Are You Fighting Or Are Your Values Fighting? | LQ057

Crystal Clark: 00:00:00

Welcome to our love space today. Hope you guys are all diving in to the month of June. For those of you who have kids or work with kids, I am sure the vibe for a lot of us in a household with children is that we're all just crawling to the end of June. So if you're not in that vibe and just trying to get to the end of the school year, then Lucky you. If you are in that vibe, maybe things are feeling a little bit more prickly in your house. Maybe there's a few more miscommunications, and sometimes with our miscommunications that can keep coming up repetitively, or bigger arguments that can come up. And sometimes these bigger arguments can actually cause couples to maybe stop really communicating for a few days, which is definitely not my relationship style, and I don't really encourage couples to stop communicating for a few days, but I know that this does come up for people, and one of the reasons that this comes up is you really have to ask yourself, if you're arguing or fighting against each other, slash, are your values fighting each other, or are you actually just having a miscommunication? So if it's that your values are fighting each other, you're going to have a really difficult time coming to an understanding. You're going to have a really difficult time trying to find your way through to a solution, and you're really going to have a difficult time feeling heard or understood through this process. And what often happens when we are fighting and arguing over values and rather than the actual topic at hand, right? The values become the thing under the thing is that we feel misunderstood. We feel unheard. And so then what happens is we maybe we just agree to disagree, but not for the sake, as we always talk on here about agreeing to disagree for the moment, to allow ourselves to cool down so we can come back and actually communicate more clearly and open and honestly with each other. But if you're agreeing to disagree and then just walking away from that issue, from that values debate, it is going to come up again. And every time it comes up, this is one of these things that can put another brick in our little wall where one day we won't be able to see over it and see each other anymore, and that means we won't be able to communicate about it, because we'll just be it's like we're yelling over wall, and who knows who's listening on the other side, or who's not, or what can be heard on the other side of that wall. So, and this is because that our core values, our values, are really something that is innate with us, right? And they often we actually have a physical connection to our core values, and this kind of comes up because a lot of times it's our intuition or our feelings. Some researchers actually even think it's our our feelings in certain situations, and the way we have picked solutions for the situation, or the way conversations have gone or and what values have won out in those conversations and in those situations, that those are actually the feelings that we have out of those, that those shape our core values. So, you know, if we were in a situation where, you know our body, our body felt very empowered or very positive or whatnot around the idea of integrity or justice or security or adventure or humor, right? If that gave us positive feelings in a difficult situation then, and it that happens enough time in our young lives, throughout our life experiences, that what's going to happen is that's going to develop into one of our core values, and that's what's going to become important to us. So we often learn about our core values through these situations, right through feeling what our reactions brought to our body. And then that means that when these issues come up, or when things question our core values, or when we have an instance where we need to rely on our values to guide our decisions or our reactions. That it really has, does have that inside visceral feeling, just like how we're talking about with the rejection, sensitive dysphoria a few episodes ago, that that gives people a real, an actual physical, like a punch in the gut, or an inner, physical feeling when they feel like they're being rejected, or even like they think they're being rejected. And this is the same thing when people come when things come up that question or values or that we're like, wow, I you know, this is a time to have integrity and the other person's not having integrity, or this is a time to use humor and the other person's not using humor, or humor is not being used, and it can feel like a visceral inside physical reaction. We also see this tie to our physical reaction and just to our general understanding of how important values are, is that we often see. Higher reports of happiness, calmness, lower levels of stress when people are living in accordance to their values. So that is like the hot word that we use nowadays if you're living in alignment, right? Because if you know these are your values, and you're making all your choices based on those values, and your values give you positive emotional experiences and help you feel satisfied in these emotional situations, then that's when you're going to feel that everything is alignment, right? Your body feels comfortable with the decisions that your heart and your mind is making, and they're all coming together into that piece of alignment. And that's because our values really, it's almost like cyclical. Our values guide it's almost like it's cyclical because our values guide us in our life experiences. And then we often feel that these, you know, either we often feel reinforced by the values that we've chosen, these life experiences, that's where our positive emotions come from, and then, because they're so entwined us using our values and experiencing our everyday situations through our values is that really becomes part of our identity. Our values do so again, when you are in a fight, or you're in a miscommunication, or you're in a disagreement where you have two sets of values, or a value versus a value fighting each other, you're almost questioning each other's personal identity. You're almost questioning each other's physical peace, right, physical calmness when we're not finding alignment between these values. So a values miscommunication or agreement might look something like, maybe we have an extra an extra surprise injection of money. I'll use this example, because a lot of couples fight over money, so we might have a surprise injection of extra money from wherever. Okay, and one person might think, ah, amazing. We should put this towards our RSPs. We should put this towards an investment. We should put this in the savings for our rainy day fund. Okay, the other person in the relationship is like, oh, extra money. We should we've been thinking of doing this big vacation, and this is actually almost just enough money that we would need for that vacation. So Wow, lucky as we get to go, we should use this money to go on this adventure together. Now you neither of these people are wrong. Now you may have a certain opinion right now, as you're listening to this, you may be like, Oh, well, that person, one person's being responsible, one person's being irresponsible, or one person's being super boring and one person's being fun. Now those are your opinions, but I can let you know in this little example, the values that I was thinking of, or the values that I've seen this played out with couples, is the person who wants to put the money towards,

Crystal Clark: 00:07:55

towards the rainy day fund, towards, you know, more recipes, whatever that person is valuing at that moment, their highest value may be security. So even though that this is extra bonus money, they may see this as being extra bonus security. And wow, don't we feel even more secure that we can put this in a place that's going to help us feel secure, feel like we have abundance and extra and that it's in our little hidey hole. And isn't this great that we have something to go back to whenever we need it on an actual rainy day? Okay, that's what that's important to that person. Now, when I say it like that, some people might be like, Oh, that's boring, or that's whatever that's, you know, extra money. It should always be fun money, or like, you know, or you should agree upon whatever it's agreed upon that person is valuing security, future security and current security more than anything else in that moment. And so that's why they want to put the money towards that the person who wants to put the money towards a vacation, again, it's not that they are, you know, spenders, and they're being irresponsible and they're immature because they want to spend on fun. No, maybe what they do value is experiences. Some people are very experiential with life. They want to fit in as many possible experiences as they can in life, and probably in it, they may be doing it, you know, some, lots of times when we think of people like this, we think of them being immature, or a little bit, you know, over adventurous, or that they're not thinking through all the consequences, but they may be thinking like, hey, we have just a short time on this planet, and so yeah, I'm not going to spend all my money. I'm not going to go into debt. But when there are opportunities that come along, like bonus extra money, that we should take advantage of these opportunities and we should put them towards experiences, adventure, fun, living life as that person would find is valuable. Now, again, when we look at it from that viewpoint, is that that person's not being inherently right or wrong, neither person's inherently right or wrong, and we can both see that valuing adventure or life experiences. Because when we only have one life to live, is an important It seems like a fair value. And also we can see that valuing security and having a rainy day fund and things like that also pretty valuable, right? But if these two, if these two values, are fighting each other, you can see that these two values will never agree, not that the people will never agree, but these two values may not be able to come into alignment on this one topic, similar to if you have a person who is what we would call self directed as a value or independence as a value, and they are with a person who is having a moment, or both of them are having an extra moment of this that the person their partner is a person who values tradition and maybe family, ritual and things like that. And in a couple like this, a stopping up point can often be about whether we're going to get married or not, or about whether we're going to have a traditional wedding or not, because the person who is self, directed or independent, they may be valuing the idea of we can make our own plan. We don't have to get married. We can get married if we want marriage for us, might be just you and me on the beach and we say nice things to each other, and we just put rings on each other's fingers. And we have now decided that we are married and we don't need a piece of paper. We don't need any other body besides our own independent selves to declare this a thing, okay, that person may also be like I need to be independent from any family traditions that I that I had to be a part of when I was younger. That may be the thing that is important or valuable to them and drives their decision making. The person who values tradition may feel a sense of connection to you, know again, this physical sense of connection to their family, to society, to other human beings by following traditions, by partaking in traditions and rituals. And as we know from last episode, traditions and rituals are beneficial to us, and that doesn't mean that the it the person who values self, direction and independence in this situation is wrong, but we can see that someone who values tradition and ritual and things like that is also not wrong, right, that both of these perspectives, in this case, about whether we're going to have a big, traditional wedding and do all of What the family says, versus whether we're going to be independent and do what just our own selves say or or move away from what regular tradition is and be independent of that and make our new own traditions. You know, both are right, but we can see that both are going to run into a fight because one wants to be independent and one wants to follow the rules, the traditions, the guidelines, and again, those are going to have a hard time falling into alignment, because often they're a little bit oppositional values. So how do we get past this? How do we get past when we have oppositional values, or some oppositional values with our love of life. So again, the first thing that we want to do is we really want to know not just know ourselves, and we can get to know ourselves in a relationship. So don't be a silly billy and be like, Okay, well, I can't be in a relationship because I don't know what my core values are. Wrong. You could totally be in a relationship. Because remember, you do not exist in a vacuum, right? You're not going to go off be like, I've perfected myself and now I come back. Because as soon as you're in a relationship with another person, you're the there are things about you that are going to change, adapt and react differently. So you really have to be curious about finding out the thing under the thing, when you are having miscommunications or arguments, that is really the first step. So you really have to think about being curious, finding the thing under the thing, if you know what each other's values are, okay. So again, we can do values work together. You guys can do values work with each other. So how do we get past this? How do we get past having some oppositional values that are fighting against each other? Because, again, you can see how, if someone's valuing security and someone is valuing adventure, how this is not just going to come up once when we get an injection of extra bonus money, that this is going to come up often. So first, you really need to be curious about each other's values and about knowing your values, your core values as a couple. So I have a few episodes on this, on figuring out what your core values are. I can also help you out with that. There are also lots of core values cards, and, you know, instructions on how to sort them and go through them. But it is important that you know, even if you're kind of going through them and you're like, I don't know what resonates, if you at least go through the values cards and you start to think of them as, what are they? What are our values as a couple? I. You start to think of what your own values are as individuals, and you share those with each other, even if you're like, I don't really know if these are the right ones for me. Just getting it out there, putting it into the world right, sharing it with your love of life, that is just a step in trying to find out more about yourself. Because you may think like, Hey, I think adventure, just because we've been using that, I think being adventurous is really important. And then you may actually, as you're moving through life in the next three months, six months, nine months a year, you might be like, Do you know what I've actually I thought that I was a really adventurous person, or I thought that was something that drove me in life. But now that we're out in life, and now that I've been thinking about it, I actually don't make that many adventurous choices. Or actually, when I see other people make adventurous choices, I also, you know, don't really think it fits. That's a really good clue. When you're like, Ow, I don't know why that person would do that. I don't know why that person spend all their money on their their bonus money on a vacation. That's a good clue to say that maybe that's not important to you, right? Even though sometimes, if someone goes, Hey, if I gave you a bunch of money, what would you do? Would you put it away? Or would you go on a vacation? Lots of times we're like, oh, yeah, we go on a vacation, but we actually get that little that money in your hot little hands. That's not all the decisions that we actually might make in real life, right? So really being curious about what your values are. The other part that you need to be curious about is about finding out the thing under the thing, when miscommunications happen, and not just being like, Oh, we sorted out this one thing. We decided that, you know, three quarters of the money is going to go towards a smaller vacation, and a quarter is going to go in our security fund. Great, great compromise, great way to move through life. But do we actually know why we made that decision, or are we going to have to have, like, a two or three day argument about adventure versus security, you know, in two months from now or six months from now, right? I mean, we don't want this to keep coming up, because, again, every time it comes up and we make a compromise where we don't know the reason why we're making the compromise, we haven't found out the thing under the thing to be like, Ah, we're arguing about our values again. Okay, let's take a step back, you know. Let's do some active listening. Let's figure this out. Let's have this understanding about each other. If you're not able to do that part, this is going to keep coming up, and it's going to keep making a brick in the wall, because you're going to keep being like this person is so ridiculous. And I don't know why we keep why they keep like, asking for all this adventurous stuff, or why they don't understand that we need this stuff to be safe and secure, right? That that's just going to keep coming up. And the more you say, I don't know why this person would think that right. I don't know why this person wouldn't want safety and security

Crystal Clark: 00:17:48

that almost starts to become into rather than us having some admiration for our partners and knowing that our partners can live life successfully and that we can live life successfully together, we really start to question the way they live life, and we start to lose our admiration for them. And when we start to lose our admiration for them, then that's when more resentment and questioning. And when I say questioning, I don't mean like, obviously you should be able to question your partner and you should be able to explore things together, but I mean more like questioning, like everything they do is wrong. It starts to put you on that path when you don't understand the thing under the thing that is happening. Okay? So we're going to be curious about our values and our values as a couple. We're going to be curious about discovering the thing under the thing when we have miscommunications, and not just looking at how to solve this one tiny problem in the moment, but like, why did this come up? Right? And sometimes the thing just under the thing is too much stress, right? Sometimes that's it. And if that's it, then we're going to think about our stress. We're going to solve this tiny problem. Then we're going to think about our stress. But anywho, the thing under the thing always super important. The next thing we're going to do is we really need to do some perspective taking. We really need to do some empathizing, because as we know and as I've said a million times, no value is inherently bad. So that means we need to be curious and open minded about the values that our love of life has and that they think is important. And we have to be able to view things from their perspective. And some, for some people, viewing things from other people's perspectives comes very naturally and very easy, and that's fantastic, and Lucky them. And for some people, it's very, very difficult, and that's kind of sucky, but it's a skill that we can all develop. Even if you're kind of good at it, you can still develop it. Okay, and if you're sucky at it, you can still develop it. It is a skill, just like any other skill. So Right? Because if you can be if you can say to each other, if you could be like, Oh, I see you feel it's really important that our action. And he goes into something about making us feel secure, and I think it should go into something that's all about adventure. Oh, okay, well, how are we going to work this out? If you're actually able to label it like that, you are going to feel more comfortable if you're able to say like, Oh, I see. I understand that not having a big wedding is important to you, or not having or like it's not that getting married is necessarily important to but it's important to you because you value traditions, and you value participating in these kind of societal or cultural or religious traditions, and that that's innate to your sense of identity, and it's not innate to my sense of identity. Ha, how can we come together to see eye to eye on this right that's going to open up so many doors if you're able to accept and honor why you each have those values and know that neither you're like, that both of your values are neither inherently good or bad, you're going to be able to be so much more flexible and understanding and accepting with each other, right, because then you can both see that you both have valid ideas, right? And that it's not about winning and losing, it's not about who is more right or wrong. Because sometimes, when we're arguing about values that almost really has a sense of justice, right? It's Oh, it's so innate like that that, you know, someone should agree that being adventurous is super important to everyone's life, because that's right, right, that's correct, and it's just, and it's and everyone should have that. So if you can both see that your ideas are valid, then you're actually able to make the room to discuss them more openly and vulnerably, and you're also able to make the room to collaborate and to collaborate and think about how to move forward. Otherwise, if just one person's values are correct or right or just or have integrity and the other person does not. That means that there's only one idea that should win, that not even there should be even a compromise, right? There's no space for a solution, as someone's values are invaluable, right? If someone's ideas based on their values are you know, not are wrong, are inherently wrong, then you can't come to a compromise, because someone will always be bitter or upset or resentful about that compromise, because they feel that their value wasn't valued. That's going to make them feel unheard, that's going to create a space for adversarialness and for a need for wanting to win and wanting to avoid losing in this argument, because if you lose, you're not just I'm not getting my way, but you're actually being invalidated. Your thing that drives your part of your core being and part of your identity is actually being seen as wrong, unimportant, not needed in the relationship, and that's why people can get so stuck on these arguments that it takes multiple days for them to either blow over, like we're just not going to talk and we're going to let blow over and then we're going to decide everything's okay. That's why it can take multiple days and not just an hour or two or an evening. One of the things I do with couples when we are working on things like this, is I actually have them once we've discovered the thing on the thing and we've decided, oh my gosh, this is actually two values arguing with each other, and not necessarily us, right? Because think about when values come up in real life. Values come up in real life when we talk about politics, right? Politics are values based, and that's what they run their campaigns on religion. Religion is value based, and that's what they run their arguments for, why you should live their way of life versus not. Right? What else does it come in? I mean, those are kind of the two big ones, right? We all right. That's when debate. It comes up in debates, right? If you're on a debate team lots of times you're debating, you know, values with each other, right? Underlining values on points. So you can see that it comes up in these very, you know, religion and politics. We often don't talk about those things with friends or with people we've just met, because they can be very adversarial. They can really put people on two opposing sides that can never meet. So what I have couples do is I have couples take their point of view, or right now that we've discovered what value is what, and they have to take their love of life value and kind of write a point form, almost argument about why actually that idea, or that value, or whatever is actually right in This situation, or is worthwhile in this situation, because then you have to reach deep down and really be like, Ah, well, I don't think invention is important at all. Okay, well, what arguments could be made for it? Or why do I think they think it's important? Or where do I think this came out of for them? Right? Maybe they had a parent that passed away, uh, young. And. Uh, like the parent was young, or younger than they thought was, you know, a reasonable age to pass away. And they were like, wow, you know, my mom or dad passed away, and they didn't get to get to retirement. They didn't get to get to that dream vacation that they always wanted to. And so I've now promised myself that it's important to get to life experiences before life is dead, right? Or maybe like the other person, you could be like, Oh, well, I can see that they grew up in a household that did not feel very secure. And so now making sure that we live in a household that our love space is a secure space for everyone is very, very important, because they don't want anyone in the love space to feel it that security is not there or present for them, right? So when we can do a perspective taking exercise and actually write it down in black and white, you know me, I love to write things out in black and white, because it makes it more real. That really brings a sense of clarity and a sense of open mindedness and a sense of understanding to both people in that situation, and it makes compromises and finding common ground much, much easier if you can actually see the other person, if you can actually really clearly see the other person's perspective. Like, if you could clearly be like, Oh yeah, no, I totally can see why they see they would think this because of blah, blah, blah, and that's understandable. That's acceptable. I honor that. That is a totally reasonable path of thought in this situation, then you are able to make compromises, then you are able to find common ground, right? And if you aren't familiar with each other's values, then you will really constantly find yourself getting stuck in these values wars. It will be hard to get out of them. Like I said, it'll be hard to make compromises,

Crystal Clark: 00:26:43

but we can get by this by being curious with each other as always, right, by knowing our own values and our couple's values, by being able to take perspective or having a willingness to practice and try to take each other's perspective by coming together, to collaborate, to find common ground and to find understanding and acceptance with each other. If we are able to do these things, if you are able to do these things, this really it opens up the possibility to feeling heard in your love space. It opens up the possibility to being able to find common ground in your love space. It opens up the possibility to finding that way forward, right? It opened up the possibility to being able to experience each other's values, and maybe through these experiences and these situations with each other's values and all of your wonderful perspective taking you may start to find you're both starting to embody an inherent inherit, a new core value from each other, and that will create two new shared core values between you amazing, because these are really the fundamental pieces. This is really such a fundamental piece, being able to share these values, that's going to be really foundational and fundamental to keeping you sparked.