My wife and I consider ourselves very fortunate. Since 1997, we\u2019ve spent one week each year in New York, in \u201cThe City.\u201d Kitty-corner to Carnegie Hall, two blocks from Central Park, we \u201cencamp\u201d at the Manhattan Club, a stone\u2019s throw from the marquee glow of Broadway\u2019s theatre district. <\/p>\n
Within walking distance, an array of ever-alluring restaurants, museums, and art galleries beckon us. But we\u2019re especially drawn to the plays on Broadway, often hungrily devouring two a day: an afternoon matinee, topped off with an evening performance. For us, it\u2019s the equivalent of dying and going to heaven.<\/p>\n
Recently, we saw Art, a play whose premise centers on three sophisticated, middle-aged friends who descend hell-ward in a bitter fight that tears the otherwise resilient<\/a> fabric of their friendship<\/a>. The trio\u2019s scorching verbal combat ignites when one of them acquires a \u201cwork of art\u201d consisting of a contentless, blank-white canvas, which he purchased for the profligate sum of 300,000 dollars!<\/p>\n Beyond baffled by this purchase, one of the friends raged, \u201cIt\u2019s incumbent upon the two of us, the sane, to restore sanity to our beguiled friend and connoisseur of non-art!\u201d As the three waged war over what constitutes art, we, the audience, in stark contrast, laughed uproariously at the go-nowhere folly of their torrential fighting.<\/p>\n Soon, emotionally spent and spun out in a wasteland of irresolution, the three combatants finally lay down their arms as the play resolves in an awkward but peace-restoring truce that tacitly acknowledges the priority of their friendship over the futility of fighting over who is right or wrong.<\/p>\n When the performance ended, we shot to our feet in a standing ovation. And as my hands turned red from vigorous applauding, the glaring contrast between the fighting on stage and the audience\u2019s uproarious reaction to it recalled what I often observe in couples therapy<\/a>\u2014the ludicrous mindlessness of fighting.<\/p>\n Fight Follies<\/p>\n In couples therapy, it can be helpful to ask partners to resuscitate a recent fight, especially a recurring one, then parse it for its causative underpinnings and replace these with conflict-preventative strategies.<\/p>\n As we begin these efforts, I often hear partners make remarks like, \u201cWe can\u2019t remember exactly what we fought about,\u201d which draws a head-scratching blank. Others laugh at themselves, like the audience\u2019s reaction to \u201cArt,\u201d as they look anew at how their pettiness morphed into stagnant embitterment. A few assert, sometimes defensively, \u201cWe fought, but afterwards we had a great conversation,\u201d or I\u2019ll hear, \u201cWhen our fighting stopped, we had passionate make-up sex<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Responding tactfully, I\u2019ll ask, \u201cSo, to have a good conversation or passionate sex, you must first pre-stage it with a fight?\u201d Or I\u2019ll ask, \u201cHave you ever had a great conversation or passionate sex that wasn\u2019t prefaced with fighting?\u201d Their answers are predictable. <\/p>\n Our Brain on Anger<\/p>\n Nestled bilaterally and subcortically within the temporal parietal area of our brain is an almond-shaped cluster of neurons called the amygdala. Its job is to help us vanquish or flee from danger. Under perceived danger, the amygdala\u2019s volume of neural<\/a> activity can dominate, even blink off higher brain functions, monopolizing them. Thus, the slower, more complex reasoning of our higher brain is quickly replaced with emergency-like reactivity.<\/p>\n These fast-acting adaptations are reflected in our speech and language patterns. For example, as I write this blog, my words form grammatical, rule-following, or complete sentences, called syntax.<\/p>\n However, if my \u201cemotional temperature\u201d were to rise with intense feelings, my speech would change correspondingly, stripping me of my vocabulary. Now, two or three words must do the work of delivering a sentence\u2019s worth of meaning, as syntax abbreviates into telegraphic speech. I am at a disadvantage, especially when expressing complex ideas.<\/p>\n As my feelings escalate, my speech turns holophrastic. One word now shoulders the heavy burden of expression; I am at an even greater disadvantage.<\/p>\n Difficult Problems<\/p>\n Conflicted couples face difficult problems, frequently complex ones that require their best thinking and the words to capture and convey them, which, of course, become increasingly compromised by intensifying emotion<\/a>. Imagine the absurdity of experts at a think tank trying to improve the quality of their \u201cthought products\u201d by arguing and fighting with one another. <\/p>\n A Helpful Prescription<\/p>\n I encourage couples to do everything within their maturational powers to abolish arguing and fighting. Granted, this is a tall order, but one worthy of their effort. I\u2019ll add: don\u2019t ignore the needs and feelings that are generating your strong feelings, but learn to \u201cdeconflict\u201d by regulating your feelings to keep your higher brain \u201conline\u201d and fully functional for keener problem-solving.<\/p>\n Deconfliction Procedures<\/p>\n I recently stumbled across a military term, deconfliction, which refers to procedures designed to prevent soldiers in the same fighting unit from killing one another with \u201cfriendly fire.\u201d Certainly, coupled partners, at least theoretically, are on the same side; shouldn\u2019t they, too, have deconfliction procedures to prevent emotional bloodshed?<\/p>\n A Preventive \u201cCognitive Vaccine\u201d<\/p>\n Consider a flu vaccine, where an engineered protein is injected across the cell membrane to rally antibodies in the event of exposure to an infectious virus, which otherwise would incubate in its victim who\u2019d become symptomatic within two to 12 days.<\/p>\n Now, consider the stunning virulence of an \u201cemotional virus\u201d by picturing a belligerent partner angrily attacking their significant other. The angry partner\u2019s emotions have an incubation period measured in nanoseconds\u2014the time it takes the targeted partner to become symptomatic or negatively reactive. This is the length of time it takes for neural impulses traveling at a speed of 286 mph to traverse the synapse, a junction site a fraction of the diameter of a human hair.<\/p>\n In a nanosecond, we can be \u201cinfected\u201d by our partner\u2019s emotional contagion. In short, what if arguing and fighting are like highly infectious emotions or diseases?<\/p>\n So, if there were a vaccine to prevent arguing and fighting, would you take it? And what would it look like?<\/p>\n Need Management Therapy (NMT)<\/p>\n NMT has a built-in cognitive vaccine. It presupposes that all human or partner needs are valid at their most basic, irreducible levels. Fighting directs attention<\/a> away from the basic legitimacy of our needs and focuses it instead on the flawed means by which they are mismanaged, thereby escalating couple turmoil. Would two neurologically normal partners argue and fight with each other if this were not the case?<\/p>\n