How To Have Better Arguments With Your Partner - The Freemans - #285

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, beautiful people, welcome back. My guests today are Aaron and Jocelyn Freeman, and we're talking about how to have better arguments with your partner. If you are in a relationship, I'm going to guess that the last year may have been slightly challenging from an argument perspective. And certainly success in relationships seems to be as much to do with dealing with disagreements as actually finding common ground. So learning to argue well might actually be an important skill that we all need to develop. Today, expect to learn what an argument hangover is, how you can make a disagreement with your partner better before it's even begun, how you can turn conflict into a good thing, why emotional triggers are a danger and much more. In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Manscaped. That's right, precision engineered tools for your family jewels. Manscaped presents the best in men's below the waist grooming Over 2 million men trust Manscaped with grooming the most sensitive part of their body. You cannot use an old face shaver now. It is 2021 Come on, lads, like, let's get a grip of ourselves now. Can't use the face shaver you got for Christmas five years ago to trim your ball sack. It's just, it's not acceptable. It is no longer acceptable. Manscaped has designed their Lawnmower 3 to be the greatest ball and body hair trimmer ever created. It's got a little light on it. So if you're doing it in the dark, perhaps if you're deciding to have a trim in the dark or just if you are a particularly crevice man, if you're very crevicey, you can see what you're doing. It's waterproof. So it means that you can shave in the shower. It's got a 90 minute battery so that you can go for a longer and more precise trim. Perhaps if you are partnered with someone who is a particularly hairy gentleman, this could be a good way to hint at them that they need to take some control or just treat yourself, you know. Head to manscaped.com and use the code of Modern Wisdom for 20% off and free shipping on everything site wide. That's manscaped.com and the code of Modern Wisdom for 20% off and free shipping. Go and get yourself a Lawnmower 3 today. But for now, it's time to learn how to argue better with the Freemans. We're talking about how to have better arguments today. What is the argument hangover?

**Aaron Freeman** (2:45)
Love that, actually. You know, when we say that to anybody, they kind of get the sense. People have had arguments, yes, they've had hangovers too, whether food or alcohol. So the argument hangover specifically would be that period of time between having a disagreement, we talk about a romantic partner, but honestly, this could be with a friend, a family member, and then there's the things that you say and do, and then it's the period of time that you feel disconnected, you feel frustrated, you may feel guilty for the things that you said and what you did that has that relationship feel either stalled or just really disconnected. And that can last for a day, two days, weeks, months. It can actually lead to relationships ending. And that argument hangover finally ends when you get it resolved fully, emotionally, which some people don't.

**Chris Williamson** (3:40)
That's relationship sobriety then.

**Jocelyn Freeman** (3:44)
In a way, right. Well, it's in a way, like, I mean, I know you'll ask some great questions about this, but what my pattern used to be was if things weren't going well in a relationship and conflicts were coming up, sure, we would try and I would do all the yelling and the name calling and I let my emotions have it be a free for all. But then when it just got hard, I'd leave. And sometimes, I think really, I think across the world that there's a big conversation about relationships should be mostly good and we don't see a lot of portrayals, especially in media, of what does healthy conflict look like and how to stay in a relationship even when things get challenging. So people, unfortunately, like you said, will just leave the relationship.

**Aaron Freeman** (4:24)
Or how to leverage that conflict into an opportunity to grow and strengthen that understanding and that relationship.

**Chris Williamson** (4:32)
One of the things I was talking about toward the end of last year is unremarkable depression. So a lot of the time when we see people hit rock bottom, it's a big deal. And there's almost bizarrely a bit of glory attached to it. Perhaps that's the archetypes that we see in media. When someone has a full blown breakdown, perhaps they get sectioned. Perhaps they need to go on to some antipsychotics. But they know from that bottom position, there is nowhere else to go. You have to get better. That is where you go.