A Man's Guide To Leading Through Conflict
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All right, team, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Conor Beaton here. Today we're gonna be talking about how to lead through conflict in your relationship. ♪

Now, this is specifically a guide for men. And if you are interested, I also have a free guide for you that is in the description below called How to Lead in a Relationship, Man's Guide to Leading in a Relationship. So check that out. You can click on that. It's a free resource for you. And tons of guys have found that to be very valuable. So let's dive in. The first thing that I want to say

I've said this time and time again. I'll say it in case you are new because I know that 74% of you are not subscribed. So maybe get on that whether you're on Spotify or YouTube. But I'll say this again and again. Choose a woman that you are willing to do conflict with. Choose a partner, whether you're listening to this as a man or a woman. Choose a person that you are wanting or willing to do conflict with.

I dated too many women that I didn't trust. And when conflict happened, I just kind of checked out because I was like, "I don't trust you. I don't trust that you're interested. You have my best interest, the relationship's best interest in mind." I also dated women that I didn't respect. And so when conflict happened, I would just disengage or I wouldn't act in a way that was how I wanted to be aligned with my own values or ethics.

And then I also dated women that I didn't want to stand up to because I didn't want to hurt them and I didn't want to cause them any pain. And all of these caused all kinds of issues. And so ideally, you know, leading yourself in a relationship and being able to lead in conflict in any capacity, which I'm going to share four or five steps here that you can take with you that I have seen to work really, really well for every single man, but I

But ideally, you are with somebody that you're willing to do conflict with, that you trust, who you respect. And it's not about them showing up always in the way that you exactly want. You know, it's like when we get into conflict with our partner, with our person, you know, when you get in conflict with your girlfriend or your wife, sometimes they're not going to act the way that you want them to. Sometimes they're not going to be

be super grounded. They might yell sometimes. They might get loud. They might be a little harsh. They might shut down. They might be anxious and love bomb you or pull away or fawn or try and placate and just sort of appease you. But it's not about them sort of behaving or acting in the way that we think they should all the time. That is going to lead to a whole bunch of challenges in a

Do I, for the most part, respect and trust who this person is in our relationship and life? But do I trust and respect who this woman is in conflict with me most of the time, right? And that is her being able to sort of see her part sometimes, her being able to own how she may have contributed to some of the dysfunction, not constantly just like

you know, passing the buck on to you and blaming you fully and vice versa, right? That you are also somebody that someone else would like to go through conflict with. You're not a wild raging a-hole. You're not yelling. You're not calling names or threatening, you know, constantly threatening to leave the relationship or weaponizing, you know, love and intimacy, those types of things. So all of that said,

the first thing that we need to know is choose a woman that you're willing to do conflict with and be a man that a woman would be willing to go through conflict with because the reality is that

Genuinely, some of you guys are men that women would just never trust to go through conflict with. You collapse, you don't stand up for yourself, you become extremely aggressive and hostile, you shut down entirely and don't talk to them for days, and that's on you. So yes, choose a woman that you want to do conflict with, but also be a man that a woman would want to do conflict with. And that's what we're going to talk about right now. So number one, leading in conflict in your relationship. How do you get through some of these things?

The first thing is your nervous system sets the tone. So because of a lot of dynamics in relationships, and specifically between men and women in heterosexual relationships,

your nervous system as the man is going to play a big role when conflict happens. Normally, okay, not always, but as a sort of general rule, normally because you are the bigger person and capable of more aggression, capable of more, let's call it physical harm. And so your nervous system is going to carry a little more weight

in terms of the tone when conflict is happening. So when an argument unfolds, depending on where you're at, if you're grounded, you might be able to create some containment. If your girlfriend or your wife is starting to get like a little, you know, a little aggressive or she's kind of like attacking you or she's starting to raise her voice and maybe get louder and louder,

Because of your ability to ground and leverage your nervous system, you can create some containment and set the tone. If you are collapsing, shutting down, you're scared, you're retreating, you're yes-mamming, you're just placating and trying to fawn and please your girlfriend or your wife, that's going to really impact and influence how the conflict unfolds.

So if you're meek and avoiding confrontation at all costs, that's going to collapse things. And for women specifically, that is going to feel very unsafe. For a lot of women, when they're dating a man who collapses when conflict happens, they do not feel safe any longer because it's a way of checking out of the relationship. So you're

your nervous system is going to set the tone for the conflict. So you need to know when you're moving into either

an extreme form of upregulation where you're moving into a space where your sympathetic nervous system is so activated and the fancy term is in like a dorsal vagal mode and you're kind of starting to shut down or rage out, you need to know when you're moving into those territories. When are you moving into the territory of losing your temper and

getting loud and maybe saying something that you regret? And when are you moving into a territory of getting a case of the efforts and just shutting down entirely or not feeling safe at all and shutting down entirely? So you kind of have to start to know what happens inside of me. What does it feel like inside of me when I move into those two places?

Can I pause the conversation? Can I work with my own breath and my body to stay in the conversation, to stay in, whether it's a disagreement or you're trying to hash something out that maybe there's some conflict around in the relationship. So your nervous system is very, very important. It's not to negate hers. It's not to say that she doesn't have her own responsibility.

in dealing with her emotions, in calming herself down when she gets too worked up, in being able to speak up if she's a chronic shutdown person. She has her own work, but for you, it's really tuning into, can I move into a grounded, centered place

without suppressing my emotions, letting myself still feel what I'm feeling, and without moving into this hyper-rage place or complete shutdown. The second thing about leading in conflict specifically is you need to have some rules of engagement.

Okay. And I'm going to give you a couple of the rules that I have found to be very, very helpful. The rules of engagement are how are you and the other person, your girlfriend, your wife, your partner, how are you and your partner going to go through conflict? What are the ideal things that you want to do? And what are the things that you're just not going to tolerate, right? Obviously things like

abuse should not be tolerated. Calling each other names should not be tolerated. Moving into a place of contempt and vitriol should not be tolerated. All of those things should be a cause for a pause. They should be a cause for you to say, "Hey, you know what? We've moved into this place. We're now getting out into this territory that's not productive. It's not healthy. I think we need to pause." The one thing that I wanted to add in, and this is a big one for the rules of engagement when it comes to conflict,

is having the rule for both of you that arguments are not about victory. Arguments or conflict or disagreements are not about victory. What can happen in a lot of intimate relationships is a kind of power battle, especially in modern day relationships. I see this a lot.

where there are just massive power battles in relationships. And so this is when two people are more interested in victory, in winning the argument, in winning the conflict, in getting their way than any type of reconciliation, resolution, compromise, willingness to hear the other person's

perspective and really understand it and be able to validate it. It is just like a zero sum game of I need to win and it's me versus you. So a big rule for engagement around conflict should be we are going to try and avoid

just being right, just being victorious all the time. So these are the boundaries that you want to try and maintain. This is how the two of you are going to ideally engage, right? You're going to try and be calm as much as possible. You know, you're going to be respectful of one another. You can assume positive intent. That's a really good rule for relational conflict is assume positive intent.

Because some of you will have grown up in environments where you had a parent that was hypercritical, always thought the worst, moved into worst case scenario, never believed you. It can feel sometimes challenging to have positive intent for the other person. So assume positive intent that the other person isn't out to get you. They're not trying to screw you over, et cetera. And if you really do feel that way about the person that you're with,

That's a red flag. It's not like it might be a red flag. That's a red flag. If you fundamentally and really truly believe that the other person does not have your best interest in mind and that they're sort of just in it for themselves, that's a red flag. So we'll put that out there. So that's number two, rules of engagement. Have rules of engagement.

Number three, stop trying to fix her emotions. This is one of the fastest ways that I think the majority of men go astray when it comes to conflict. They take responsibility, right? So you take responsibility. Oh, she feels angry. I did something wrong. She's disappointed. I need to fix that. She's sad. I need to fix that even if it has nothing to do with me. And this can perpetuate the conflict because

Because it starts to treat her like a little bit of a child, like she doesn't know how to deal with her own emotions. But it also puts you in this, sometimes a position of superiority where it's like, well, I'm the savior here. I'm here to save you from how you're feeling and save you from these problems.

And that can show up when you are in an argument and a disagreement with the other person that a lot of men will shift into as soon as their partner is upset, angry, sad. They're feeling something that's hard for you to see them feeling. You can find yourself just trying to resolve it or get out of the situation just because it's like, well, I don't want her to feel that way anymore. And so let me just solve this by disconnecting her job.

is to deal with her own emotions, right? Treat the woman that you're with like an adult and treat her with respect, treat her with trust. Sometimes that can be challenging because you might have a history with somebody where they've inadvertently wanted you to save them from how they feel. That sometimes how she feels is too much or she's got a lot of sadness or a lot of anger.

And she almost wants you to save her from those things. Now, you can set boundaries around emotions. You can say, hey, listen, like this is escalating to a place that isn't helpful. Again, these are the rules of engagement. This is escalated to a place you're yelling at me and calling me names. We're not engaging with this right now. So we're going to pause. And when you're ready to come back to the table in a grounded, calm way, then I'm happy to engage with that. Or if you're ready to apologize for saying those things,

then I'm happy to engage with that. I want to resolve this with you. But really notice that what a woman is, and I know I'm talking about a man and woman relationship here, a heterosexual relationship, but you can contextualize this for whatever dynamic you're in. But just notice that the majority of the time, what a woman's looking for, especially in conflict, and this is where most of men, we go astray,

Most women are looking for a deep kind of emotional understanding of what's happening inside of them, how they're feeling about a certain situation. And it's not always about some logistical thing that needs to unfold. They're actually wanting to be understood. They're wanting for you to be able to understand how they're feeling about a situation.

And for most men, a woman's emotions almost always become the mission and we get distracted. So she starts to feel sad or upset about something. And it's like, I need to fix these emotions. I need to solve these emotions. And so what logistically needs to happen in the relationship? What is she saying? She's saying she wants more time. Okay. She's saying that she wants to go out for a date once a week. Okay. Let me move into trying to plan that out.

so that her emotions can be taken care of. And this is another way of trying to fix how she feels.

So we have to move away from trying to fix how she feels to deeply connecting to and getting how she feels, right? That's the mission. The mission for you as a man is to be able to say, tell me how you really feel about this. What was that like when we had that disagreement? Or what is it like for you that...

You know, we haven't been going on dates because we've been so busy. What, you know, that's the content. The logistical part can come after. Yes, there needs to be sometimes changes in the relationship, but what most men miss is the emotional content. And if you can get the emotional content,

then the majority of the time the relationship moves into a very smooth, easy place. If you don't have the relational content, oftentimes we move into changing the logistics, changing certain structural things in the relationship, like, okay, she wants to spend more time together. I got to do X, Y, and Z. That can still be helpful,

But oftentimes what a woman is communicating is, I want you to get how I feel about these things not happening. So that's number three. Number four, I just have two more. They're very brief. Number four is don't fall into the trap. What is the trap? You know how when your partner pokes you, provokes you, you've probably heard this called shit tests before. Don't fall for it.

For example, when my wife gets stressed out, sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes she'll be critical about these little small things. And she'll start getting upset and critical about really seemingly innocuous things or

Or she'll go into like hyper task mode, you know, and just start like going down our to-do list. Like if we don't get it done, everyone on the planet's going to die. And this used to piss me off so much. This used to irritate the living crap out of me and it would create conflicts. I was like, what are you doing? What is happening?

But it's in those moments I realized that I could step out of the pattern because what she's needing is some type of connection, recognition that she's feeling stressed, an opportunity to express that she's feeling stressed. Yes, again, sometimes things need to be done. Sometimes there are some things that need to be taken care of. But more often than not, it was, she has this great saying, she's a couples therapist, she has a great saying that behind every complaint or criticism is an unmet emotional need.

And I think that what happens for a lot of us men is that we hear the women that we're with complaining or criticizing about something and we take it at face value and we miss the unmet emotional need that's behind it. Yes, sometimes it's about the dishes that have been in the sink for two days, but more often than not, it's some unmet emotional need that we're completely blind to. Connection, love, intimacy, understanding, understanding how she's feeling, etc.,

So whatever, and this is very, very helpful, whatever her quote unquote shit tests are, whatever the poking and provoking is, start to really get a sense of when she does those things, how you normally respond, and what it would look like for you to step out of the pattern. Because most guys get hooked in and it creates a big conflict over seemingly nothing. And you probably have seen this in your relationship where there's like

you know, you get into an argument or some type of conflict and you're like, how did this even start? This is so ridiculous and it seems so small. Like, how did this even begin? That is a good sign that some trap between the two of you, whether you started it or she started it, there's some trap that happened that caused this cycle. And so start to pay attention to

What are the things that you're doing that poke and provoke when you're actually wanting love and connection? And what are the things that she's doing that poke and provoke when she's actually wanting love and connection? And then talk about these things with your partner. Have a conversation of like, what have you noticed that I do to start arguments or create disconnection? Those are the two pieces.

What do you do and what does she do that either starts arguments and conflict or creates disconnection? Talking about those things and being able to resolve them in the moment can be super, super helpful. And having recognition of like, oh, I'm doing that thing now or oh, you're doing that thing right now. I'm going to step out of that cycle and just give love and connection and care. The last thing is lead the repair. Lead the repair. When conflict does happen,

When an argument happens and whether or not it gets resolved, because research has shown that there are many arguments that do not get resolved in a relationship. And in fact, there are some arguments in most people's long-term relationships that actually just never get resolved. And we have this notion that like everything should have a solution. Everything should be like neatly ironed out in the relationship. And

And there's some things that genuinely just take couples years to kind of chew on and move through and come to a resolution of. But when those conflicts do happen, being able to lead in the repair. Now, that does not mean that you take all the responsibility for everything that's happened. It also doesn't mean that you sit your partner down and say, you know, you need to take ownership over, you know, everything that you did and what you said and da, da, da, da.

It simply means that you initiate the conversation for repair to happen. And you can encourage your partner, you know, if they've had a blowout and blow up at you and clearly something happened that triggered them and they just sort of, you know, got angry and came at you, you can still initiate the repair by saying, hey, you know, when you want to talk about whatever it is that happened yesterday, I'm here.

Or, you know, hey, I'd like to repair from the conflict last night, from the conversation last night. Are you open to that? If it was an argument or a disagreement that happened with the two of you. Or if you know that you were just playing in the wrong, where you just, you lost your temper or you started an argument, you started a conflict, you can just be super straightforward. I would like to apologize for what happened last night. Are you open to that right now?

Giving people the choice, this is where a lot of us go wrong when it comes to reconciliation, is we just sort of flippantly put it out there like, hey, I'm sorry for what happened. And we try and move past it as quickly as possible. If you give the other person a choice, and you can encourage your partner to do this with you as well, if you give the other person a choice, hey, I'd like to apologize or I'd like to repair from what happened last night, are you open to that? Are you open to talking about that right now?

That is going to be very disarming already for the repair process. You're initiating it, you're leading it, you're creating the structure for it, and you're giving them a choice to step into that. They say no, great, no problem. You let me know when you're ready or I'll circle back later today.

Sound good. Or I'll circle back tomorrow. Does that sound good? Or you let me know when you want to engage with that. Now, if you're with an avoidant person, that's probably going to be never. So you might want to just be a little bit more direct about that. But lead that repair process. Sometimes

What I even encourage men to do is, and I've done this with my wife before where she's gotten upset about something and kind of like come at me out of nowhere and I've grounded, I've done all the things I just talked about and held space and been very like calm and in the moment and then just let her go and do her own thing. And the next day I'll come back and say, hey, I would like for you to apologize for what happened last night. And it's not a demand.

It's not, you have to do this. It's just a recognizing that something went astray. And she does that with me too. If I get upset and I step over a line or I'm loud in any way, shape or form, or if I move into a place that's harsh and I don't own it, usually the next day she'll say like, hey, do

Do you want to share what happened last night? Or, you know, can you take ownership? Sometimes she'll say, can you take ownership over what happened last night? And then that's like the cue for me to step in. So we can invite our partners into an apology. You know, sometimes we underestimate, and this is what I'm going to leave you guys with as I'll close off. Sometimes we underestimate that when everybody does this, when people cross a line within themselves, right? And you've probably experienced this.

You cross the line, you get angry, you get reactive, you get loud or you just shut down, you completely disconnect from your partner. And the majority of people have shame about that.

You don't like that you've done that. You don't like that you've spoken to your girlfriend or your wife that way. You don't like that you've pulled away like that. You don't like that you've been reactive or childish or petty or combative or resentful. The majority of people, we all have shame about that.

And so sometimes it can be very, very helpful to invite our partners in to taking ownership for their actions when we know that they've felt shame about that. Again, it's not your responsibility to get your girlfriend or your wife to take ownership or accountability over their part. They genuinely have to do that for themselves. But you can create the opening, the invitation for them to step in and say,

Yeah, I'm sorry I got so reactive with you or I'm sorry that I just shut down and tuned you out. That wasn't great.

So you can use some of those things, right? If you want to repair, hey, I'd like to repair from the conflict or what happened last night. Are you open to that? And if you just genuinely know like something happened and just like a tidal wave of emotion and anger and volatility came at me, you can still invite the repair and then it's their work and their responsibility to do that. And you can say things like, hey,

You can even just give a look. Sometimes I'll just look at my wife like, hmm, you want to say anything about last night? And again, I know her. I'm not doing anything that's going to piss her off or agitate her or cause her to feel shame and embarrassed. We have a good dynamic where I can look at her and say, you want to say anything about last night? Are you ready to talk about what happened last night? And sometimes I'll say, are you ready to apologize for how you engaged last night?

All of those things, when you have a healthy relationship with what we're working towards, are completely possible. So direct the repair. Create direction for the repair to happen. So many men either sit back and wait for repair to happen or they try and force it and take sort of heavy-handed action. So

Leave your thoughts and comments in the comment section below, whether you're on Spotify or YouTube. Don't forget to man it forward. This is a great episode that you should listen to with your person so that you can get some sense as to whether or not like what they agree with, what you guys want to institute. This is definitely something that you should listen to with that special somebody in your life. So until next week, Conor Beaton signing off.

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