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Helping couples discover the why behind the what in their marriage with Chris and Beth Bruno and Tracy Johnson of ReStory Counseling.
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Welcome to the Thrive Marriage Lab with Restory Counseling, where we help you explore the why behind the what. Because guess what? We believe that your marriage is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be explored and enjoyed. We believe that the more you explore and know your story, the deeper your marriage connection will be. This podcast is now the audio version of our new YouTube channel, Thrive Marriage Lab.
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where each week you can expect us to help you cultivate connection and belonging without the fixing and tips and common things you often hear in the marriage space. So find us on YouTube or listen in.
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So which kind of couple are you? I see couples that say, hey, we fight all the time. And then there's these other couples that say, hey, we never have a fight. Everything is great. We never even have a conflict. Which, you know, on that kind of spectrum, where would you say you and your spouse are? You see, the reality is that there are four different levels that we have identified here at the Thrive Marriage Lab. Four different levels of conflict and communication that are really important for you to kind of know,
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Where do you find yourself? Are you actually fighting all the time? Or are you actually not having any conflict at all? It's important for you to know so that you have a sense of where to navigate through and out into better and deeper communication. Welcome to the Thrive Airs Lab. My name is Chris Bruno, and I'm a licensed professional counselor and the founder of Restore Counseling. And together with my wife, Beth, and our colleague, Tracy Johnson, we post videos to help couples
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Explore the why behind the what because we know the more you explore and know your story the deeper your marriage connection will be Okay, so there's four different levels of communication conflict if you will that That we help couples kind of figure out and navigate where do we find ourselves? And I feel like it's even helpful for us to to know like where do we find ourselves in each? in each conversation because
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sometimes we are at, you know, at level four, and that requires a very different response than if we're just at level one. And if we can have these kind of, you know, verbal cues and language around what these categories are in our marriages, we could say, hey, we're at a level one, we're not at level four, so therefore we can do these things in order for us to navigate our way through. So let me first describe these four levels. All right, so first of all,
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there is the level of a disagreement. Now this is not in every conversation and not in all communication, but most of the time couples don't come to us because they have too good a communication. They come because there's some kind of communication breakdown. And typically it's gonna be in one of these four, what we call kind of conflict levels. So the first level is what we would just call a difference. And this means that I am different from you and I have different.
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or perspectives or desires or preferences in the world. It's just like there's a difference. And it can be as simple as like, I like vanilla ice cream and you like chocolate ice cream, or I like action movies and you like rom-coms. Like that can be just a difference. We're just different people. We have different preferences. Like I said, some people like hot and spicy foods. Some people like Chinese food. Those are just differences in the world. And...
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And usually for couples differences are fun. They can be explored. They, there's something intriguing about trying something new or having a different, you know, experience of a different kind of restaurant that maybe you would have never gone to or for trying a different sport. Maybe you like to ski and the other person likes to snowboard, whatever it is, those differences are there. And most of the time, those differences don't cause a lot of like heavy conflict because you can usually kind of navigate through them.
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And there's generally some kind of like, okay, tonight we'll have Chinese food and tomorrow we'll go out for, you know, Buffalo wings or something like that. There's some kind of negotiation that you can do to figure out your differences. And then sometimes, you know, the longer that you're married, those differences become endearing. Sometimes they can be annoying for sure, but, but most of the time it's like, that's just how he is, or that's just how she is. And she just doesn't, you know, he doesn't eat seafood. I don't eat seafood. I don't like it. I actually have a story in my background of
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of throwing up as a child because I had too much crab at one point, now I have this like adverse reaction to most seafood. So my wife knows that I don't like seafood. And so when I'm in the house, we don't eat seafood. But man, if I go out on a trip, guess what comes into the house? She's eating shrimp and crab and lobster and all those kinds of things all the time. She binges on the seafood because I'm out. It's just a difference, you guys, it's just a difference. It's not that big of a deal. So that's the first level.
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Sometimes it can cause some conflict, but most of the time that difference can just be easily negotiated The next level is what I would call a disagreement and this has a little bit more energy to it it has more like opinion and Some perspective and a sense of like this is how things should be There's there might be some morality difference or even a little bit Maybe not morality all the time though that definitely is part of it. It is
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a little bit more in the sense of like, this is kind of how the world should be. And this also gets into some of the background of the story that I've talked about before, that there are some things that you were raised with that you grew up with that you just kind of assume that this is the way that things are. Let me give you a super simple example. So, um, one family, uh, family of origin, you might've been raised as a child in your family who saved a lot of money. And, and.
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really that was a high value to save, save, save. And you were sacrificing some things. You weren't going on those vacations. You weren't buying a new car. You weren't doing those kinds of things because you were saving the money. Because someday down the road, you might need it, the rainy day idea or retirement or whatever it was, your parents were focused on saving. And you as a child understood that's just kind of how life is with regard to money and finances. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that.
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The other spouse might come from a family where, you know, saving wasn't as important as having great and fun experiences. Laughing and playing and being together, going on big vacations and getting the big truck or the fast car or whatever so that you could play and have all kinds of fun. Again, there's nothing wrong with that necessarily. It's just a totally different perspective on what you do with money. So you bring your two spouses.
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had these two people into the relationship now and we have a spender and a saver and there is a disagreement. It's more there's more energy to it. Like I said, then then just, you know, chocolate versus vanilla. It's like, are we going to save that thousand dollars or are we going to spend that thousand dollars? And as you engage in these kinds of things, you can probably feel some of the energy rising because that's not right. That's wrong. We should do this. We shouldn't do that.
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those kinds of words start to enter into the conversation and communication, that community that I've talked about, the communing starts to break down because we're not actually in the same space anymore. Now we're in the rights and the wrongs. Now there's some level of even kind of assumed morality to things that we shouldn't spend or we should spend. Maybe there's some political affiliations that are some differences. Maybe there's some religious affiliations that have some of that.
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that disagreement that's a little bit more like I said, that palpable kind of energy to it where there's a disagreement. And so as a result of the disagreements, if it's not like heard and understood, and again, not just the information is passed, but if you don't understand the why behind the what, where is this coming from? If we don't pause long enough, it's not actually about the issue of money, it's about
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how you understand money. It's the story behind the money that you're talking about. That's more important for you to get to. If you don't get to that in those disagreements, then you're gonna cross what we call the hurt line, the hurt line. And this is, you know, differences and disagreements. Once you get into crossing that hurt line, then it enters into what we would call conflict. Now here is what the hurt line is. It's when
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You're no longer talking about the money. It's how we have engaged about the money, how you've not been curious with me, how you've not been present with me, how you've made assumptions, how you've thrown shoulds and shouldn'ts at one another, how you've, how you've said you're wrong or, or whatever, how you've engaged around the issue is more important than what the issue is. Did you hear what I just said there? It is how you've engaged around the issue more than it is about the what of the issue.
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If you've engaged in a way that is defensive or aggressive or you're not actually like curious about what's going on for you right now as we talk about this money situation, right? Those are the kinds of things that cross the hurt line. Once a person is hurt, now we're in the space of the third level, which is conflict. Conflict itself is again, not bad. I think it's important actually for couples to have.
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some level of wrestling, but this is absolutely where the issue on the table is not the issue on the table. Now, the actual issue is how you've hurt me, how you've not been present to me, you've not been kind to me, you've not been listening to what I'm trying to say. Like, those are the kinds of things that now we're in a conflict. And if you're in the conflict place, it's really important to put aside the thing that you're talking about. Maybe if you're still up in the differences and disagreements places, you can
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You can still talk about the money or the issue that's that you were starting. But if you get into that conflict place, you need to actually set aside what you were talking about and now enter into a conversation about how are we, what just happened, where did I lose you? What are the things that are going on for you? Like I noticed that when we, when I said this, you completely shut down. Now I understand that we're in a completely different space.
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You guys, if you don't address it in those ways, then you're gonna actually enter into the fight because now, yeah, conflict is already moving into the defensiveness. Now all of the defensive measures and survival techniques that you learned as a kid to survive difficult and challenging relationships, those are gonna come online and actually what happens, you know, one author talks about it like this. He's like, you actually literally flip your lid. You lose the executive functioning of your mind because
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things are starting to activate, things are starting to fire, and your defensive mechanisms come online and you lose your reasoning. And if that is what is happening, you've moved from conflict into a fight. And a fight is that fourth level of that, that actual like combative. We cannot actually continue the conversation because this is no longer a conversation. We are, we're not able to communicate.
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And a lot of times couples will come into marriage counseling and want some help and they're at the fight level. But until they come down from the fight level, until they allow for the jets to cool a little bit and actually regain some of that executive functioning that I talked about, they're not at they're not going to be able to do anything. There's not going to be any actual communication that they're going to be able to share. They won't recover in that sense and they'll only continue.
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hurting each other more and more and more and more. And so as I said at the beginning, it's important for you to know like, which one of these categories are we in? And all couples are gonna be in them at some point. I don't believe that one couple always fights and one couple doesn't fight at all. I think there are probably some good and sweet moments in both, and there's some moments of a little bit more tension in both. So when you're in both of those, it's important for you to know which one of the four levels are you in.
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And then what do we need to do in the midst of that category? Because if it's a fight, you need to take a break. You need to let the jets cool. You need to take some time off and circle back for sure. And I'll talk about that in another video, but to circle back for sure. So that you actually have a sense of like, we're going to, we're going to let things cooled off and then we're going to come back to this in a little while.
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If that's where you are, that's what you need to do in a fight. But if you're just in a difference, if you're just talking about Chinese food or, or Mexican food, you probably don't need to take some time off unless you've crossed that line, unless you, how you've talked about things has hurt the other person. So there's some thoughts about communication. I hope that is helpful just to give you some navigating tools, some, some kind of way marks along the way so that you know where you are in your conversation.
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and we'll get to coming back to another in another video.
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If you like this, there's more where that came from. Go to Thrive Marriage Lab on YouTube to check out all of the marriage resources we have for you. We are so committed to helping you develop a deeper and more connected relationship.
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that we have created 12 free curated date guides to walk you through one year of good dates that we believe take you beyond your average date night to the kind of connection you really want. So head over to restory.life/thrive-dates or just look in the show notes to subscribe to get those for free in your inbox for one year. And if you're curious about us, you can find us over at restory.life.
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where we look forward to hearing about how your marriage continues to grow. See you same time, same place, next week.