welcome everyone to the get real good love show I'm your host Arlene Washburn I'm a

science-based dating and relationship coach and a Matchmaker and today we are covering the topic of how to navigate

romantic relationships and this is of course one part one of a series of things because there's only so

much we can cover in each segment and of course I want to start out with the

obvious conflict right sounds like two comes up and relationships and all relationships have conflict and it's actually healthy to

have conflict in a relationship is how you solve the conflict how you go about it and how you

deal with and interact with the person that you love so I want to start with numbers of

course because you know me I like the data like the science so here's the data

on t' 69% sorry I'm shutting off my phone 69 percent of the conflict between

a couple or in a relationship is never solvable in other words and of course this is

going to vary from person to person right because each person is going to come with their set of

issues and you're going to have to accept that some things are never going to be

solved and not only is it see 90% of the conflict unsolvable it's also repetitive and you'll argue about the

same thing over and over again and so a lot of times when we choose a partner we have to

recognize that of course none of us are perfect we all have our traits that are not ideal if you're

messy or you know all the different things that you can think of a person and you

need to decide when you get together with someone if you are okay and willing

to tolerate the issues that that person has and so that is number one right

because you may not be able to solve them ever so that's said I do want to talk a little

bit about conflict technical problems how to solve conflict or at least how to deal with conflict and War the

couples that do best and I think this is really important to know if you're a single

person and you're listening to this it's never too soon to learn about how to navigate

relationships because as I said in my post people spend a lot of money hiring matchmakers and they spend a

lot of time and effort using apps and paying for dates and getting dressed up and doing all

the stuff that is required when you're out there dating to meet someone and a

lot of these rom-coms that we watch they talk about how to get the guy

how to get the girl but they never really go into how to navigate the

relationship once you achieve actually connecting with someone and people go on to self-sabotage because they have a

mindset and an idea of what relationships are all about that is not accurate so I

wanted to start with this particular topic about conflicts first because I want you to know that

is absolutely normal for there to be conflict in a relationship and so I always love to

quote dr. gottman who's one of my heroes when it comes to the relationship space because he is

amazing and can predict within 94% or something like that which couples are going to end divorce

and in the prediction comes about when they first get together they are able to watch these

people interact and have a conversation and they've picked up enough information from those conversations to

be able to determine if though that cup of that particular couples going to end in divorce and his

accuracy is within 90 something percent him and the people in his lab and so he talks about the Four

Horsemen of the Apocalypse and what these are these are the traits of couples that are likely to

end in divorce or if you're dating you're likely to break up especially when you come out of limerence if

you're dating and it's been you know it could vary anywhere between six months to three years where you're in

this little emotional cocktail of hormones and then when you come out of that you now see the person

for who they really are and and this stuff starts to happened so I want to go over

what these Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are number one is criticism and this is an area

that I have to constantly work on because I have a very critical nature and I recognize this

about myself but when you are critical in a relationship it is really really detrimental to how

the relationship flourishes whether or not its large is and it really causes major issues in the relationship

because a critical a person when you when you critical what you do is you walk

into a room and you're looking for things that are wrong and so the antidote to

that is to train yourself and I need to remind myself I'll be the first to admit I'm

super critical but to look for things that are happening that are right look for

things that are good look for catch people doing the right things and bring it to their attention acknowledge

it for yourself acknowledge it for and so that's number one criticism number two is defensiveness and of course

if somebody's being criticized then they're going to feel defensive and so what they do

is they instead of acknowledging whatever it is as being said to them you know if they if

they're doing something that's not ideal and somebody expresses you know their dislike for whatever is happening that person

will come back and say well you do XYZ and I can tell you right

off the bat I know a lot of people follow me on social media they

see a lot of my posts I have a wonderful relationship but this kind of dynamic sometimes happens in my

relationship or I'll criticize and then my husband will say well but you do XYZ right so

that's called being defensive and that's called not taking responsibility for your you know whatever you're responsible in that moment

or whatever it is that's happening and so that's not ideal because once you start to

be defensive as I said you're going to then bring up other things that the

other person from the past Etc and this is not going to deal escalate right because

conflict the most one of the most important things about conflict is that you want to deescalate the conflict

you want to communicate and understand one another and that can come out of conflicts but not make the

situation worse the other very important thing that comes out of defensiveness you know you're being criticized

people getting defensive content right so content is when you feel like you're better than

someone and therefore you're going to put them down and you're going to put them down as a human

being if you complain about something that they did you not saying something about the ACT your

instead putting the person down and calling them your this or you always add the absolutes are the worst

right using absolutes is not ideal either so contempt is number three and then the

last one is stonewalling and stonewalling is when you withdraw emotionally and what's sad about that

is when you're in a relationship and you start to withdraw you abandon the relationship

you abandon the person emotionally it's very painful it's very hurtful for whoever's on the receiving end

of that and therefore it's you know it's just a very very difficult thing to overcome so you so those

are the four horses of the Apocalypse all right in a relationship criticism defensiveness content which is

equivalent to disrespect and stonewalling so what you want to do instead when you have conflict is to

be able to count and lean on the friendship that you have with this individual and with your partner and

in order for you to have friendship it's really important to be connected acting on a regular basis

so dr. Terry Terry or Bach who is also one of my mentors talks a lot about how you

should get together with your spouse or your significant other everyday just talk for about 10 minutes

or so about whatever it is that's happening in their lives you know ask open-ended questions ask them how

they feel about whatever how do you feel about work are you happy with your career

you know what do you think of of where we live you know should we

move should we do something different like open-ended questions really not yes or no questions so

I'll take that last one back but getting people's to share their desires their goals their dreams and talking

in really deeply getting-to-know-you partner that starts to build my boyfriend he's this and he's batting he's and yet talk

forever know your has been people see those you never know how you really feel and

you admire and what are the things that you respect about them all of those

come into play so instead of having this stuff in your mind it's so important

to share this with your significant other especially we're not going to go into the five

love languages but if someone in your life they're lovely which is words of affirmation they particularly neat that even

more right because then you start to add to their love tank you know you start to

feel their love tank by giving them the thing that they desire so it's really important to let people know

how you really feel and you know what you admire and all those things so that they

know and instead of just telling others and that also builds intimacy and friendship and

the last thing I want to say is dr. gottman talks about making big Ed's small they could be small

they could be you know big things or small things an example would be that when you're with your

significant other and you say something to them and they don't even acknowledge you that's very hurtful when you're

having a conversation with your significant other could be about anything it could be anything insignificant the fact that you're

trying to interact with them and that they don't even look your way they don't even respond they

don't acknowledge they don't make any kind of movement facially or verbally or anything that

is very painful it may seem very insignificant but that kind of takes away from the friendship and the

what he likes to call the love map or you know the the Friendship basically

that these little things chip away at your relationship so it's so important that when you're around your

significant other and they're talking to you or they're trying to hold your hand are they

any kind of bid for affection or intimacy that you acknowledge and that you buy into it

right because if you want to have a loving and wonderful relationship that is part of

what it takes so he talks about two things one is positive sentiment override and the other one is

negative sentiment over right now this is really important because if you don't have the friendship and

all the the things that I mentioned before in a relationship what you create is a negative

sentiment override which means that anything could get a negative reaction for your from your significant other in other

words you can walk into a room and say one simple thing and you may not be

raising your voice you may not even be critical but the person has a negative

sentiment override towards you because of the nature of your relationship a ship and they will overreact and say

don't you know like don't tell me what to do or how to do it or whatever right so by

creating all these positive you know actions and filling their love bucket if you will

you then create a positive sentiment override so that the when when you are having a bad day and you

say something kind of abrupt if your significant other has that positive outlook do they'll dismiss it they'll laugh

they'll make a joke of it they won't get offended they won't get defensive so this is why the Dynamics

of a relationship or so important because little things can escalate to something like tremendous

right and cause a divorce even or an argument that becomes physical or abusive because of

everything that's been going on little by little it starts to build up right and it's really important when

you have conflict and things don't go in the positive positive direction and there's a lot of stuff that I'm

going to share with you over the next few weeks this series about how to navigate

relationships and we are going to cover more about conflict and things that you can do

however what people use that are you know very effective tools for dealing with conflict is

humor but it's got to be time to properly write you don't want to be making jokes

when someone's trying to be serious about something but there are ways to use humor the most important

thing and one of the best things you can do is to apologize quickly if there's

something that you know bother someone and you're doing it whether you agree with them

or not apologizing and acknowledging and validating is huge and it doesn't take anything away from you and the other

thing that I would say is just to when you have conflict and when you're having a conversation

that is not going in the right direction one of the things that causes that is

because you walk into an argument or a conversation wanting to be right and I often talk about

this if you have a relationship with someone that you love that you chose to have

in your life then this need for being right she's sort of go out the window right

because if your app Partners if you are a partnership when you're in Partnership you're not looking

to blame to be right to be wrong you're looking to get to agreement you're looking for collaboration your

look you're looking for cooperation and that means that you're looking for that coming from them and it

has to come from you and so the best thing that I can offer in terms of conflict is going

to conversations without a desire to be right but a desire to get to agreement and as I said

before you know and everything else that I've covered you know from the work that I've learned through dr. gottman

tried to deescalate you know D escalation is such an important thing and this is completely an analogy and

somewhat off topic but when you situations with you know law enforcement and people getting

killed and stuff like that a lot of it happens because there's no effort to to both of

you agree upon whatever up you know obscure word that you used to say to me that it's time

to take a timeout and while once people are activated is very difficult to communicate and

then the last thing I would say is if you can't if not about the someone wrong if you

say there's some what is wrong with you then they're going to shut down and they're going to

get activated and then I'm going to be able to listen to you so that's just a little bit

of what I believe based on what I know and also the stuff that I'm

bringing to you from dr. gottman I'm going to bring some other experts doctor or buck

etcetera these are people who have been doing research for a very long time and so

I'm sharing some of of their data and their expertise with you and curating that because I think it's

just such an important thing to know how to navigate relationships and what will happen and

that you can navigate conflict in a way that helps to deescalate to get to agreement and to

have Harmony so that is what I want to share with you today and will continue this conversation next

week Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time I'm going to continue to talk about how to navigate relationships

and I'll probably be bringing some more content about conflict because there is a lot that goes

into it that you can learn so that you can have a better more fulfilling

life and more harmonious life with your significant other and as always I want to share with

you that tonight the love Insight show we're talking about advice that the guru's are sharing

that may be detrimental to you so I hope you'll tune in tonight on The

Love Inside show on Fireside so that you can hear some great information about how to choose a

dating coach which dating coach is you shouldn't be listening to and what are they saying out there that

really is not ideal for someone who's single who's trying to figure things out and

the last thing they need is to hear bad information that's not going to help get

them to relationship goals so I hope you'll join me tonight at 6 p.m. Eastern

Standard Time There's the link love inside show Fireside and until next week I will see you remember

what I always say everyone deserves to love and be loved let's see you next week cheers