This week, we're continuing
our discussion about
what in the world
are these different types of intimacies. And this comes from the Choose Therapy
article that was talking about there being 10 different types of intimacies. And come to find out there, some people think that there's more, some people think there's less. But either way, I just stuck went ahead and stuck with the 10 because it was just a good round number. And there's some in here that were kinda interesting and some that were, you know, a little iffy. Well, this week, we're talking about conflict intimacy. What?
Being intimate about with with conflict? Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're gonna be talking about that this week on episode number 248 of the relaxed male.
This is the relaxed male.
A show that comes to you each week helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms.
Join the host certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Hey, man. Hello, and welcome to Relax Mail. Alright. So we are talking
about conflict intimacy this week,
and this one here is
a little tough. And I think if there's any
intimacy
realm that is
probably one of the more important ones. Yeah. We all like the physical intimacy.
And while others,
you know,
think that that emotional intimacy is more important,
I almost do have to say the conflict intimacy
is actually
the most important
intimacy there is
for a relationship. If you do not have good conflict intimacy,
things go awry real fast. Things get honestly, things get stale.
But I wanna first, before we even dive into that, let's review what we've kind of talked about so far.
And that is that we started off with
with emotional intimacy. There's 10 different types of intimacy. And there's there's the physical, which is the one everybody knows. There's emotional, which pretty much most people know,
but then there's intellectual,
spiritual,
experiential,
social, and creative.
And to kinda break this through down real quick, emotional is how comfortable are you with sharing your emotions with each other.
Intellectual
is how close and how intimate are you or how capable are you to share your ideas and your thoughts
with each other?
Spiritual,
again, is how well are you willing to share your
spiritual journey with each other?
Experiential is how close are you to sharing
your experiences
with each other. That being the big overall arching experiences,
but also the
the experiences with the movies and with
life in general.
How much how well are you willing to to share those experiences with each other? What was that experience like when you went to the store?
You know, you can get as mundane as possible,
but those types of
of
interactions are also as important as the great, big, huge, hey. We went to the,
we went to,
to the Eiffel Tower together type of experiences.
There's social, which is how well are you able or willing to share your social interactions
with each other?
How are you
how well are y'all able to be social together?
Then there's the creative, which under all reality, I think is just an offshoot. It's kind of a subcategory,
I guess, you should call it a subcategory
of experiential
because the the the creative
is all about the experiences.
Are you able to create stuff together? Is it if you want to boil it all the way down,
how
are you able to have
creative
adventures
together?
And if you can, great. You've got some really good
creative intimacy.
Conflict intimacy.
How well are y'all able to fight together?
And this is, again, this is an important one.
Because if you're
if you're not able to fight, you're going to find
that
the relationship
really stales out and and just becomes kind of this bland
roommate. And this is where the roommate syndrome really
creeps in because you're not willing to argue with each other anymore. You're not willing
to have those
those hard conversations anymore.
So
when it comes to conflict intimacy, this
is the hardest and scariest
aspect for many of us to face, especially us men. Because believe it or not, we don't like conflict,
especially when it's conflict that is with the person that we like to sleep with. And a lot of that is because we have
assorted thoughts,
especially thoughts
around around sex.
Oh my god. If we have a fight,
I'm not gonna get to sleep with her. I'm not she's not going to want to have sex with me anymore,
are the kind of the thoughts that we draw together.
And we cause
a lot of,
because we have those types of fears, we have we we run from the conflict. We run from
the these the fear that we may
not be able to have
the
relationships that we want.
Yet,
when we have the fights, when we have the arguments, when we have the
the those hard discussions,
we actually open up the opportunity
for all the other intimacies to come into play.
Because
when you're having a fight,
you're going to have
conflict or you're gonna have conflict, and that
conflict is going to have
emotions mixed in with it. So you're going to have to share your emotions
with
with your spouse.
Also, while you're fighting,
you're actually
mixing in the intellectual
intimacy too because you're gonna be sharing your thoughts with your spouse, and your spouse is gonna be sharing her thoughts with you. And those things can mix together and not always pleasantly. It might mix like oil and water, but then again, it may
kinda smooth itself out.
And the whole arguments that you have is also an experience.
And so you have these experiential
intimacies. And so call you can almost say conflict
intimacy
is a type of experiential
intimacy.
You could also, again, call it a subset
or a subcategory
of
of experiential, but it's also kind of a a
it
incorporates the emotional and the intellectual.
It can if it's about church and stuff, it could incorporate
spiritual.
You could develop the the conflict intimacy
while you're trying to be doing something creative. I mean, I don't know if you've ever tried remodeling
a room with your wife,
but there's going to be words exchanged
unless y'all are very good at
staying in each other's lane.
So conflict intimacy
is actually something
that is needed. Doctor,
John Gottman
actually says that it's crucial for relationships, healthy relationships
to have conflict.
Jason Gaddis talks about this in his book, Getting to 0.
And these are
2 of the leaders for conflict resolution and understanding conflict and how conflict
combines and to make a beautiful relationship.
So and a lot of people wanna know. It's like, well, why do we need a fight?
Well,
this is because
of several different
aspects.
First of all,
anything you want in life,
discomfort has to be paid. Alright? You have to go through
some level of of discomfort
if you're going to get something you truly desire.
Alright?
You may end up having to work more and harder than you want to to to be able to afford something.
You may have to
learn a new skill if you want to be able to make more money. Maybe that's your your goal is to make more money. You have to learn a better skill so that you can make that
money.
Because where you're at right now is not gonna get you to that $200,000
a year that you're you're dreaming of. The the fighting
and the discomfort that it comes with that fighting
is
is needed.
Also, when you fight, you're not gonna allow yourself to fall back into the roommate syndrome.
But you also get to know and understand your wife more? You get to know and understand what it is about her
that really
makes her tick.
It's been through
arguments that I've learned the most about my wife. It's not
necessarily, you know, this is how this is gonna piss her off more than anything type of thing,
but it's more of the long lines of
you
show up when you actually present yourself at dear to an argument, to a
to a discussion, to a conflict,
which is what a fight is. It's a conflict. And a conflict is doesn't have to be where you throw on hands
so much as your
having the
the ability to show up. It allows you to become present. You're there
for your wife as she is talking. It is a disagreement.
Now these are can be high stakes,
and you may have a disagreement as to what you're gonna watch, you know, but and those can be just as
important discussions because you get to understand and you get to voice your concerns.
You actually are showing up to the relationship
when you have a conflict, when you have a disagreement.
Because a lot of times, if you don't do that, you're going to end up just kinda hemming hawing and just you're just, oh, well, whatever you want. It didn't bother me. But your wife wants to know, are you interested in this show or not? And if you're not willing to step forward into that,
you're going to struggle.
How are we supposed to have a a meaningful relationship
if we don't have communication?
That communication
is
when you are
present
with your wife. You have to fight for what you want.
And your wife wants to know that her her opinion matters and that the relationship matters. And if you're not willing to step up to that relationship,
then why does it matter? So, yeah, we have to get ourselves out of the discomfort of thinking, oh my gosh.
Well, you may not have sex that night. There's a possibility. If she falls into
into the the thought of
of that makes her mad and she wants to
to
retaliate
for it, then, yeah, you're gonna have that problem. You're going to have your wife
crossing her arms, going to bed, and
maybe
probably won't give you a kiss good night.
Are you willing to be
man enough to be okay with that?
Or are you going to
push her so much to to confront her on whatever the problem is?
Now there's different things we gotta know about conflict because some of us, me included,
are often
conflict avoidant.
It means when the going gets tough, we clam up, and we just
don't do anything.
We avoid having those conflicts
because nice guys
do not like
emotions,
high emotions,
wild swings in emotions.
They they throw us off. And if you you when you are an unintentional nice guy,
you want to control
all the emotions.
You wanna make sure people are happy the right amount of happy,
not overly happy because that gets a little uncomfortable,
definitely not angry because that's a whole lot of emotion. That's a really big emotion that we really don't like as as
as nice guys.
And when our wife gets angry
at us, at the kids,
at the mother-in-law,
at the whoever's,
that wigs the nice guy out. And so this is why
you have to go through the process
of being okay
with conflict.
And it's not that it's hard. It's just you have to understand
why you are running away.
And that's why most people run away from conflicts is because we've never been shown
what healthy conflict resolution is about.
Most of us have either been in 1 or 2
aspects of
conflict resolution.
Either it's the abuse of everybody's in their reaction
reactionary
phase.
May husband's yelling at wife and wife's yelling at husband and they're just in each other's faces and getting really loud and bar and it's all about the emotions. And, oh my god. And you're just a little kid seeing this scared crap you know, scared the bejesus out of you. And you're thinking, yeah. I don't ever wanna have my see my parents fight. They're running around, slamming doors.
Mom's throwing ashtrays at the at the wall.
Dad's, you know, like, busting doors in and and all that, and no one's ever actually getting
physically hurt
so much as, you know, it's not dads even there's well, even
when there is actual physical abuse, a lot of people will then shy away from it because, no. I may lose control, and I don't wanna hurt my wife. These are thoughts that a lot of people have,
And that I that's understandable.
I see where you're coming from, but there is a good way to resolve conflict. And we'll talk about that here in a bit. But then you have the people on the other side,
the parents that never fought in front of the kids.
Did this doesn't do the kids any service either
because they learn from the parents.
Can you have
conflict resolution
and show the kids that, yeah, we're going to talk we're gonna have the hard discussions.
And, yes,
junior, I understand. It is really awkward when they when parents start talking about
big big emotional items.
And there's some emotions be it bubbling underneath the underneath as the parents talk. And sometimes there's a little bit of passion mixed in with it, and so you get really loud and you start kinda talking with a lot more force.
And mom may be telling you to stop yelling because
you don't yell at her or or what.
That again, also,
when you don't get those discussions,
when the parents don't talk about the don't argue in front of the kids, the kids don't see that.
The kids think that, oh, well, we're not supposed to fight
when you're married. And that's the biggest lie we tell kids all the time.
Oh, no. We don't fight in front of the kids. Well, start fighting in front of the kids. Start having the arguments.
Deal with the emotional upset that you have about arguing in front of the kids. Deal with the emotional upset that the kids have
after you have resolved. Let them see what happens after you have the argument.
When you have
the coming together,
you have that resolution.
That's
the important part because you go through,
you find that out. You have your you have your thoughts. Your wife has her thoughts, and y'all come together and you have a better thought.
But that better thought never happens
when you or her or both of you run away from the from the problem.
You can't run from the problem. You're not going the more you avoid the responsibility
of having a good discussion,
a good conflict,
the more problems you're going to have when it comes to
when it comes to things that are supposed to be sailing smoothly, and they and they aren't.
Now so how do you
resolve a conflict? How do you
what is it about a conflict that you're needing to,
that you need to have? You know, why why do we need the, the how do we go through the process of having
having a conflict and and being able to fix it and resolve it? Because
when I say fixing it, I don't mean, well, let's
let's placate.
Let's
manipulate.
These don't work. You actually have to throw out what are your
thoughts and put them out on the line, and let your wife take hers and throw them out on the line, and let your wife have her emotions.
Because that's one of the big things you're gonna have to want, know is warning. Warning.
Danger. Danger, Will Robinson.
It's your there's a big warning because there's a lot of emotions gonna be showing up when you have a conflict,
and you have to be able to understand. First off, keeping yourself present.
If you go into into
unintentional
land and you turn your thinking part of your brain off and you just run on autopilot,
you're gonna run away every time. Yet, if you
are present,
you will see
and understand. I'm getting angry.
You will see your wife. She's getting angry. You're not trying to manipulate this situation. You're just understanding the fact that she is displaying
the
indicators that she's getting angry. Is she getting angry? I don't know. You honestly don't know.
Those are her emotions. She gets to have her those emotions.
You get to have your emotions.
So
you get to y'all get to have the discussions
and you get to have each other's emotions. Alright? You get your emotions, she gets hers.
She's going to display hers. You're gonna display yours.
And how you react to what those emotions are displayed
determines on how close you're going to get to resolving the problem.
Because the biggest thing that happens and the biggest cause of why we have conflict
is because we stop listening to each other.
We
and all of our wonderful grand emotions that we have,
we we suck
tremendously
at having
good, proper,
full, dedicated
communication.
We'll hear stuff, and then we've
decided we we're gonna run down that line, that road.
And good example of that is
I have a podcast with a friend of mine, and it's called 2 grumpy vets and dude. If you ever wanna see it, it's
gives you a completely different side of who I am
because
we just
talk.
And sometimes there's discussions, sometimes there's
there's
assorted ideas that are bandied about.
But one of the big things you will notice in here is that
we can't maintain a single
line of thought for more than about 10 minutes.
And then we're we've scrolled off into another direction.
And that's just that's that's
human
conversation.
And
so you we have to learn how to
be present
when we're
doing our doing our thing,
when we're having those fights.
And one of the big things you wanna know when it comes to
to resolving is,
first and Jason Gaddis
talks about it probably the best is that, first, you have to understand you're gonna feel fear.
That's one of the biggest fear or biggest emotions that we're gonna
feel. And it's gonna be some offset,
offshoot,
of fear. It may be jealousy. It may be anxiety.
It may be because anxiety is nothing more than the fear of the unknown.
We don't know what's gonna happen next. It's just to fear the unknown.
Jealousy is fear that our our spouse is gonna leave us
or that we fear of a lack of of resources.
And so there's gonna be fear.
And sometimes that fear
feels very
disempowering.
And when that that fear is
when we feel disempowered,
we're gonna turn to a more powerful emotion.
And the one that men love to tap into when we feel disempowered, like with shame,
is anger.
And anger, if you act upon it, becomes
becomes aggression.
And that's where most a lot of guys most guys actually
have the ability
to maintain
and keep away
from aggression. We will get angry. We will get mad. We will yell. We will shout. We'll cuss. We'll do this.
But it's all based in fear.
So when you actually understand
that you're
blowing up,
you're caretaking,
which is not been which is not a good form
at all,
if you've ever heard me talk about that. Caretaking
is where you actually take a person's reason to care away
or you just completely stonewall. You shut down. You stop talking. You just yeah. Okay. Whatever. Uh-huh. And you do and you disengage from the
from the disagreement.
Now Jason says
recommends that what we need to do is we actually need to learn how to do conflict.
And
conflict's the hardest when it's with people that
work the closest to when so like our wife.
So you need to learn how to act he recommends that you learn how to fight with your intimate partner.
And
I'm I'm going ahead and kinda break this part down because I went ahead and pulled his, his art post up that he where he talks about how to resolve conflict in your relationships.
Jason said, I knew nothing about conflict until I met my wife. Thankfully, we learned together. At times, it was ugly and dark. I felt so incredibly uncomfortable at times. I wanted to just hit the eject button and run away. Ouch. But since my parents hid their conflict from us kids, I learned that healthy relationships
I learned that healthy relationships,
as a quote,
meant no fighting. That teaching,
is and that teaching is and was
bullshit.
Every single short term relationship I had prior to meeting my wife, I would say, yeah. Our relationship is great. We never fight. Thinking that my parents taught me well. Little did I know that I was keeping a relationship stuck on superficial grounds.
With the unwritten rule to not go there, deep down, I was terrified of ruffling feathers of any relationship that I wanted to withhold on, withhold
to the truth. And
I would just tell white lies, take care of things, do anything in my power to avoid the tension. The irony was that I was really feeling a lot of tension inside myself. Bottom line, I was afraid of conflict. My wife and I had some pretty intense fights, and I imagine there was gonna be the and I imagine there will be more. I have learned that a healthy fighting is good for a relationship. It's fertilizer. We burn through the conflict
and the relationship challenges within hours. And that is actually a really good analogy of that fertilizer
because what happens when you when there's a fire?
That fire burns 1. It burns away all this all the superficial,
unwanted,
unneeded
trash.
Alright? That's the scrub brushes, the the fallen dead, dying,
leaves and branches that have fallen.
And the more trash you let build up, the hotter that fire is going to burn.
Because naturally,
when you let fire just do its thing,
a fire will go through and it will it's a vacuum. It's nature's vacuum cleaner.
It's gonna pick up and get rid of all the trash. And what it what happens is it converts all that all that garbage
into fertilizer.
It turns into ash, and that ash is very
if you've ever looked at fertilizer, one of the things that it needs is potash,
and
that potash
is found
in the ash. And so your as you
as you get,
as that fire burns through, it'll it gets reincorporated
into the plants.
It allows for new growth.
Now burning
stuff away is not fun,
but it's how you
it's how you grow. You have to go again, you have to go through the discomfort
to get the the life you want.
The currency for your life is discomfort.
So you have to burn away the trash, the superficial
BS
that is sitting in front of you.
And so you have to burn that stuff away so that you can actually get to the tender
parts that really need to grow.
Proper taking care taking care of a field
requires that you have to come from time to time, burn the field down.
Sometimes you actually have to go off and you have to cut back on the tree.
Are you killing the tree? No. You're actually helping the tree grow more. You want a tree to really produce a lot of really good fruit? You know what you do? You take a hammer and you whop up on it, and you beat the tree up a little bit. You stress it a little bit.
You want good,
good tomatoes growing?
You take your broom and you beat up your tomato plant with a broom.
Sounds weird,
but it works.
You see, the stress
helps things grow a little bit better.
So you have to you have to be able to practice,
and you're going to have
to step into those you see those fights and you
step into it, and you lean into the fight. And there's things that you can do that helps your fight go
along a lot better.
One is using the 4 pillars of effective communication,
and the those 4 pillars are, 1, assume good intention. Your spouse did not wake up today thinking I am going to make sure that your,
my husband's goat is tied. I'm I wouldn't I didn't they didn't wake up saying, I'm gonna make their life a living hell today.
If they did, the relationship's long gone. But 99.9%
of the time, they aren't waking up thinking that they're going to go see what they can do to piss you off. Alright? So assume good intentions. Assume that they
weren't trying to get to get to you. What is it? Occam's razor is,
never assume or Hansen's razor?
Never assume,
malice where ignorance is a a logical excuse or something like that. So while you're talking, though, the second pillar comes into into
effect, and that is don't dismiss the other person's view.
They're telling you how they see the world. They're telling you how they
see it. Now is it right? Is it wrong? It doesn't matter.
They're just they're sharing what they view.
And the moment you go, well, no. That's not how it works at all. The moment you dispute what they're saying is the moment you're tearing apart
the lines of communication.
Because why should they go? You're not gonna believe anything they say. You're just gonna dis dismiss
and,
everything that they tell they're talking about, everything that matters to them. What they're talking about right now is something for whatever reason
that's important to them.
So they're going to fight for that. Remember, we fight for our limitations,
and we get to keep them every single time.
But you have to let them at least air out what
that limitation is. Air out what their concern is. Air out and voice what they, what their concern is.
And then from there,
you ask questions.
Stephen Covey said it best. Seek first to understand before being understood.
And through all of this,
you have to the 4th pillar is
stay out of the victim mindset.
Because we are so
so desperately want to go, you know what? I can't do anything right.
Never mind. I'm just going. You're you are then tearing off
the the
lines of communication
when you fall into the victimhood because victims, they don't get respect. Your wife is not gonna argue with somebody she doesn't respect.
Remember
that when you're getting when you're sitting there in the middle of of scarcity.
Well, I wish my wife would respect me. She's arguing with you because she respects you. The problem is is that you have to be able to respect her back. And you may you may very well respect her, but y'all are not seeing eye to eye right now. And that's okay.
You don't have to see eye to eye with each other.
You'll have to just come to understand each other just a little bit better.
Now some other points that you wanna know is like creating and when it comes to creating common ground,
when it comes to that argument, is that first off, you gotta recognize that your spouse is a human. Alright? They're going to have their emotions. Humans are going to human. Alright?
And that means those emotions are gonna bubble up. They're gonna have their thoughts, and their thoughts are gonna create their their their emotions. Their emotions are gonna create the react their actions, and the actions are gonna create the results. This happens every time.
But to know that their emotions are just their emotions, they're not
they're they're not
anything that you need to take personal.
Even when she says, oh, yeah. Well and this, and says something that she you know, she's intentionally saying to just to get you to respond.
You don't have to take that personally.
They're just
words, 1.
2, she's hurt, and she's just trying to strike out to you also. So she wants to try to hurt you.
It doesn't have anything to do with you.
Everything she does is all about her.
Everything you do is about you unless you're being very intentional in your actions.
So you have to use those 4 pillars of effective communications,
and then
ask more questions. Identify what her problem is. Identify
what the need is. What is she trying to tell you? All those times your wife is nagging you about you working too hard
is not at that she doesn't want you to work any harder.
She's just trying to say in her own way, I'm lonely.
Can you love on me? Could you give me a hug? Could you give me a kiss? Could you pay attention to me for 15 minutes?
Can you do that? Can you
get out of your own way long enough to try to hear and come to understand
what it is that your wife is telling you. When you can understand that, she's going to be willing to understand you.
And when y'all both understand each other,
that's when
the reconnection,
the fixing,
the the resolution,
and the repair
for relationships comes into play.
And that's where you get to
create the trust that is needed
to be able to have
even better
intimacy
in all the other fields.
You get that better emotional intimacy because you took the time to share your emotions
with your wife, and she'd shared her emotions with you, and you accepted her for being the beautiful human being that she is.
You got to experience
your beautiful
baby doll
as the human being who has the messy emotions.
It's what makes humans so beautiful is that
we are,
we are in emotional mess.
And damn it, we're glad for it because
how boring would life be if we didn't have our emotions
to not be happy, to not be sad,
to not be scared to try something new. Because on the other side of that scared is the feeling of,
exaltation,
the feeling of success,
the feeling of triumph,
but you can't get to those high, those high, vaulty
emotions
unless you go through the scare.
What if it fails?
What if I land on my butt? What if it hurts?
Then you get up. You rub your ass a little bit, and then you try it again. Conflict is scary.
I get it. We
even thinking of the word conflict
and working on conflict resolution,
that word conflict
generates such a revulsion, such a distancing. You're like, woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. I'm no. I don't wanna work that. That's not,
I don't wanna do why do we wanna fight?
Because
of how
much more intimacy you get
when you
go through that conflict.
When you go through that argument,
life becomes so much better.
If you want help
with
your relationship, if you want help with being able
to find
the
the joy of your relationship again. If you wanna be able to have the the means to
to reach out, be the leadership that your family needs,
to have the ability to be there and be present for your wife when she has her meltdowns
and be able to have the
the relationship you dreamed of.
Reach out to me. Go to relaxmail.comforward/lovebirds,
and
let me know what it is you want to be you want to to work on with your relationship. We'll sit down, we'll look at it, we'll talk it through, and we'll see,
and we'll strategize.
How can you have a better relationship with your wife?
How can we take what she said
and
and look at it in a way to where you can love her even more?
These are things that we're able to do. These are things that we can take the
the relationship
that seems like it's about on the verge of failing,
and you can turn it around.
All of a sudden, your that woman who has caused so much consternation
and aggravation in your life
is all of a sudden that beautiful woman again.
You we can get you there. We can take you there.
All you have to do is take the first step. That first step is
relax mail dot com
forward slash lovebirds.
And I would love to help you out. Love to be able to show you
what a better
relationship
is like.
Also, if you, found anything in the show that resonated with you, you found it,
powerful and you would like to share it out, please
share it out with your your friends, your family, your those who have just recently had an argument and worried that their wife's never gonna talk to them again. Why is that? You could share this with them. You do that as a as text email or text email as a text message
or shoot it as an email. Or you can combine them both, and it'll be a text email. Who knows?
Share it on the on the Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and and all the other places that you have
men that you believe would benefit from hearing
this message.
And with that, just let them know. It's like, hey. There's a there's a
a a site out there that is working to change men's lives, change their lives so that they have better relationships.
And so guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. Y'all take care and we will see y'all
next week. Till then.
Bye.