Ultimate Fighting

So I'm going to take us back in time to our class about structure vs. function and content vs. process.To refresh, the function, or dynamics, of families or any sort of relationship is more important than who is involved,the structure, when looking at the 'what' factor. On the other hand the process, how the interaction is taking place, is more important than the content, what the interaction is about when looking at the 'how' of relationships. Now, why am I blogging about this?...because this class gave me an entirely new perspective about what is important in any sort of relationship (and actually helped me get through this week).
I've been in a relationship where the past few months have consisted of arguing...a lot. I've come to realize that my boyfriend and I are both just stubborn and sometimes we clash. That's not the problem. In reality the problem is the process, or how we go about doing it.
The fights are usually all the same-besides the content.They start with the source-whatever it is that we're arguing about. Then we go back and forth with our sides. Which is the problem. What I've noticed is we don't let each other express their feelings without talking over, running on with our side, or blaming the other one. Some of our fights have consisted of hanging up, raising our voices, and even walking out. I know people have different ways of expressing their feelings and arguing but what I realized was that those interactions are what cause the next step to occur-digging us deeper.
What I did last time we fought was call us both out and explain to him what I learned in class. I told him exactly what I just wrote and even what Dr.Hollist talked about. It made us both think about what we were doing instead of what we were fighting about. Since then when we disagree about something we have been better about letting each other talk and working it out civilly. Just surfacing the things that are so obvious but still hidden by the content of arguments helped us out so much it's amazing. I would suggest to everyone to take a step back from the argument or situation and bring up how you can fix the process because you never know what it can change.