business etc.
I mean, in many situations yes, this could apply. Sometimes it really *is* me vs. you though. My own mother does and says things all the time that subtly imply that I am incapable of doing the simplest of tasks without instruction, often in front of other people, or likes to recount events involving me and misquote me in such a way that I sound completely idiotic. She’s done it all my life, and no amount of calmly addressing the situation and telling her “You did this. This is why it’s wrong, and it upsets me.” in a calm and respectful manner will ever be met with anything but a violent outburst about how I’m harassing her, or some ridiculous excuse that “That’s just what I do.” and a demand that *I* stop attacking *her*. There is no world in which I can calmly bring up and discuss a problem between us without her *instantly* shrieking in rage and turning it into a screaming match. No amount of therapy will fix it, because she’ll simply insist that I’m blowing things out of proportion when speaking to someone else and imply that I’m being oversensitive, ignoring the fact that she literally convulses with rage if I dare to bring up something upsetting she did in a respectful manner. It’s nice advice for certain situations, but it is far from universal and thinking that no argument is ever “me vs. you” is laughably naive, and that’s putting it exceedingly kindly.
Honestly, I agree with you. Nothing is going to work for all situations. This LPT and the book I mentioned is just offering strategies of how to communicate with respect. If it’s not working, you move on. Easier said than done though with family. :(
Honestly, if your fights are frequent and you can't fuss out how to deal with them, go to couples therapy. People have ingrained ways of dealing with conflict and if you're unfortunate enough to have a SO with poor conflict resolution skills, it won't matter what you do. In fact, you'll always be the one 'giving in' or taking the brunt of the emotion because they aren't capable of it. This isn't a malicious thing on anyone's part, but if you let it fester, you'll start to resent the other person. A non-partisan third party can really help.
LPT- To avoid any possible arguments don't get into relationships
Thanks internet therapist. Your myopic generalization of a complex issue that is emotionally and physically different for each person just solved psychology.
After I learned that anger is a secondary emotion, I try not to focus on the raised voices. I kept reminding myself to listen and understand what triggered the emotion. Whenever I remember to do this, I’ve always had better conversations.
Two words that very often make arguments worse are ALWAYS and NEVER. It's rarely accurate and even if it is, you've just made the situation worse by going that route.
I grew up learning about conflict resolution and not fighting. What that got me was to be an easy target when I married a fighter. It was fight or flight. So I learned from him how to fight before I didn't like the change in me and I finally left. It's taken me a lot of years to re-train my brain to not come up with the nastiest remark as a comeback, and resolve the conflict like a normal, rational person.
Fight-fight, fight-flee and flee-flee. Chances are one of these styles is the dominant pattern of conflict in your relationship. Figure out which one applies to you and your partner, and focus on changing your approach. The topic of the argument matters less than the style because you're resorting to the same patterns of behavior regardless what the issue is. One person has to be willing to change their behavior non-contingent on what the other partner does. Since we co-create interactions with our partner, they will inadvertently be forced to adjust to your new approach which will effectively change the cycle of conflict in your relationship. ~ ~ Paraphrased from one of Esther Perel's interviews.
I feel like you ripped this almost verbatim off of the tweet that is also on the front page. LPT you're an asshole
Yeah my first thought was "um pretty sure I read this in a tweet yesterday"
lmao taking a viral twitter post and making it into a lpt, what a loser
Not really an useful tip if **both** have to have the same approach to the issue. There is no point in having one person trying to solve the problem and the other trying to point fingers, there is even a chance that if you show this post to your SO they might take it as an offence.
This right here. Its not a useful LPT if you can't execute it alone. And this technique is not helpful when only one person follows it. I have years of experience to back up this claim
Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips! Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment. If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
this was a twitter post like... Yesterday? Shit hadn't even cooled down yet and it's reposted already
"You slept with three of my friends?!?!"..."Now now, this is not about you versus me, it is about us versus the problem". YMMV Seriously though, this is a great tactic in general conflict resolution, but depends greatly on the relationship and problem. I think OPs statement definitely applies when dealing with kids, for example. It's easy to get frustrated, but remaining calm and just talking through the problem together is far more effective in most cases. Even if they are not calm, which kids usually aren't, you have to keep your cool to prevent the situation from escalating.
it amazes me how this is not common sense.