Hello GAG reader! We all have fights now and then with those who are closest to us. We fight with family, friends and spouses! Sometimes we even fight with ourselves. Here are a few tips to help you with the art of fighting, so you won't get angry and heated...or butt-hurt!
1. Do not start defending yourself
if you start to defend yourself, you're no longer listening to their point of view. You are only caring about your point of view and you start acting really butt-hurt, and like a victim.
Here's a scenario: you just told your sister there is a movie theater with reclining chairs, and your friends told you they serve alcohol too. You have never been there before and you want to go with her. When you get there, there are reclining chairs but no alcohol as the request to get the license to serve has not been approved. Your sister is really angry and claims you lied to her. You start to defend yourself. That's a no go! You stopped trying to understand her, and help her with her pain when you are only looking at yours.
2. Listen and get all the facts
The author who wrote the "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" series stated in his book that you must first seek to understand, then be understood. You have to want to listen, therefore you have to ask questions to understand them! Try to understand why they are feeling the way they are!
In the previous scenario with the sister you could have asked "you really wanted to drink that alcohol huh? You wished we had alcohol to celebrate our birthday right? You must be really angry there was no alcohol huh?"
Remember to ask questions to listen to understand and not listen to get more ammo to hurt the other person.
3. Always treat the other person the way you want to be treated!
If you don't like people calling you names, putting you down, not forgiving you and always blaming you for everything then don't do it to them.
If they are doing it to you, just remember that that is probably how they see others treating them and that's why they are lashing out. Hurt people usually repeat the hurt that has been done to them.
Remember to keep the fight as calm as possible. The fight it to get rid of whatever fear that is there, or whatever problem that is there.
5. Learn to state your feelings without putting the other person down
You have to learn to say "I feel sad because..." and in the scenario above you can say "I feel sad because you think I was lying, when I told you that I have never been here and only heard rumors from friends about the alcohol."
The sister can also learn to figure out how to state her feelings too! She could say "I felt excited that there was going to be alcohol but now I feel angry that there isn't any". This statement does not put blame on anyone, it is just an expression of how she feels.
6. Learn to put yourself in the other person's shoes
In the same scenario you could state to your sister "I know how much you wanted to drink alcohol, I wish they had a huge bottle here to serve you too. I bet it would have made you really happy"
In the same scenario the sister could have said "Please don't feel bad, because I know you didn't mean to tell me something that wasn't true. It's because you haven't been here before, and you just heard it from your friends".
7. Pick Your Battles
If it really was a small mistake and/or accident, just DROP it! Sometimes it is much better to just forget it and move on than bring it up. If I forget to put the hose back, my husband has learned to just not bring it up when he is mowing the grass. He just goes and puts it away. I have learned to just not yell at my husband for not putting a garbage bag in because of the fact that he at least took the garbage out. No one else does that in my family. Plus it takes me 2 seconds to put the new bag in and 1 hour of arguing. So pick your battles wisely. If my kid wanted to dye their hair blue, I won't fight them. If they wanted to cut themselves and starve themselves... I would fight them.
8. Sometimes during fights, if it gets too heated...YOU HAVE TO LEAVE!
If you must leave because there is emotional, verbal, or psychological abuse, and especially physical abuse... then just leave! Protect yourself! Come back later if you can when both parties are calm.
You can also give the an ultimatum. Such as "if you are going to be calling me names and putting me down, and making me feel bad for something that I already apologized for and I didn't even do on purpose, then I can't be hanging out with you. Let me know when you are calmed down and ready to be treating me with respect."
Okay, that's all, if you have other tips on how to argue better please leave it in the comments below.
What Girls & Guys Said
Opinion
2Opinion
I read full but honestly speaking it really hard to adopt in real life sometimes we lose patience sometimes we not ready to listen others yeah but point 6 is awesome really nice sandals n feet. 😊
Seems like you forgot no. 3
hahaha I did! lol, #3 is to make sure you are calm too. If you are not calm, take a day to think about it before bringing it up later.
can you update the myTake?
can I? I've never done that before
at least you can update questions on here
If I can, I don't know how.
It would be cool if people had the chance to edit a myTake