Why Hard Conversations in Marriage Go Sideways (And How to Get Back on the Same Team)

Chad: In today's podcast, we want to look at why hard conversations often go sideways. I know for us, and for a lot of the couples we coach, sometimes we go back to the details of what was said. But in our experience, there is actually something that happens maybe ten to twenty seconds before that, that is kind of the beginning of hijacking a conversation. So in your experience, what does that look like, or what are your thoughts there?

Sarah-Gayle: We hear this all the time with our couples, where it is like we were just talking about something regular and then all of a sudden it just turned. And just because a conversation turns does not mean we have to keep having it. We will talk more about that later. For me, something we teach is to take personal responsibility, speak for yourself, and let your partner speak for themselves. So for me, what happens is something might be said and I am fine, but then as we continue talking, maybe I am triggered. There is a trigger, and that is what my mind is focused on moving forward. Honestly, I do not know that I really hear, at least through a clear lens, what Chad is saying after that trigger, because I am caught up in my feelings at that point.

Chad: Part of what we want to explore is this idea of what is happening in our bodies. Oftentimes for Sarah-Gayle and me, and a lot of the couples we coach, we can enter a conversation with pretty good intentions. I am not talking about the conversations where we come in hot to just destroy each other out the gate. The solution to that is to stop it. I am talking about the conversations where one or both of us enter with good intentions, even an expectation that we are on the same page, and they get away from us. Something happens physically and emotionally, and the next thing we say or do is, I will use this word, compromised. I am no longer operating from the space of a teammate and a partner. I have shifted into self-preservation. Many of us have heard of fight or flight. Over the decades of study they have added some ideas, so it is fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. The goal is not to dive into the details as much as to create awareness. For me, I first flight and start to retreat. If that does not work, I fight and attack. Either one separates us. What does that look like for you?

Sarah-Gayle: I want to clarify, when we say fight, we are not talking about anything physical. This is not fight club. We want you to be safe if you are listening. Abuse is not something to be tolerated and worked through. Get out, get safe, get outside help.

Chad: It is amazing how often we have to clarify and distinguish that.

Sarah-Gayle: I clarify it with my couples too. So back to the question. Out of those four words, what I would typically do in tense moments is fight to an extent, just trying to protect myself, to talk back, to defend. But then also to freeze, to think, well, maybe this will pass. It is a weird dynamic. I will try to fight, but when I recognize my fighting is not working, that is when I freeze. There is a lot I want to say, but I do not say it, because I feel like nothing is going to get through.

Chad: The big thing is recognizing that regardless of how you or your spouse responds, there are different strategies for the same thing. Individually, something happened where we now feel the need to protect ourselves. With fight, it is to confront the threat or push back against it. With flight, it is to escape the threat, to withdraw. Freeze is to stall it out, like a deer in headlights, hoping the perceived threat goes away with time. Like if I stick my head in the sand, when I take it out it will be gone.

Sarah-Gayle: Real quick, it reminds me of our boys. Sometimes I go in their room and they do not want to interact with their mama, and they just cover their eyes in their chair. And I am like, I can see you. So that is like freeze.

Chad: And the fourth one is fawn. This is a newer idea. It is to appease the threat. For a lot of us who struggle with people pleasing, that can be an expression of it. We try to create safety by making sure you are happy, so maybe the threat will go away.

Sarah-Gayle: And deep down it just creates resentment, because you are not being true to yourself. After the fact it does not feel good. It backfires.

Chad: So we want you to do some personal inventory. The goal is, how do we get back out of self-preservation and into being a teammate? Marriages thrive off of vulnerability and courage. But if I feel the need to protect myself, that competes directly against my ability to be vulnerable. There are skills and steps we can take as a team to get back to important conversations. What has worked for you, or for some of your couples, to recognize that response and get back to the table?

Sarah-Gayle: It starts with awareness, recognizing that we have things internally. When we get triggered, this is how we typically react. So it is identifying what you do. Do you fight, flight, fawn, or freeze? And then acting accordingly. I know I do this, so I am going to choose to do something different. One thing to be aware of is that we protect ourselves for a reason. Sometimes it comes from our upbringing, perpetuating what we saw growing up. Sometimes it is because trust was broken with our current partner. So we put a wall up. What I tell my couples is, we get it, we understand the wall. But the wall is not going to get you the deeper intimacy and connection you ultimately want. Marriage is vulnerable. It requires walking by faith. You do not know how the conversation will go, but it is choosing to be vulnerable in the hopes that you will connect and keep moving forward.

Chad: For me, getting back is recognizing my tendency. In fight mode, I use my words or intellect to win the argument. The challenge is I can win the argument but erode connection. So I recognize that, and then we use elements to create timeouts. In a different podcast we talked about the peace pause. Sometimes to get out of an emotionally flooded state we just need a twenty or thirty second pause. For me, my volume goes up, which means there is agitation or frustration. So I take that peace pause, breathe, and recognize the path I am going down. Then I remind myself communication is about connection and we are on the same team. A practical question I ask is, if we are on the same team, how would a kind person approach this topic? If there is a big gap, I need to come into alignment. But sometimes twenty or thirty seconds is not enough. What do you recommend other couples do?

Sarah-Gayle: We have a pre-agreement. If one of us is feeling over the top and has lost sight of the whole conversation, seeing red, we call a timeout. You could have a different name. I had one couple who called it a Milwaukee, because it made them laugh, an inside joke. You pre-agree what it means. Basically a break, and then come back, following whatever guidelines you set. The point is to physiologically self-soothe and come back to calm. I think a minimum would be thirty minutes. The break is not, let me go finish my favorite show. It is, let me calm down, breathe, pray, listen to something positive, look at my affirmations, remember what we are building, and not just win the moment.

Chad: A question a lot of couples ask is, how do we know we are ready to return? When you are ready to re-engage focused on being on the same team. I think about Proverbs 18:21, life and death are in the power of the tongue. When I am in fight or flight, my tongue turns to death. I am blaming, criticizing, accusing, defending. So if I go back into the conversation and my words are still in alignment with death, I am not ready. I am still flooded and in self-preservation. If you can re-approach your spouse with a renewed commitment to teamwork and life-giving words, you are ready. If not, you are not. A huge part of what we see is couples having too many important conversations in a fight or flight environment, where they have no real chance of being successful, because we are operating as individuals protecting ourselves.

Sarah-Gayle: This is what we were saying earlier. Sometimes the conversation just turns, and we do not have to keep having it then. For some reason we think once we are talking, we have to finish. No. If it is not about connection, if my aim is not to connect with him, then I do not need to be talking in that moment, because it is probably more selfish and fueled by emotion. I go as far as to tell couples, when you are fueled by emotion, do not engage. Feelings are God given and they help us pinpoint where we are and what we want to grow in. Self-reflection is required, because a lot of us do not give ourselves time to think. How am I doing, really? Why did that trigger me? If we do not have times of self-reflection, it is easy to blame the other person, they made me feel this way. And when we blame, we never get to grow and do the deeper healing we need so we can show up better.

Chad: That is really good. I will oversimplify, but it is this idea of skills. There are core skills, individually and as a team, that equip us to have hard conversations while staying teammates. The first skill is personal responsibility, being able to identify when I feel threatened and how I respond. Once I do that, I can understand how to get out of it. The next skill is, how do I self-soothe and calm myself so I return life-giving? Then collectively, recognizing what environments make both of us feel safe, because if vulnerability is required, we need to feel safe. Any other core skills or mindsets that come to mind for you?

Sarah-Gayle: I realized I lost focus earlier. What I was going to say is the game plan. We do not have to have hard conversations as they just shift into being hard. We can pause. The game plan helps us think through ahead of time what we will do. So when someone realizes, this is not the kind of conversation I wanted to have while we are out having ice cream, they can say, hey, can we take a timeout and come back after dinner. And the other person does not feel minimized or avoided, because you already talked about it beforehand. This is typically the best time for hard conversations, the best place, and this is how we have them. It is coming into agreement on the plan ahead of time.

Chad: One of the things I love is that so many couples we work with come from competitive backgrounds like us. They played sports at a high level, or they are ministry leaders or business owners. So I love to shift out of the marital space and look at what championship teams do. They have plans. They do not spontaneously make key decisions. They have vision and discipline, so when they show up to a game or a meeting they already know what they are trying to accomplish. It does not mean other things are not important. It is recognizing that focus creates clarity and allows people to operate as a team. That is one of the biggest things the game plan supports. There may be multiple topics, so let us take one at a time, because championship teams work through one thing at a time.

Sarah-Gayle: The last thing I will say is the willingness to pivot. Go with the championship team metaphor. If you are playing a team and they come out with a play you did not prep for, you do not bow out, you adjust. You pivot. I tell my couples, you have what it takes. You are not broken. You are in coaching because you are wise. You recognize we have a business coach, a nutritionist, a marriage coach. So take what we are saying, put a plan in place, and if it does not work, it does not mean you are doomed. It means that part did not work, so we try this, we try that. As long as you recognize you are on the same team, that is a mindset. Then you can pivot and adjust, and it is not devastating, it is part of the process. A lot of times we find ourselves on different sides, and when we are on different sides, pivoting feels like betrayal, like, wait, we just said this. That is also when we weaponize the tools we are learning, because we are on different teams. But the whole world opens up when you recognize the mindset, we are on the same team, we can adjust, we will get this.

Chad: What helps us stay on the same team is celebrating. Celebrating baby steps. So often a couple's current skill level is a two out of ten, and they move to a four. Let us be honest, a four is still not very good. There is still pain and frustration and disappointment. But my encouragement is to celebrate the growth from the two to the four, because it makes everyone on the team want to keep working and learning and growing. If we went from a two to a four and all you do is beat me up for the missing six, I am going to find myself right back in fight or flight, right back on separate teams. In theory we are playing this game the rest of our lives. We have been married two decades, working on our third, and Lord willing we have several more. As long as we are growing, we are in a great spot. It may take time, but the focus is to keep taking those steps, even the small ones.

Sarah-Gayle: I love how you recap. Not to put you on the spot, but if you were to say these are the things we want you to take from this episode, what would you tell the people?

Chad: The biggest thing is recognizing why hard conversations get away from you. Oftentimes it is because we get emotionally flooded, which puts us in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn space. These are different ways we react to protect ourselves. Learn them, identify them, take personal responsibility. That is the first thing. The second is, learn how to self-soothe and then return as teammates and partners. We coach couples through this process all the time. If you are looking for a coach to come alongside you and your spouse, reach out. We would love to have a consultation. We offer a free thirty-minute consultation where we ask questions, get a better understanding of where you are, and put together a plan to help you move forward as a team.

Sarah-Gayle: And the fact that you are listening to this means you are doing better than you think you are. You are ahead of the game. You could be doing anything, but you are listening to this. It shows you care about your relationship. So well done. And as always, we are cheering you on.