Esther Perel explains why couples fight | SVT/TV 2/Skavlan

I shall I shall not try to translate ah but you've heard it all I suppose it it seems so loving is it good or bad for a relationship to have a fight from time to time oh it's a must but it's but even if it's everyday the question is not so much the fighting the question is really the repair I think relationships follow a cycle of harmony disharmony and repair sometimes they it seems that the people they bring up the same old things when a friend it's the same old topics yeah when people fight about the same stuff what they're fighting about is not the towel or the bathroom ordered who takes care of what or who takes the children every day or who is always late what they're fighting about are actually three key groups of themes that are underneath those plot lines which is power and control closeness and care and respect and recognition so do we tend to fight early in the relationship or late in the relationship when you when do we tend to fight months look some people come with a history where they learned we learn to fight we learn to argue we learn to defend ourselves we learn certain ways for asking for what we want or we learn certain way never to ask for what we want but to criticize the other for doing it when you can't do it yourself and we come with those schooling's of our relationships that usually we learned in our own homes by watching our parents with each other and with us some people are maximizers they explode some people are minimizer's they implode they keep it in they wait they wait they wait and then they explode you know like and over something that has nothing to do with the thing they're actually annoyed about but this is the right moment yeah it's not always about words it's it's an energy the more one person goes up the more the very person that goes up is actually made the other person go numb and the more the person door shuts down the more it actually activates this one to go i RN i each person is actually contributing to the extreme version that the other person become what about bickering because you have couples that are sort of bakery and just all the time is that the same would you say the city coming I would say bickering is chronic low intensity warfare in which I am picking and I'm critical all the time and instead of saying I would like a cup of water I say why did you take a cup for yourself and I am not telling you what I wish because behind every criticism is a wish and I'm just going at it and going at it and making yourself you feel down low contemptuous I also when I talk about the cup I remind you of the shoes and of the friend you didn't call back and of what your mother told me 17 years ago and I do what is called kitchen sinking meaning I pile up all the dirty dishes in the sink at the same time so that at the end we have no idea what we're actually fighting about it began with the cup of water and it ended up with the day that you broke up with me when we were going on our first date you know I see and when you start to clean it's it's like a big job yes yes you can't clean the dishes when you've got all the dishes in the sink at the same time so you do kitchen sinking you do chronic picking the bickering you also have two wonderful things one is called confirmation bias which is that now that I've decided that you really are a slob and you don't care about whatever I ask you I look for it I look for it it's like a radar that is looking to confirm the bias that I have if I believe you don't care if I believe I just doesn't matter III scan it and I disregard evidence that proves the opposite the one time that and if you say but I did it yes except that's just yesterday that's one time that doesn't count because look Tata Tata Tata and you know the whole scoreboard arrives and the next thing I do is what we call fundamental attribution error which is that if I am late is because there was traffic yeah if you are late is because you are a total disorganized slob so it's about my whole character yes - circumstance yours is characterological I see cuz I had a bad day if you're in a bad mood is because you're a cranky human being they recognize this so so Eric who are you in a fight what would what would your wife say she will say I'm stubborn and wrong and wrong I'm wrong yeah she's right and wrong yeah but you don't give up at least I mean very much taken by what we hear here I mean of course the bigger the love the more important the quarrel I mean a person who just passing in this state cannot harm you in any real way a colleague which is distant can maybe harm a little bit but not much very close colleague or a close friend can harm a lot and your partner cause this is a person can harm me the most so they're great to the low the more important she knows the buttons she knows every single weakness I've ever displayed in my life I don't fight so much but after this I'm gonna go home and fight can I go now I heard something in your podcast you mentioned that that it's important to - actually you don't have to give people to agree with them but you have to give them the sort of acknowledge that they have they have the right to have that opinion or they have that you have to respect their opinion in a way so it's kind of the question of can people fight better right is there a way that that you can minimize some of the escalation basically a bad fight is a negative escalation how do you turn and a negative escalation follows a very classic pattern attack blame defend how do you turn that around so that people can actually hear each other because behind anger there is often hurt behind criticism there is something you want to there's an unmet longing and we shall need etc and one of the first thing is this thing about not being right is can you imagine that there is this person that is so close to you that actually has a completely different experience of what just happened and that's very challenging we in a relationship because if I feel this way you must have done this otherwise why am i feeling it it cannot be that I feel so neglected and that you that you think you were being really warned for example right and so the next thing that is of course the most difficult thing to do is to talk about what you feel versus talk about what the other person did or did not do you know it's a way of saying I can hear you and still disagree with you versus if I hear you then it means that I agree with you and when you are in conflict situations we have the ability to listen to 10 seconds and 10 seconds is three sentences before in our head with stopped listening and we are preparing the rebuttal so it's very short how much people can actually stay in a conversation when the when the tension is mounting and what you want is to turn it around so that people don't feel attacked they can pay attention they can you know turn it into a little bit of you know from from conflict or to our empathy if you want and then validate it and still say you know I don't think I've done this but I can see that that's how you would experience it that's how you would see that's how you feel that kind of thing and that that fundamental shift into a from a negative escalation to a reflective listening from reacting to reflecting is really where you turn the whole thing around do you have a difference between the sexes here do you have a do the women and men fight differently look there's a lot of studies that have checked on the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system in men in situations of stress and if we are in an intense intense conversation and fight it is often so that the men will look up that a man will move their bodies that they will try to regulate themselves to lower their physiological reaction by trying to create some space from the heat whereas women can stay in there much longer without necessarily diss regulating to the same extent besides that I actually think that what I just described I can see between two men between two women between a man and a woman I see it in families I think it is more a temperament and we are born with the temperament be what was reinforced in our growing up see what the culture tells us you know it is definitely a man who's angry is a man who's in charge a woman who's angry is hysterical let's be very clear that the cultural valence on on on assertiveness or aggression is not the same for men and women all over the world so there is layers of different things but I don't think these things are intrinsic to gender what is a good way to end the fight there's different things you know what I don't think at this moment I'm doing justice to this conversation I'm gonna go cool off and we'll come back one [Music] that's a ground that's you know as in you know what I get so angry in those situations let me go and just chill for a second because otherwise I'm gonna regret what I'm gonna say and I don't want to do that and then you need to not follow me around the house you need to let me go and trust that I will come back the person who leaves has the right to go but they have to be the one to come back to you know what apology is really important when I did this yesterday I was out of line I was angry I wanted to shoot I wanted to hurt I felt attacked and I really regret this and I'm really sorry that goes a long way to three letter writing I've done a lot of letter writing with people because when you're alone and when you sit with yourself and you write to someone and when I receive it and I read it you hear two people completely differently so sometimes it's go and just say when I thought yesterday it brought back something for me that has nothing to do with you actually it brought back the time when I felt that I was always being kicked by my brother and that I had no place in this house and you just made me feel small like that and I got in touch with that and when that beast hits me I am ready to kill and I just wanted you to know that that's you know variations of letter writing with accountability what is accountability it's your ability to take responsibility for what you did without being mired by shame responsibility is a relational conscience so is guilt shame is I feel so bad that I want to go hide and I don't want to talk about it and so the next day we pretend like nothing happened but it's it's there you know I just don't want you to remind me you know how bad I feel about myself not about what I did to you and that's the thing in a fight is that people often feel terrible about themselves afterwards they don't like it they don't like what comes out of them they don't like how they behave they don't like the face that they can have even if it's a quiet face you know a seedings face three days three days I walk around like this you know and let's you know and and and and make you plead with me and but all kinds of dances like that and when you can just say you know I don't like this about me so why is that so crucial because what is the fundamental definition of self-esteem it's your ability to see yourself as a flawed person and still hold yourself in high regard as their I know that that you your your choice of profession has to do with your parents is inspired by your parents life tell me about that hmm I mean I think you know some my parents were both concentration camp survivors of the German Nazi camps they both are the sole survivors of their entire family they both were about five years in the war and then another five years illegal refugees in Belgium so that's that's where they met no they met on the lib on the road the day of liberation as they came out of their own respective camps that were close by and I think you know from very young I would ask questions why don't I have grandparents where is everybody why do we have such a small family how come you have an accent and then as you grow and they tell you the story then you see what made you want to stay alive what makes somebody want to stay alive five years as you live face to face with death you know what did you do when other people gave up what is the difference between not being dead and being alive which is really the foundational question that I work on with couples it's not just to be surviving but what does it mean take to be thriving and so I think a certain interest in the human condition in the in the limits of what we can tolerate in what it means to fall in love in the concentration camp for my dad like how could you still in the midst of this humanize yourself and experience feelings that normally you're not meant to feel when you treated like animals and from there you know why do I have the nightmares what does it mean to have this kind of legacy and and I just became really fascinated by what gives us meaning did I fight my parents my father adored my mother and felt like she had the founder the the woman that he would never have married if there wasn't the war because they would never have met and my mother definitely was a much more explosive reactive person and he had a way of just kind of taking disappearing and then she would you know definitely amplify and he would minimize and she would rise more and then he had a way of just going and giving her a kiss and saying is this worth it is this worth it after all what we've gone through is this worth it and just I had an amazing way to pacify her or to shut her up whichever way you're going to look at him but it was effective it's like you know he he just kind of would say keep it in perspective after all this we're gonna fight over that now what does that do to a child it makes every problem feel rather insignificant you feel like you can't really what wonderful final word thank you so much as deeply hope you enjoyed the clip for more interesting conversations please hit subscribe

Channel: Skavlan

Views: 541,968

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Keywords: Skavlan, interview, talk show, Fredrik skavlan, talkshow, esther, perel, fredrik, relationship, relationships, psychology, therapy, therapist, fights, fight, fighting, quarrel, boyfriend, girlfriend, advice, Esther Perel explains why couples fight

Id: 5CnxqgVZJm4

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 05 2018