A misunderstanding can happen so easily. One partner says something the other believes it was a slight and gets offended and then there is a disagreement.
But what really happened was someone saying something that the other person didn’t quite understand and the receiver made it into something that it wasn’t.
Does this sound like something that happens in your relationship? Well, it happened in mine.
Often in relationships couples will fight with each other. Both want the other person to hear them, but the arguments usually continue without one person giving in, so there is no resolution. And that’s exactly what both people want.
Often when in a disagreement partners will tell the other person mean things. They might call them names or discuss the way they act, all to point out that they have something that they need to share.
Many of us bring our old childhood habits into our relationships. They appear whenever our feelings get hurt and if we haven’t worked though these old patterns, we will use them on our partners. Like blaming them when we get hurt.
I grew up getting mad at the people who hurt me. I know this is not a good way to let people know they hurt you, but I was not trained to do any better. My single mother was overwhelmed trying to manage three rambunctious children and she often just got frustrated and yelled at us.
This is what I saw, so this is what I learned. When things didn’t go my way, I yelled. Of course, when I grew up, I didn’t yell that much, but when I really got my feelings hurt, I did. It took a while to figure out that I was bringing a lot of the chaos into my life by just getting angry.
Often when we lash out at our mate it is usually because we have been triggered by something they have said or done. This is common because most people hold on to our difficult feelings and they reside somewhere in the body.
Someone we love says something to us and we explode. This is common too. If you are in a relationship and your loved one just reacts when you say something, it’s probably because you touched something that resides in his or her body and this feeling has been out of reach until you triggered it.
That’s why psychologists call these out of the blue reactions triggers. They probably make sense to the person who is reacting if they have spent time wondering why they act the way they do.