I've had some good conflicts! Here's one I had with Genius Cat Owner.
At one point, we had a conflict. She was angry about something, and to my mortification, when she brought it up, I went into intense trigger panic mode and just melted down into crazy tears, which meant the conversation couldn't progress. (And I was just sane enough to KNOW it, which only made me feel even WORSE. It felt like shitting myself in public.)
And she stepped back, took a breath and asked if I needed some time to calm down. I said yes, went to my room, had my sob/rock/wheeze fit, and when I was calm enough to talk, I went over to her, and THEN we had the conversation.
And the crazy part was, the conversation worked. I apologized for wigging out on her, and explained why I wigged out. She went, "OHHHHH, I get it now!" and then explained why she was angry, and it turned out that my triggery behavior was what was honking her off! (Because the madder she got, the more I tried to pacify her and make everything easier on her, which just DROVE HER CRAZY, making the situation worse.) So it turned out that we were in this shitty loop of setting each other off, and due to an illness couldn't get away from each other!
I was like, "shit, I didn't realize, I'll try to stop doing that triggery appeasement thing," and she was like, "I should've told you immediately instead of letting it fester and blow up," and we both came away feeling better because we had a way forward. And it worked! We did the things and our relationship, I'd argue, became the stronger for it! And once it was settled, it was DONE. There was no grudge-holding, no pretending everything was fine when it wasn't. We had a conflict, we looked at the problem, we fixed and apologized.
It was really mindblowing for me at the time. Cheers to Genius Cat Owner!
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Date: 2020-08-08 12:59 am (UTC)At one point, we had a conflict. She was angry about something, and to my mortification, when she brought it up, I went into intense trigger panic mode and just melted down into crazy tears, which meant the conversation couldn't progress. (And I was just sane enough to KNOW it, which only made me feel even WORSE. It felt like shitting myself in public.)
And she stepped back, took a breath and asked if I needed some time to calm down. I said yes, went to my room, had my sob/rock/wheeze fit, and when I was calm enough to talk, I went over to her, and THEN we had the conversation.
And the crazy part was, the conversation worked. I apologized for wigging out on her, and explained why I wigged out. She went, "OHHHHH, I get it now!" and then explained why she was angry, and it turned out that my triggery behavior was what was honking her off! (Because the madder she got, the more I tried to pacify her and make everything easier on her, which just DROVE HER CRAZY, making the situation worse.) So it turned out that we were in this shitty loop of setting each other off, and due to an illness couldn't get away from each other!
I was like, "shit, I didn't realize, I'll try to stop doing that triggery appeasement thing," and she was like, "I should've told you immediately instead of letting it fester and blow up," and we both came away feeling better because we had a way forward. And it worked! We did the things and our relationship, I'd argue, became the stronger for it! And once it was settled, it was DONE. There was no grudge-holding, no pretending everything was fine when it wasn't. We had a conflict, we looked at the problem, we fixed and apologized.
It was really mindblowing for me at the time. Cheers to Genius Cat Owner!