Let’s suppose it is Friday and evening is coming on. You have a good idea what you will find when you get home and you are dreading getting there. You know the fight will be outrageous. It will boil over and last the whole evening. The feelings are already welling up as you get into the car. You drive home playing the same tape in your head over and over. You are feeling some frustration, not understood, and deep-seated annoyance. These are emotions and expectations you are familiar with as this argument has been going on and on. By the time you reach home you are nearly sick with the hurt and frustration you are feeling. You walk in the door and things are just as you expected. You feel this heat rise up in a wave that goes up and over your entire body making you hot under the collar as the saying goes. After the wave crashes over you. You get started; the other person is right there to meet you. They are ready to party!

Have you ever had a fight like the one I described above? Maybe you only used some of the weapons here, not all. Pretty sure most of you can relate on some level to this story. When did the fight start? You might say when I entered the house, or maybe not till the yelling and name calling. But let’s look more closely. The fight started long before you walked into the house. In fact, in this case, it started before you got into the car. It started with the expectation that you put together as you contemplated going home. If you doubt me on this, I would love to have you send me a message on the Facebook page on an example of a fight that didn't start as an expectation. They should have known or they should have done it differently. I have had expectations come hours before or right at the moment. But the unmet expectation is when the fight begins. The fight is about getting your expectations met. In this story, on the ride home as you played out the experience over and over again it was part of the fight that you had with yourself. In the argument you have in your head do they ever get solved? Other people are usually more pigheaded in my brain than they are in person.

These are some of the worst things that anyone can do during a fight. We talked about the weapons that can be used in a fight. But weapons mean things will get bloody and someone will get hurt. It should be noted here that abuse in any manner physical, emotional, mental, is never okay for one person to do to another. It is possible to hash things out without weapons. Doing this can create love and acceptance. The #1 thing to leave out of a fight is name calling. That is a hurt that you cannot take away. I would place name calling under abuse. Name calling does include obscenities but obscenities are not the only way to call someone a name. #2 is the silent treatment or cold shoulder. This is where you slammed the door shut. This leaves the conflict unresolved and leaves the other person alone and hurt. This is very damaging to the relationship and the person. Next #3 bringing up past mistakes or unrelated issues to distract and deflect. Bringing up irrelevant past mistakes is counterproductive and puts them on the defensive. #4 Your focus is on being “right” or “winning” instead of focusing on understanding what is going on and what feelings are happening. #5 Many of the things we say in an argument do not even come out of our mouth.

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