Fighting Fair

by Jillian E.

July 22, 2022

What's goooooooooood, beautiful people?! It's been a while, but I wanted to hop on and share some tips that I know to be beneficial when communicating in a verbal disagreement AKA a "fight." So to be clear, "fighting fair" in this post is not referring to a physical altercation. I personally believe these tips are truly gems based on my own personal experiences. They help in getting to the root of the issue, as opposed to perpetuating unproductive disagreements that lead to no resolution, frustration, and feelings of being unheard by the parties involved. Let's jump into it and learn how to "fight" fair.

call people by their preferred name

In short, do not call people out of their names. No name calling. Derogatory terms are not acceptable, whether we believe they are accurate descriptions of the person or not. For example, if a person is lying, calling them a "liar" in the midst of a disagreement will likely heat things up. Of course, this applies to curse words too. Terms such as "jerk, a$$hole, b***h, idiot, stupid, motherf****r, etc." should be off limits. And real talk, none of those names are on anyone's birth certificate. Just sayin'. Call them by the names the names you call them when things are just fine and dandy.

speak at a normal decibel level

Guess what?! We can get our message across without raising our voices. Say it ain't so??? That's right, I said what I said. There's no need to raise our voices. If we do it, the other person may respond the same way in order to be heard over our loud-behind selves. On the opposite end, raising our voices may trigger the other person to shut down altogether. If we're yelling in the presence of others, especially children, they may become startled and frightened. Heck, someone might even call the police on us for causing a public disturbance. The bottom line is that raising our voices in a disagreement is not necessary and is likely to make things worse.

state how you feel

One thing I've learned that has been super impactful in my verbal disagreements with others, (especially with my significant other (SO)), has been to state how I feel rather than telling the other person how they feel. Stating how we feel allows us to get to a place of vulnerability, helping pinpoint what is truly going on with US on the inside and why certain things bother US. Just as important, stating how we feel allows the other person to have their own voice. Communicating this way may also encourage them to communicate in the same way, getting in tune with things from their point of view, and not telling us how we feel. Our feelings are ours and frankly, another person shouldn't be telling us how we feel. Stating something like, "When you don't call back within a reasonable amount of time, I feel as though I'm not a priority," is more helpful than stating something like, "You obviously just don't care because you take forever to call me back." It's important to think about how it makes us feel when someone tells us how we feel. Doesn't feel good, does it?

"oftentimes" is better than "always" and "never"

My point is to have flexibility in word choice rather than using absolutes. Words such as "always" and "never" tend to keep us confined to a permanently sealed box. Telling someone that they never make time for us or that they always put us last, can make a disagreement worse than what it could be. I find it much more productive to state something such as, "Oftentimes, it comes across as though I'm not a priority to you." Absolutes can be trigger words and are likely incite a defensive attitude in us humans. Give people room to grow out of the box of absolutes.

use peaceful language

This may be difficult to achieve mid-disagreement; however, I've done it and with practice, so can you! What I really mean by this is that we should do our best to avoid using aggressive language, including curse words. As we already know, it's easy to mirror another's person's behavior when in a disagreement, so cursing at the other person will likely provoke them to curse back at you. It can be viewed as disrespectful, so it's just best not to do. We can learn to catch ourselves when the curse words are ready to slip out. Practice, practice, practice.

That's it. The end. I do want to make clear everything I share is subject to scrutiny and I write based on my own experiences and thoughts. You do what works for you. Take what resonates and leave the rest. That said, drop a comment and let me know your thoughts on my tips and how you fight fair. Thanks for reading!