159 How To Fight With Your Partner

We tend to fight the worst with those we love the most. While fighting ought to be rare, when they do happen they are great opportunities for improving the relationship as a whole. This episode covers how to resolve fights quickly and how to use them to "gain intimacy" rather than costing it.

Transcript

My wife and I are pretty good at fighting.

And I don't mean that sarcastically.

What I mean is,

When we do fight,

Which is not very often,

It one,

Resolves very quickly,

And two,

After the fight,

We always are closer than we were previous to the fight.

These two factors,

Quickness of resolution,

And whether or not intimacy was gained through the conflict,

Is what I would define as good,

Quality fighting between loved ones.

Because while I certainly wouldn't go as far as to say that fighting between romantic partners is a good thing,

Certainly should not be a common thing,

I do think it is inevitable.

I think when two people enter a serious relationship,

Meaning you're more than just spending time with each other for fun,

Right?

Like you've chosen in some way or intended to do life together,

Meaning one person's actions and decisions and thoughts and behaviors affects the other person's life trajectory,

I think when you've become that close,

When you are interdependent by design,

It is damn near impossible to not have conflict from time to time.

And I'm going to further qualify that belief later in this episode,

But if that is true,

Then these two factors,

Quickness of resolution and gaining intimacy through the conflict,

Are things that people should strive for in a relationship.

This first piece,

Of course,

Is important because whether or not the conflict is necessary,

And we'll also speak about that in this episode,

Fighting with your loved one doesn't feel good,

Right?

It releases cortisol,

Stress hormones,

Right?

But it's not that cortisol is a bad thing.

If you caught the episode of Physiological Toughness,

You'll know that it's a very important steroid hormone,

And the only reason why it has been demonized is that chronic cortisol is damaging to the body.

Chronic cortisol presence or release takes years off of your life.

It's not a pleasant experience.

But people who are healthy,

People who are physiologically tough,

They have an acute stress response,

Right?

They take on a stressful event head on,

They deal with it immediately,

So they can quickly go back to a state of peace and homeostasis,

Where physiologically weak people,

They have a weak stress response.

It's like their cortisol release,

Their adrenaline dump isn't strong enough to deal with the threat,

Whether it's an immediate physical threat or a perceived threat like the stock market crashing.

So,

Their stress response isn't strong enough to deal with the threat,

So that their cortisol,

You know,

They can't go back to homeostasis,

So they have these prolonged periods of cortisol release,

And that's what's damaging,

And that's what's particularly unpleasant.

And same thing goes for relationship,

Right?

Like,

People who try to avoid unnecessary conflicts,

People who try to drag things out,

Or,

You know,

We're also going to speak about how defense mechanisms can sometimes,

You know,

Stretch out a fight that could have been dealt with,

Maybe in a couple hours,

Can stretch out into days,

Because of this inability or unwillingness to take it head on and resolve it quickly.

One big thing we're going to speak about in this episode.

And then the other piece,

You know,

Gaining intimacy,

And here's where I like to look at conflicts when it arises,

Whether it was necessary or not,

Because,

You know,

A lot of fights can be avoided,

But if it's already happening,

Then that in itself is an opportunity to gain intimacy.

If a fight's already occurring,

It is a chance to enter into greater alignment with each other.

You know,

If you caught my episode on the dark night of the soul about a year ago,

I spoke about how that experience,

What some people might just label as depression,

I also see as an opportunity for internal alignment.

You know,

I'm using that a bit metaphorically,

But like,

If you've gotten into that point where you're having a dark night of the soul experience,

Then something has been out of whack within you and these kind of depressed feelings forces you to introspect and gives you a chance to,

You know,

Basically realign yourself.

So I think it's a great opportunity.

And I think it's even more clear and more obvious when we speak about a romantic relationship.

When the two of you are fighting,

It is a chance to gain ground,

Not just solve,

You know,

The unpleasant word exchange,

But it's an opportunity to actually be closer than if the fight had never happened.

So with those two factors in mind,

This episode is on how to fight with your partner,

Given that it's inevitable in such a way that it will benefit your relationship.

Right now,

You're listening to 159,

How to Fight with Your Partner.

A couple weeks ago,

We had a small fight.

I cannot remember what it was about,

Which suggests that the topic of the argument was probably not important and maybe didn't actually matter.

As is the case with many relational arguments,

You know,

It's kind of like flirting,

Where the content of the exchange is secondary to the emotional exchange.

And I think,

You know,

I mean,

And most people can observe in most relationship fights,

When you make up and look back and laugh about it,

You're like,

Ah,

Yeah,

We didn't actually care about such and such.

So this was definitely one of those cases.

But we resolved it quite quickly,

And we're making up and everything was nice.

But then we kind of had a meta fight,

A somewhat playful meta fight,

Where we were going over what had happened and we disagreed about what had happened and what should have happened.

Nilay and I ideologically agree that the best thing that a man can do for a woman when she's emotional is first validate her experience,

And then if relevant,

Provide a solution.

We both agree.

We don't agree,

We didn't agree,

And maybe we'll never agree on the degree to which those two things occur.

From my perspective,

I totally validated her experience.

But from hers,

I didn't quite do it enough.

She said,

Yeah,

But you didn't really feel what I was feeling.

And I was like,

Wait,

Wait,

Wait,

Hold on,

Hold on.

If I cried every time you cried,

You would dry up so fast.

And she laughed and,

You know,

That was the end of that.

But it does point to something that's very true.

And I think one of the big challenges and maybe underlying causes for conflict between men and women in partnership is our great difference in worldviews and perspectives and models of emotions.

Because women,

And I think Nilay is typical in this regard,

And I have a lot of data at this point from many different women,

It does seem that women in general,

When they're emotional,

They need to express it.

They need to get it out.

And they also gain a lot from being with someone who's really feeling what they're feeling.

And this is what women do when they get together.

There's this woman,

Regina Thomas-Hauer,

Who I think is retired now,

But she used to teach these workshops.

But her school is called the School of Womanly Arts.

And it's for women,

So I don't know about it firsthand,

But I do know many women who've gone through it.

And it does seem to be an amazing set of programs for women.

Like I've seen many female friends really blossom as human beings through it.

So I can only imagine.

It's great stuff.

And I know one of the things they do with each other,

These women in these programs,

Something called spring cleaning,

Where they'll call each other and they'll have some amount of time to just vent,

Like uninterrupted,

Just like what I think most men would consider complaining and airing negativity.

And this is apparently an extremely cathartic and healing and relieving process for women and women get it.

But it's a very unnatural experience for men.

And I'm speaking for myself,

But I think this is true from all typical men.

Like to listen to someone air negative emotions and just listen and not do anything about it is like,

It's so against our nature.

Because even our models of looking at emotions are different.

This is something Naliya and I have spoken about.

It's like,

She feels that when she has a negative emotion,

It's like women view emotions almost like a substance in them,

Right?

And Naliya said this,

And I've heard many women use a similar kind of model.

It's like,

When there's negative emotions,

They have to be cleared out so that the good emotions can come back,

Right?

It's almost like you're thinking of emotions as water and sometimes it gets dirty,

But you have to just keep letting the water run and then it becomes clean again,

Right?

I think most women resonate with that model.

Whereas most guys,

It's like,

One of the things that's very challenging for me to like listen to her having a negative reaction,

Even though I know intellectually,

It's what she needs to do.

Sometimes it's like,

For me,

It feels like myelinating a negative emotional pathway,

Right?

It's like,

She's almost practicing a certain response and it's like,

It's so hard for me to just sit there and listen to it.

And I've heard this from other guys too.

And I'm not gonna like try to,

I mean,

Obviously I'm biased towards my perspective,

But given that basically every guy I've spoken to sees it that way and every woman I've spoken to sees it the way my wife does,

I'm not gonna try to solve this argument as I'm not even trying to argue it.

I'm just trying to point to the fact that men and women have very different models.

And I'll just assume that it is a positive evolutionary thing that maybe we're just in an unnatural environment for because this whole thing,

This whole little example points to what is the big challenge in a modern,

I'll put modern in quotes because when I say modern,

I'm talking about anything after the Neolithic revolution,

Essentially.

You know,

Modern post-civilization relationships,

The way we do it now where a man and a woman or two adults live together,

It's unnatural.

And in this kind of situation,

We're disconnected from the tribal environment that we evolved to be in,

Where there's many men and many women who all can support each other in different ways.

In the nuclear family or the two-person isolated relationship,

You kind of have to be everything to each other for the most part,

Right?

It's like we all have friends,

We all have extended family,

But in a typical modern two-person relationship,

Your partner is the person that you end up relying on.

I've spoken in other episodes on how when my wife needs support in motherhood things,

You know,

It's great if like one of her mom friends or sister can come over or something,

But usually I'm the only one who's there.

So even though it's not really my nature,

I do need to fill in for what might be considered maternal roles sometimes,

And I'm happy to do that even though it's not really my thing.

And I also think this points to the main reason as to why we fight the hardest and we sometimes are the meanest to the people we love the most,

Specifically in a romantic relationship,

A serious partnership,

Which I'm defining as the two of you have the intention and maybe also already the action of doing life together,

Meaning you have formed a survival group,

You are interdependent by design,

You lean on each other,

And for that reason,

You hold each other sometimes,

I mean,

You hold each other through a much higher standard than you do,

Say,

Your friends or some family member that you don't live around.

Things are different when you're doing life together because you have to rely on each other,

And the nature of that kind of relationship is that the actions of one partner inevitably affects the other partner,

Right?

The decisions,

The life decisions of one partner affects the life trajectory of the other.

It's like I have some really close friends,

But I would never fight with them in the way that I fight with my wife because there's no expectations between us,

Right?

Like,

For example,

I'm moving away from some of my closest friends in Thailand,

We're all a little bummed about it,

But no one's mad at me about it,

Right?

Like,

There's no,

Like,

Maybe we're a little sad,

But,

Like,

We didn't fight about it because there's never any implication that I needed to consider them when making life decisions.

However,

If you look at almost any dispute between a man and a woman in a relationship,

In a serious relationship,

That's almost,

I mean,

That is the underlying reason why a fight would occur,

Is because there was some sort of expectation based on the fact that you are leaning on each other a little bit for survival.

Because of this,

Because of the dependence on each other,

It triggers survival fears that end up leading to some of,

Like,

The irrational emotional behavior.

I mean,

Simply just being unkind at times to the person that you might love the most.

Like,

This is the reason.

And it triggers things that are much deeper than our rationality because this type of relationship is actual vulnerability,

Not just the Bernabe Round vulnerability of telling things about yourself,

But the vulnerability of this other person has the ability to really screw you over.

I mean,

Just looking at,

In the biological sense,

You know,

Women have to test and sometimes be very unpleasant to men because the worst thing to a woman would be to have a man's baby and then be abandoned.

Like,

That's just like,

You messed up the survival game,

If that happens.

And on the same token,

Or similar token,

You know,

The worst thing for men,

And the reason why men,

You know,

Do things in dating that maybe women don't like,

Is that the worst thing for them would be to be something like cuckolding,

Right?

To invest his limited resources in someone and for her to have someone else's baby,

Right?

That's the root biological thing.

You know,

Obviously,

You know,

It doesn't always play out,

Given that not all people have children.

But that is the root of the survival fears that end up dictating our behaviors and relationship.

So I'm gonna speak about fighting in three phases now.

Pre-fight,

The actual fight,

And post-fight.

And you could argue that these are actually just two phases,

When you're fighting and when you're not fighting.

Obviously,

Hopefully the latter is the majority of the time.

Because how a couple fights,

And whether or not it resolves quickly and leads to gains in intimacy,

Does largely depend on what's happening not in the fight as well.

So as far as pre-fight goes,

I'm going to basically just share three beliefs that I think are very important to do your best to maintain whenever you're not fighting,

Right?

I think it just sets up a healthier dynamic if and when a conflict does occur.

The first is to see yourself as one unit,

Right?

This is the reason for polarity that I've spoken about in many other episodes,

Right?

It's an interdependent polarity.

That is the reason for these masculine versus feminine traits.

Is that,

Yeah,

If you're unfamiliar,

You can check out my somewhat recent episode on how to help her into her feminine.

But basically,

When one party goes into a more feminine state and the other party goes into a more masculine state,

Like magnets,

Hence the term polarity,

They get drawn to each other and they can behave as one unit.

That is the reason for these polarized behaviors.

It helps you feel physical attraction for each other,

But also function together better as a survival unit.

This belief that you are one unit is critical because when a couple has a really long extended fight,

I mean,

Especially the longer a fight goes,

The more the two parties will probably see themselves as separate.

In fact,

For a fight to even occur at all,

There has to be some sort of separation,

Which is just the nature of a fight.

But if you maintain the core belief that you are one unit,

Then the fight is not about winning at the other person's expense.

It's about mending something internally,

Right?

It's about,

Okay,

Something in the machine,

Like there's a wrong part in here,

Or something was just not in its groove,

And we're gonna get it back in its groove so this entire unit can work together,

As opposed to here we are in this transactional relationship and the other,

Like my business partner's not fulfilling their end of the bargain,

And I gotta take him to court,

Right?

If you have that kind of perspective,

Then almost certainly your fights are gonna escalate and lead towards less intimacy in the future,

Which leads into a second belief,

Which is relationships and every kind of relational interaction should be a positive sum or co-op game,

Right?

Again,

When people fight,

And I think this is just a part of our modern Western consumerist culture in that we tend to look at everything transactionally,

As I just mentioned.

Like,

It's like,

I do this for you,

You do this for me.

That is fine in business,

And it's kind of how,

You know,

Political societies have to work to a degree,

But not with intimacy,

Right?

Like,

When you're bonded emotionally and you're really doing life together,

You can't view it that way because at some point over the course of especially a long-term relationship,

Someone's going to,

Perhaps by accident,

I'll just assume best of intentions on both parties,

Someone's gonna mess up at some point.

And if it's a transactional thing of like,

Oh,

I'm only fulfilling you if you fulfill me,

As opposed to how can we build this thing together so it's better for the collective,

The two-person collective,

Let's say,

You know,

The transactional view is just very,

It's not very robust.

It's very open to being,

You know,

Someone's gonna mess up and then the whole system collapses.

And the worst is to have a zero-sum view for long-term relating.

And this is,

You know,

I have my criticisms of Red Pill.

I've said them in other episodes.

There's many things I like about the Red Pill mindset,

Especially for guys with like beta male viewpoints or perspectives.

But one thing that's really not good from the Red Pill community,

As far as having happy relationships,

Is kind of this zero-sum game view of relating,

Of like,

If she gains too much,

It means that I'm losing something,

Which is not how relationships work.

And I know no one in the Red Pill world like says that straight out,

But if you look at their material,

That's kind of the assumption that when women win,

Men lose,

And when men win,

Women lose.

And that's,

It's also a very unsustainable way to look at relationship because then someone's always losing.

And if someone,

If you're losing half the time or some part of the time,

Then there's no reason to be in the relationship.

The third important pre-fight belief is something I've said in other episodes,

Which is you should strive to bring your resentment to zero.

This is a useful mental state to strive for.

Whether you're in relationship or not,

As for everybody in all cases,

Like resentment is never useful,

But especially in relationship.

And it's critical here because I think a lot of people,

For the sake of harmony,

With totally good intentions,

Maybe because they want to avoid conflict or they want to make their partner feel good,

They'll do things to avoid unpleasant feelings,

But it leads to increases in resentment,

Some sort of feeling of powerlessness within yourself of like,

Oh,

I can't do such and such because of this person,

Which is essentially like the core underlying belief when you are feeling resentment.

It's like,

Oh,

I would be happy,

But this person is doing something to me.

That is always going to be toxic in relationship.

In fact,

Resentment,

Even little resentments over things where you just avoided telling the truth because it might hurt feelings,

You didn't want to stir up an argument,

That almost always leads to damages and actually even leads to decreases in sex drive.

It's like,

I have a whole episode on arousal response in couples,

It's like when resentments pile up,

It actually makes it harder to feel your feelings down to physical sensations.

So like when a couple's sex life tanks,

It's almost always because of resentment.

So actually one of the reasons why I was eager to make this episode is so that people are not,

I mean,

One,

To have healthier fights that don't drag on and don't damage the relationship,

But also to not avoid fights because sometimes a fight is necessary.

Sometimes there is a misalignment that couldn't be avoided or even if it could have been avoided,

It's here and it has to be corrected and maybe the only time,

The only way to correct it is through entering what we might call a fight,

But it's actually so much better for the relationship to air it and get it out now and allow for realignment than it is to let it fester in one or both parties because it'll always end up being way worse or either through more chaos or worse fight later or the two people just becoming not interested in each other because so much resentment has been piled up.

It's now for the actual fights.

The reason why that first belief,

Seeing yourself as one unit is so important,

Is that in a fight,

Inevitably,

That belief will be challenged.

In a fight and basically any unpleasant behavior in relationship,

We could put in the category of defense mechanisms.

This is assuming that,

You know,

It's kind of common in pop psychology these days for kind of resentful people to,

Maybe resentful content creators to create these like listicles of like,

Oh,

What if you're dating a narcissist?

I've seen so many of these.

Or what if you're dating a sociopath?

Or what if you're dating this?

Yes,

These types of people exist,

But I think the labeling is really just to justify,

Justify your own resentment.

Some people suck,

Some people are malicious,

But I think that's quite rare.

I think more often than not,

When people do things that are unpleasant to people that they love or loved,

It's because of their defense mechanisms.

They are trying to protect themselves from getting hurt.

And it's like,

It's that whole adage,

Hurt people hurt people.

We tend to hurt each other when we're trying to prevent ourselves from getting hurt or we're trying to protect an already existing wound.

This includes playing the victim card or playing a martyr or whatever.

It also includes anger,

Right?

I've spoken about this in a few episodes.

Anger,

As Gabor Maté has laid out in different talks,

Anger is the emotion of taking your own space.

It's the emotion of separation.

And at times it is very important.

It's important to take your space occasionally.

Sometimes it's important to take your space even with your partner,

Even while you still believe in yourself as one unit.

But if that is the case,

But if that anger grows too strong,

If the defense mechanisms,

If the walls go up,

I mean,

To the degree that the walls are up is the degree that you're separate,

Right?

You can't have walls up and be one unit at the same time.

The reason why women seem to be the more angry party in relationship,

The reason why the feminine,

The collective feminine is that which harbors the anger in society,

Is that the feminine is the more vulnerable party,

Right?

Women,

Females evolved,

Or I was just sick with humans,

Women and the feminine nature of women evolved for being within the perimeter of a man or men or society,

Right?

All of the things that the feminine is prone to require one to be within safe walls.

I mean,

Spoke about that,

Did a whole episode on that,

On how to help her into her feminine.

So it makes sense that a woman,

Given that she has so much to lose by being in a bad perimeter,

Or to put down her walls and find out there's not actually a strong perimeter around her,

Or to find that the perimeter setter,

The man she's with,

The person who's providing and offering security to her,

Doesn't actually care about her,

That is the worst thing.

I mean,

It ties into having the baby of a man who's gonna leave her,

Right?

It's the scariest and worst survival situation.

So she has to periodically protect herself with anger,

Right?

Because if she doesn't do that,

I mean,

The anger is essentially like a fill-in for her perimeter.

When she doesn't trust the perimeter set for her by the man she's with,

Or the masculine,

Or the society,

She has to be angry.

It's like her last ability to protect herself.

So this is one thing I hope all men listening to this can get,

Because while,

You know,

It doesn't mean you should take shit endlessly,

And I spoke about this with Mac Lethal when he was on the podcast,

It's not that a man should take shit,

It's that you should at least understand that when she's being angry and it seems to have nothing to do with what you did or who you are,

That might actually be true.

It might have nothing to do with you,

But it is a hard-wired evolutionary program to periodically get angry as like her last,

I mean,

If a woman's angry,

It means that she doesn't feel safe about everything around her.

So the best thing you can do will at least one,

At least have compassion for that,

Right?

Because women are just more vulnerable than men in general.

And two,

Do your best to create the safety around her.

That's technically a pre-fight thing,

But at least understanding that.

Whereas I'd say to women,

It's understanding that when you are angry,

You are not surrendered.

It's impossible to be both at the same time.

This is something that,

You know,

As Nalai and I have had different conflicts and always resolve it and talk about it,

This is something she's told me,

Is that when she's really open,

It's actually impossible to be angry.

Like she can't do both at the same time.

Like when she really does whatever it takes to become surrendered and become open and become trusting,

Her anger melts away.

Like the two things can't go together.

So even though,

You know,

There is that Kali rage that maybe is,

It maybe has been hard-wired into women,

They also have the ability to be really soft and surrendered.

And if the two of you can help her switch into that,

The anger typically goes away.

So in regards to defense mechanisms,

Many fights escalate because both parties have their defense mechanisms up.

They both have their walls up and they're waiting for the other person to drop theirs before they drop their own,

Right?

It's like,

Oh,

I'll be nice to you once you start being nice to me,

Right?

In fact,

You know,

I think that's kind of a common type of phrase that gets said in relationship fights often.

Like,

Oh,

I would do that for you,

But you didn't do that for me.

You did this first.

And once you stop doing this,

I'll be nice to you in some form.

Whereas,

Yeah,

That could work,

You know,

But if you're both running on that strategy of I'm gonna keep my walls up until you drop yours,

You're kind of putting yourself into a prisoner's dilemma,

Which is a zero-sum game at best,

Like a Mexican standoff,

But more likely it's gonna be a negative-sum game where you're both kind of hurting each other by having your walls up and then nothing works.

And the longer that goes,

The more likely things are just gonna be bad.

Because again,

That is the transactional perspective on relationship of like,

Oh,

You do this for me,

Then I do this for you,

Which as I mentioned,

You know,

People are gonna mess up.

Assuming no malice on either party's parts,

People mess up just because we're not perfect,

But also a lot of the pains that like maybe spark fights between loved ones is not from malice,

But it's from perhaps what we could call negligence.

But even negligence,

I mean,

Sometimes it's pure negligence.

Like one person just really was not thinking about the other person.

But a lot of times it's like almost like cultural negligence or cultural unawareness.

And I mean,

Cultural in the sense of like,

We all have grown up with different moral assumptions and different ways of doing things.

And unless you and your partner like grew up on the same block your whole lives,

Chances are you've been exposed to very different things and very different ways of looking at things.

And,

You know,

Anybody who's traveled a bunch can see that,

You know,

There's so many different cultural norms of like what makes something good versus bad,

What's okay versus not okay,

Where's hand gestures or styles of speaking or how close you stand to someone.

And this comes up in relationship.

Even if you're from the same,

You know,

Country,

We grew up in different bubbles.

And a lot of what causes pain in each other,

Accidental pain,

Comes from these simple differences in world for you.

So you have to kind of leave in some room for error on both parties.

So instead of playing like a tit for tat game of like,

Oh,

You did something not nice to me.

Well,

I'm gonna be not nice to you to defend myself.

Somebody has to be the bigger party to flip it.

I've spoken about this in other episodes.

I don't remember what,

But it's been found that the most profitable strategy in prisoner's dilemma situations are tit for tat with forgiveness.

Meaning if you're mean to me,

I'll be mean to you,

But at some point I'll forgive you.

And so we can both go back to being nice to each other.

And that leads to the highest scores in that game.

And I'd actually say,

Given that women are the more vulnerable party,

I would actually put this more on the men,

Especially if you believe in polarized relationships,

If you believe in setting the perimeter,

You want the benefits of being the perimeter setter and being the masculine pole,

I would say for men,

This is a little bit more of your responsibility,

Right?

Because if the woman has to be the quote,

Bigger party,

Has to be the one to put her emotions aside and look at things more rationally and give space for you to be emotional,

Then that is actually putting her in the masculine role.

Like she's the one operating more from logos versus pathos.

Whereas,

If you're a typical guy who wants to be in a relationship with a woman and her feminine,

You can't let her do that for the sake of her wellbeing.

Not for some power trip reason,

But for the sake of her wellbeing and yours.

So I would say in general,

I do,

Especially when I coach couples or coach one person in a relationship,

I do often put a little bit more pressure,

Sometimes a lot more pressure on the man to be the one to put his emotions aside.

And you know,

That kind of fits in with our cultural ideals or at least traditional cultural ideals of men and women.

I think it's great that in the most recent generation,

Men have learned to connect to their softer side.

I mean,

That was something very important in my own journey.

But at the same time,

My strong moral belief is that men should not be as emotional as women.

It's in fact,

If you're,

As I mentioned that first,

That whole meta fight we had,

If men are crying and sobbing as much as women,

Then they're kind of not able to fulfill what they need to fulfill for women.

So this is all to say that if you are the man in a relationship,

I would say it's on you to recognize,

Even in the heat of an argument,

When your defense mechanisms are up and I'm sure they'll feel justified at the time,

And you can look at her,

It's easier to criticize the other person to be like,

Oh,

You're acting through your traumas,

You're acting through your wounds,

Or the more neutral statement is your defense mechanisms are up.

If you can recognize it and look at it from a third party perspective,

You're the one that should drop your defenses first.

Because you're the one who sets the perimeter and provides safety for the collective,

You're the one who needs to let her know that it's safe,

Even if it seems like she's being unreasonable at the time.

Of course,

This is easier said than done.

But here's a little technique that I offered someone recently.

Because of course,

It's extremely hard to do this in the heat of the moment,

But one way of looking at it is that anytime anyone is in their emotions,

It's like they have descended into a little child version of themselves.

So if you're with a woman and she's being emotional,

Stop thinking of her as an adult woman.

Think of her as a little girl.

See her as a little girl.

Because a lot of the expectations that get thrown on someone when both people are angry kind of comes down to the assumption that they can act rationally,

But they're choosing not to.

They can choose to be nice,

But they're not choosing to.

Which obviously there's some truth to that,

But also you're kind of going against the grain if you hold onto that expectation.

Whereas if when your partner is emotional,

Speaking to men here,

If your woman's emotional,

If you see that,

Okay,

She's not herself,

She's not whatever age version of herself,

She's eight-year-old version of herself,

Or seven-year-old version,

Or maybe five-year-old version of herself.

If that's the case,

Well,

You wouldn't yell at a five-year-old for not being rational,

Right?

You wouldn't get angry at her.

And also,

One of the reasons why I like this imagery is that you probably wouldn't,

Hopefully,

You wouldn't have your own defense mechanisms come up if a five-year-old was upset at you.

Even if the five-year-old was calling you the worst names they could think of and was being mean the way a five-year-old might know,

Hopefully if you're a reasonably secure adult male,

You wouldn't get triggered by that,

Right?

You'd probably be like,

Okay,

She doesn't know what she's doing,

I'm not gonna blame her,

I mean,

Whatever the thing is.

You'd have a little bit more compassion.

And this is advice that could be useful to a woman dating a man as well.

And actually,

I hope that everybody relating to anybody who's in their emotions can see them in this light rather than hold them to an adult standard,

Which typically doesn't work.

But I think this is more important for men as the perimeter setter to recognize that,

Hey,

You have a little boy in you as well,

And that little boy has needs,

Right?

Your inner child archetype,

If you will.

But typically,

Those needs are not meant to be met in your relationship.

Whereas,

At least in my view of a polarized relationship,

A healthy polarized relationship,

Your partner's little girl archetype,

Maybe not all of her needs,

But some of her needs should be met by her man,

Because she's inside of your perimeter.

Like that is how asymmetrical relating works,

Whether it's parent-child,

Whereas between lovers,

One party is more heavy on the logos and provides the security and safety,

And the other party is more in their feelings.

And I actually think it's in these moments that men earn the rights of polarity,

Or they earn the leadership role,

Right?

If you wanna be the perimeter setter and gain all the benefits of that,

This is where you prove to your woman that she has every incentive to follow your lead and stop being angry with you and surrender,

Right?

It's like,

These are the moments,

Right?

If you attack her when she attacks you,

You're kinda proving to her that she shouldn't surrender to you.

I mean,

Because again,

If you look at your woman as a kid,

Temporarily,

For those moments that she's emotional,

Or maybe anytime she's emotional,

Let's say,

And it's your job to take care of her,

Then you would also accept the fact that she's gonna get emotional sometimes,

Right?

Like,

A small child is not always gonna understand things that are going on.

And I realize,

For all the women listening,

This might seem derogatory.

I hope you can see the context of what I'm saying.

I'm not trying to infantilize women,

But it is the nature of a polarized relationship where one party is surrendering that the other party does have to take extra responsibility.

Now,

To men,

I hope I don't have to convince you,

And this might seem unfair to men,

But I hope I don't have to convince you of why you should take this extra responsibility.

I mean,

I've laid it out in other episodes,

Like how to help her enter a feminine.

There's a lot of benefit to it,

Right?

You get all the good things from women when you do this,

The love,

The sex,

The openness,

The joy,

The support,

Right?

This is how you earn that.

And also,

It's important that,

In incentivizing your partner to drop her defense mechanisms,

This cannot be done from moral conjecture,

Right?

You can't just send her this podcast and be like,

Hey,

This guy says everything will be better if you stop being angry at me.

I don't know,

It can't work like that,

Because that,

Well,

For one,

That would force her to go into her logos,

To operate from logos,

To go into her masculine,

Which kind of defeats the purpose of everything.

And two,

If someone's really in their emotions,

This kind of logical argument,

This moral argument doesn't work,

Right?

This,

If you're looking,

If you're seeing the person as an emotional being,

As they are,

You have to give natural incentives,

The way you would incentivize,

Again,

A child or an animal.

We're operating on our emotions and not on our human rationality.

And what I mean by natural incentives is that you are showing,

Not telling.

All of these non-content-based things matter,

Your tone of voice,

Touch,

Sweetness,

Right?

You have to show to her limbic system,

To her more mammalian brain,

That things are safe,

Like she's actually okay.

Any evidence that she can pull that she's not safe is only going to bolster her defense mechanisms.

And the last part of this,

Once you've looked at the situation,

Recognized,

Okay,

Myself and my partner are operating through our defense mechanisms,

I'm gonna drop mine so that she can drop hers,

You have to also offer a way to win.

This is the path into phase three and path of reconciliation and mutual esteem.

Another reason why I've seen fights needlessly escalate is that one party might be like,

Okay,

I'll,

I mean,

In some way,

Maybe I don't literally say this,

But in some way they communicate,

Okay,

I'll go back to being nice to you,

But you have to admit that you are a bad person here,

Right?

You really did something wrong.

And hey,

Sometimes people do do bad things,

Right?

Somebody cheated or there's some betrayal or something that was actually worth fighting over.

Okay,

Maybe some,

Maybe apology is due,

But there has to be some path where the person is not evil and can go back to a place of respect within the two-person society.

They need to regain their status within the relationship,

Regain the respect and love to know that they are not some other person who is,

Yeah,

Because that kind of inbred shame is only gonna cause more conflict again.

And this is like,

This is where you're really viewing it as a co-op game of like,

We are both going to win at this together,

Which means that,

You know,

If you're the active party leading towards reconciliation,

And I hope if you're in the mask and roll,

This is you,

There has to be a way,

It has to be a path for both of you to win with each other again,

Meaning you both get connection,

You both get love,

And you're both able to please each other again.

I've seen this in some intentional communities where when someone breaks one of the rules and does something wrong,

They are called out,

But they have some,

They have some sort of formal way of reintegrating the person where even if the person fucked up or harmed someone somehow,

They are then reminded of how they're loved.

There's an olive branch extended of like,

Oh,

Here's where you can regain your status,

Because if the narrative of your reconciliation is one person is wrong,

That person's going to act out again.

I know this couple where the guy in the relationship has had a history of porn addiction,

And his wife,

Who is like a particularly masculine woman,

Often shames him about it like publicly.

She'll actually talk about it and make him feel bad,

About actually about a few things.

And then she wonders why he always relapses.

I've seen them,

I've gone to dinner with them where she would shame him about something.

I would see him kind of like,

Shame him for something that he legitimately did that wasn't great.

It wasn't like she was pulling stuff out of the hat,

But she would shame him publicly.

It would be like his tail would be between his legs,

And I could see,

I could see,

Right,

I mean,

I don't know him well enough to call it out to them,

Or to say at a dinner,

But I could see almost with 100% certainty that because of this instance,

He was going to act out again.

He was going to do something else again that caused more separation,

Because he wasn't given an opportunity,

Maybe never in the relationship,

Was he given an opportunity to go back to being the man.

So,

I mean,

This is how Nalai and I always end our disagreements of like,

Some way that we reward each other to go back to connection.

And it could be something as simple as just dropping the anger and going back to being soft and touching and loving,

Or saying what we need that would make us feel good again.

Because ultimately,

Both parties want to please each other.

I mean,

That is kind of like one of the more primal desires in any relationship.

Anytime you're with someone that you care about,

You want them to like you,

Right?

That's a normal thing.

That's not something that needs to be transcended.

That's a,

You know,

It feels good if you love your wife,

It feels good to do something and have her really appreciate it.

Same thing if you love your husband or boyfriend or whatever,

You know,

For him to really love something you did,

Like that is like the best social reward anyone can get.

So you want to find ways to do that for each other,

But also have a path for you to experience that as well.

And it's helpful to know each other's love languages in this instance.

Nalai and I are lucky in that we both really appreciate quality time and touch.

Every woman I've ever known,

Actually,

I would even say,

Every feminine person I've ever met,

Which includes certain feminine men,

Seem to love words of affirmation.

And every masculine person I know seems to not care that much for it.

So it's kind of a thing that I've had to learn to like,

It's not really in my nature to say everything I appreciate.

It's not that I don't appreciate them.

I feel it,

But to put it into words is not natural to me.

It's something I've had to like really try to do because I know that it's,

You know,

It doesn't actually cost me anything,

Right?

And it's not like I'm lying either.

It's like,

There are things that I feel.

Just reminding myself to tell them to Nalai because it makes such a huge difference.

It's like,

It's kind of a worthless currency to me in my realm,

But I get such a great exchange rate when I visit her.

So it's like,

Yeah,

Of course I should work on saying that.

I do actually have a theory as to why feminine people seem to care about it more.

And I think it again comes down to perimeters and polarity in that when you are within someone's perimeter,

Right?

Meaning that you are leaning on them or relying on them for security against the outside world.

If you really trust that person,

Which hopefully is the case if you're inside someone's perimeter,

You have every reason,

You have every incentive to take what they say is the truth,

Right?

So like for an extreme example,

A small child and a parent,

The child relies on the parent for everything.

So if the child asks,

Why is the sky blue?

Or why do people do this?

Or why,

Whatever question that kids might ask,

You have every reason to believe that your parent knows the answer,

Right?

You don't question it.

You see this in another extreme example,

You see this in cult dynamics,

Which I think is the same exact thing,

Right?

People have learned to trust a cult leader for direction and for a model of living life.

And therefore,

When they say some things and when they say some things that maybe are outlandish,

They believe it because they've gotten so much good advice up until that point.

I think feminine people tend to value words of affirmation for that reason,

Because if you're a feminine person,

Or if you're in your feminine,

You are leaning on another person,

You're depending on them.

So if they say,

If they give you a compliment,

It really means a lot.

Like it really,

It's like,

Oh,

This person who I get my reality checks from say I'm great,

Then I must really be great.

And that means a lot.

I mean,

This is even true in a non-sexual polarized relationships.

Like in the master-apprentice dynamic,

Or if you've had a trusted coach,

Sports coach,

Or some sort of mentor or guide,

You take their words to heart.

If they say something good about you,

You really believe it,

Right?

Because you trust their judgment.

If they say something mean,

It really hurts.

And this is something I've also had to remember with speaking with my wife that,

Sometimes I get surprised that when I say something like really slightly critical in my eyes,

It's like maybe just a small suggestion to change something or something.

To me,

It's like so insignificant and something that if she told me,

It would just be like,

Oh yeah,

Okay.

Yeah,

Maybe I could do that differently or not.

She often takes it kind of hard,

Which I think,

It's not a bad thing.

I think it's just an element of her really being surrendered.

So I have to actually,

Given that I'm setting the perimeter and we have a trusting polarized relationship,

I actually have to take a little bit more responsibility and be a little bit more careful with how I speak because she takes it to heart.

Whereas on the flip side,

And this might be,

Well,

It's just the truth.

It's like,

She's actually really great with sharing nice things and I appreciate that about it.

I appreciate the gesture.

She says a lot of nice things to me.

But somehow it doesn't land as much as maybe it could because of the fact that I know that we're in love and she loves me and it's like,

Well,

Of course you see me in a positive light.

And I know this sounds really unromantic,

But it's true.

It's like,

I know she loves me and therefore,

When she says like,

Oh,

I'm the best at whatever,

It's like,

Well,

You're kind of viewing me with an overly positive lens.

So it doesn't really change my world view of myself or my perspective on myself,

Excuse me.

As opposed to like,

If a guy I know who doesn't give out compliments very often and doesn't worship me,

Right,

He's a peer,

Or maybe he's a mentor,

Says something to me,

Well,

That I take really to heart.

And I know maybe that's unfair,

It's unfair to my wife,

But I think that is,

Again,

Kind of the nature of polarity.

Okay,

The final phase,

The third phase,

Post-fight.

I actually think this is the most important part because it sets up whether or not you fight again about the same thing,

Whether fights drag out or not,

And the health of your relationship,

Right?

Because I think a lot of people,

Especially if a fight was really bad,

They're just relieved that it's over,

And they're just happy to go back to like,

Okay,

Thank God,

We have to talk about that.

You know,

It's a natural emotion.

But I actually think,

And again,

This is a thing I put on men,

It's on you to make sure that the perimeter has actually been reformed.

Because if we're going on in this model of fighting,

That a fight is evidence that something was out of alignment,

You could just put a band-aid over it,

You could just paint over the crack in the wood,

And it doesn't actually fix the thing.

Maybe you're not fighting anymore,

But the underlying problem still exists,

And it's another fight,

Potentially a bigger fight,

Waiting to happen.

And if you've ever had a fight where things from a previous fight come up,

I would actually argue that you didn't actually resolve the first fight then.

Right,

That fight was just like basically put on pause,

And here it is starting over again.

Because you didn't successfully reform the perimeter.

Like the fight was a crack in it,

It's still there,

You just painted over it.

I just wrote an article on my history of men sub-stack on how every man is a nation builder.

And I think this is really,

I mean,

This is where this comes into play,

Where it's really on the man,

This is where the man earns his right to lead the family by doing the extra work to reform the perimeter.

And what this essentially means is ensuring that the two of you have a unified culture.

Earlier I said that one of the causes of fights in a relationship and why I'm skeptical of long-term relationships where they claim to have never fought,

You know,

There's the defense mechanism thing,

The past traumas,

Wounds and stuff,

That's one part.

But it's also,

We grew up with different cultural perspectives,

And just having different models of reality lead to conflict,

They lead to disagreements or different assumptions which may lead to accidental harm of each other.

Whereas if you really want to solidify things and make sure the fight doesn't occur again,

And here's actually where a fight leads to a gain in intimacy,

If you can use this fight,

You can use this period of fluidity,

Let's say,

Or plasticity,

You can reform the culture between you,

Reform the reality between you so you're actually on the same page.

Meaning,

You both agree on the events and the interpretations of the events.

I'm gonna say this again,

This is the most important part of the making up process,

Other than of course being nice to each other again and loving each other and that stuff.

It's that you're ensuring that you both agree on the events and the interpretations of the events.

Now,

This doesn't mean you have to agree on everything or believe in everything the same,

But you have to,

When it comes to the things that you actually value,

You have to have the same evaluations.

Like,

With something inconsequential,

Like for example,

Nalaiah's into astrology,

I think it's silly,

I make fun of her about it,

At least to take it seriously,

But it actually doesn't matter to either of us,

Right?

She can laugh when I tease her about it,

You know,

She's not so serious about it that she's upset that I'm not into it,

I'm not so serious about it,

I don't think there's anything wrong with her,

You know,

Checking horoscopes and stuff,

I think it's totally fine if she enjoys it,

Whatever.

So that's fine,

But with certain things,

It's totally important,

Like with how to raise children or the values of how to be in society or to some degree.

These kinds of actual values,

I mean,

The closer they are together between the two of you,

The less likely you'll fight because you're evaluating situations the same way.

Whereas if you have slightly or drastically different senses of morality,

Meaning you have slightly different senses of right and wrong or more often,

And we see this in both relationships,

But also in society as a whole,

Where you have different priorities of values,

Where you think,

You know,

One thing's more important or another thing's more important,

If it's drastically different,

You're almost certainly gonna fight about something again.

And in some cases,

I would even say it's sometimes worth it to reopen the fight or reopen the wound even to ensure that you guys are on the same page,

Because otherwise you didn't actually heal anything.

And I just wanna be clear,

It's not,

You know,

Because I'm speaking mainly to men here,

I think this is the responsibility of the masculine,

It's not that it's my way or the highway.

It's not that you have to tell her necessarily,

This is what's up,

Is that you recognize her perspective and you recognize your perspective and you do whatever it takes to get them to be the same.

However,

I will also add to that,

That at least in my experience,

From everything I've observed,

That when the dynamics in a healthy polarized relationship,

Well,

Are healthy,

When everything's working smoothly,

When she's happy to be in her feminine and you feel competence and you're benefiting her by being in your masculine,

Usually when it comes to a lot of like worldly things,

I often see the woman kind of hopping onto the value system of the men.

And I think it just comes down to when a person is in the feminine,

They become more directed inward towards feelings and less outward towards viewing the world.

And I think it's also why,

You know,

If you look at typical interests,

Men seem to be more interested in things like sports and the stock market and world affairs and politics.

Obviously,

There are many women who have those interests too,

But in general,

I think those are like testosterone driven interests,

Because that is what the masculine does,

It deals with the outside.

And when a woman can really be in her feminine because she really trusts the man,

She really trusts his leadership,

She really trusts him to make beneficial decisions for the relationship with the family,

There's no reason for her to also pay attention to the news,

Right?

There's no reason for her to worry about world things or the economy or something,

Because if she really trusts her perimeter setter,

If she really believes there's a strong perimeter,

Well,

Then that part is taken care of.

She can focus on other things that are also important.

So I know if you're a guy and you're in a relationship and she really is not on board with you,

Like this dynamic that I described does not exist,

It can be very frustrating.

The thing you should not do,

Again,

Is bring a moral argument of like telling her like,

Oh,

You should just surrender to me.

Like,

That's not going to inspire her to follow you.

You earn this role through your actions.

I mean,

Basically through being a strong man in every way,

Like when she can observe that you're competent,

You're emotionally stable,

You make good decisions for the two of you,

Then she will be,

Those are natural incentives for her to drop her defense mechanisms,

To trust you more,

And essentially surrender to reality and surrender to your reality,

Which might be a mix of,

You might,

Of course,

Hopefully take elements from her reality.

Otherwise you are brainwashing her,

Which,

Well,

I'll just leave it at that.

Because when it comes to like the facts of an argument or a situation,

I think something that surprises many men,

It still surprises me to this day,

That when say we're arguing about something and she feels,

You know,

She's saying it's this way and I'm saying it's that way,

But then we make up and everything,

Like our emotions go back into sync and she trusts me again.

It turns out she didn't really care about the thing she was fighting about,

Right?

Like she didn't even care.

It's like all of that was just to test whether I was still a safe person to surrender to.

Which means that,

Again,

To men,

If you're in a relationship with a woman who seems to have a very different reality than you,

Don't worry too much,

Because it might not be that you need to actually,

You know,

Convince her of a different way of being.

Maybe all you need to do is have her really trust you,

And then she'll be like,

Oh yeah,

Whatever you think,

That's fine,

Because she probably won't care anymore.

So those are the three critical factors,

Three critical phases,

I should say,

Of fighting.

Pre-fight,

Ensure that you believe that you are one unit and are acting that way.

View everything as a co-op game,

Not a zero-sum competition or transactional game.

In the fight,

Recognize that you're both probably acting through your defense mechanisms and not to take it too seriously,

And do whatever you can to incentivize her to not have to have her defense mechanisms up,

Which means you drop your defense mechanisms.

And then also offer a way to win.

There has to be a path towards reconciliation.

And finally,

The most important thing for the perimeter setter in a relationship is to reunify the reality.

This is where fights in relationship are great opportunities for deeper intimacy and where perhaps the fight started because there was a difference in perception.

And you had this fight,

Things are plastic,

And you can reform them.

You can reform your collective beliefs so that you are looking at things the same way.

And just as a reminder to all the men,

Your role as the masculine or the leader or the perimeter setter has to be earned.

You cannot convince her to follow you,

But you can give her natural incentives by showing her,

Proving that you are someone worth following,

That she actually is better off being within your perimeter than to be off on her own or in some other man's perimeter,

Right?

This has to come through how you live your life outside of the relationship too.

So I hope this episode has been useful.

If there's anyone you know who could benefit from it,

Please share it with them.

Thanks for listening.

I will see you in the next episode.

Goodbye.

Utesh voucher