When Fighting Feels “Fun”
Why do we stay in relationships where fighting is the predominant pastime?
Feeling Safe
Arguments are an inevitable part of relationships. They are normal, natural, and even healthy in order to really come to better understanding, compromise, and compassion for each other. After the honeymoon period in any relationship, some arguing or fighting at times is bound to happen. With love and good communication strategies in place, a couple can move through the fights with more love, more understanding, and a resolution to the problem. On the other hand, most people might agree that fighting and arguing on a continual basis in a relationship is not what they desire. It is not very healthy, especially when the issues are rarely resolved and are glossed over in favor of “peace” and getting back to a neutral position. Many people who regularly engage in such fighting might say that they hate drama and they don’t like the discord. These same people might also be entrenched in a fighting dynamic with their partner that almost never seems to end. They may be the one who starts the fights or they might be the one who is taken into the fighting, but they are still playing a role in the unhealthy dynamic.
Why does this happen? Well, the nervous system has different ways of reacting to trauma and abuse and one of those ways is by fighting. It’s the fight or flight response and, very often, when a loved one pushes our buttons in some way (hits a nerve), we react defensively by putting up a fight to protect ourselves from the trauma.
If you have been fighting in this way since you can remember—in your family system with siblings or relatives; with certain caregivers; with friends; and especially with lovers—your body is primed for this way of interacting with loved ones. It might sound crazy, but to your body, this feels like love. Your logical, conscious mind tells you this is not love, of course, but your body reacts to those who claim to love you by fighting with them—or fawning/pleasing, running away and hiding, or freezing/shutting down in fear.
So, if you fought with your mom when you were a child and she would not be reasonable, made sure that you saw her point of view as the only point of view, and would never concede to your side of anything, you might find yourself married to or being with someone who feels (on a nervous system level) a lot like your mom did in this way. This can be a man or a woman who holds this kind of energy, mind you. The fights feel an awful lot like the ones you had way back when with Mom. You could never get Mom to see your side of things, so you try again and again with new partners, bosses, or friends who might eventually allow you to “win” a fight or be thought of as worthy in some way—unlike how Mom perceived you. Mom, in your mind anyway, perceived you as an unworthy opponent, so now you get to have a do-over with someone like Mom but who might eventually see that you are worthy, smart enough, right, or whatever your needs were that Mom would not or could not grant you back then.
We hold a lot of our emotional energy within our emotional body, which is all around the torso area. The stomach region is where we hold a lot of our self-esteem, confidence, self-doubts, fear, and egoic sensations and emotions. It is from this area that the nervous system often reacts. There are nerve cells in the stomach that are fired off when we go into some kind of trauma reaction. In a sense, we “move” from that space in our bodies. We often start moving from this space long before our minds can catch up to the fact that we have already taken that first “swing” (figuratively or literally) at our opponent. Once fight or flight sets in, the mind is relegated to the far reaches of the system. There is really no conscious thinking when we are being chased by a tiger and this is the exact way our bodies feel when we are fighting with a loved one. We are on autopilot and our bodies do the “talking.”
The Addiction to The Fighting
When we are embroiled in this kind of a dynamic with a love partner who feels a lot like Mom, we can form what is known as a trauma bond. This is a bond that is cemented into place when the nifty little brain chemicals called oxytocin (the love hormone that bonds mothers to their babies) and dopamine are released time and again after the fighting has ended. When this “parent” figure in the form of a love partner lets us be right or when we have moved on from the fight (even without resolution), and even though we might be confused about who “won” or what the fight was even about to begin with but are just relieved to have it all over with, these painkilling brain chemicals are released. The oxytocin kicks in and we feel some love again toward the partner. The dopamine gives us a drug-induced high of pleasure and “peace" and we see them with rose-colored glasses and decide that they are not really all bad after all. This is how you become addicted to your partner. This is how the codependency (which is an addictive cycle in many relationships) gets you.
Fighting with your partner is quite traumatizing on every level of your being and making up or at least moving past the fight feels “peaceful.” It’s not real peace. It’s the brain drugs talking. It’s the desire to just feel loved and loving once again and return to “normal” and to get beyond that fight. Each battle that is fought is heading toward somewhere—where is very uncertain, but in the moment it feels like it must be heading the couple to a better place…eventually. Just like alcohol, drugs, shopping, or sex can make us feel “at peace” for a little while, the same holds true for these opioids from the brain. These are the same chemicals that are released after a long, intense run, while having sex, when drinking or doing drugs, emotionally eating comfort foods, after childbirth, and when our bodies are in physical pain. Along with being released when engaging in pleasurable activities, these brain chemicals also protect our bodies from more pain and trauma. Furthermore, when we are constantly using these chemicals in the fighting-making up dynamic, we become addicted to them. This is not what these chemicals are designed to be used for and using them in this way leads to an addiction to the fighting (for the reward after it of feeling a semblance of “chemical peace”) as well as to the object of the addiction—your partner. This becomes a real and true sickness as you become more addicted to the person rather than loving the person in a real and truly sober way. Your brain makes you drunk with love again and allows you to have some kind of amnesia about the fact that you are really and truly not happy in a fighting relationship. Fighting is not fun and it is not good for your body physically, your mental state, and your heart. While on these brain drugs, our bodies and brains take over our common sense as we forget that we might not really even like our partner that much and that they most assuredly might not like us either. Ouch! That one is a painful pill to swallow.
If we can get away from the partner for a little while, get our brains detoxed and back into working order, and give some space to the addiction, we often can assess more clearly what we really like, love, or value about the partner. Is it enough to have a deep and lasting relationship with them or is it merely based on tugs-of-war and brain drug addiction? You can’t really know unless you have space and no contact if possible. The brain gets a little damaged (or a lot, depending on how long it has been subjected to this kind of stress and trauma) in these kinds of relationships and needs to be able to have the opportunity, time, and distance from the inciting event to heal. Breaking free from any addiction requires a detoxification process, and these kinds of trauma bonded relationships are no exception.
The issue arises when, while being apart, the “idea” of your love interest as a perfect partner comes back and the couple comes together again—in a fit of love-bombing, empty promises of making it all “right” this time, and sexual chemistry, the couple impulsively and addictively comes back together. The idea of never seeing this person again and of losing them forces the couple to cling to one another with the desperate hope that it will work out this time. Fears of being all alone and without anyone to love and a deep fear of abandonment also drives this need and desire to be back with the one they long to fight with. This is “true love” after all! Settling for anyone sometimes feels better than the prospect of being alone.
Back on the roller coaster that is the cycle of abuse, everything starts off perfectly but goes badly very soon after they come together again. Each cycle of fighting comes faster and faster and the loving times grow fewer and farther apart. Unfortunately, this is the nature of a trauma bond. It is not intended for a lifetime. It is a way to resolve your childhood trauma or to at least make you aware that it exists so you can get help and heal it. In a very real sense, it is a spiritual connection that is designed to help you transcend your wounding and grow into the best version of who you really are. But, you have to be fearless in your desire to see this and move past it. It is not easy nor for the faint of heart. It is breaking an addiction to a real, live person, and it takes courage and strength like nothing else does. It will knock you to your knees, break your heart, and move you to a better life, if you will bravely work toward becoming unglued from its hold.
Raised to Like Everyone
Now, it becomes even more difficult if you were raised in a family, society, culture, or religion where you were expected to “like” everyone even if they mistreated you or abused you. In fact, if you were raised in an abusive family and given a lot of shame about being a “bad little boy or girl” when you didn’t kiss Grandma after she whipped your little booty you or didn’t act polite to Uncle Roy who pinched your butt each time you passed him, you may have been regarded as a selfish or sinful child. Wow. That takes its toll on a kid, huh? And we simply grow up repeating the same patterns with everyone, even when they mistreat and abuse us. We are groomed at early ages to act in certain ways and until we see these patterns, we cannot change them.
And this is fairly normal and common to most people on this planet. From a very young age (even before birth for many), we are taught to be nice, to please, to smile in spite of our hatred and resentment, and to play along in order to get along with the masses of emotionally, sexually, physically, or verbally abusive family members, friends, bosses, and partners we have lived with and encountered in our lives. To “make waves” goes against society’s need to keep the abuse agenda plugging along.
It’s probably time that we wake up and stop allowing this. Stop being nice for the sake of being nice to people who manipulate, control, and who have gaping abandonment wounds that they take out on us simply because they are unwilling to put in the effort and time it takes to truly heal. Sure, we might love these people who are hurting us because they are wounded animals, but at what point do we stop abandoning our own selves in order to enable the abusers to continue to perpetuate their abuse? We can stop being overly kind—being kind is good, mind you, but being too kind and self-abandoning to abusive people is not good because they are then rewarded for being abusive—is by healing our own shame, our own abandonment issues, and the parts of us that were burdened when we were very little ones.
Loving ourselves allows us to have a stake in what’s good and what works for us. It allows us to really see that fighting with people is not loving us or them. It’s simply a nervous system dysregulation and it very much can be changed. Once we uncover the limiting beliefs that shame caused us to have about ourselves and we heal it all, we are free. Our nervous systems can then be calmer more of the time. The notion of fighting with anyone becomes a thing of the past because you are more consciously aware of what triggers you and you move away from being purposefully triggered and into more peaceful territory. While you once “wanted” that fight because it felt automatic and natural to your body and nervous system, once you heal, you will have a very negative reaction in your body to fighting. And if you have a partner who still needs to fight the good fight and you no longer want to play that way, you can decide what is best for you, and stop self-abandoning. Healing is very, very powerful and once you have healed something, you never go back to that place again. Sovereignty is the actual position that is most empowering in life. Knowing that YOU have your own back and that you are okay being all alone, so long as you feel peace most of the time, is where the good stuff lives. Getting through your fears of being alone can be challenging but it is very, very worthwhile. Then, when you find that truly special someone, it is like the icing on the cake that is you. YOU are the actual cake! Settling for anything less than this and for someone who needs to fight with you for power, control, or to feel like they belong in some way is painful and eventually becomes much lonelier than being alone.
Does fighting all the time really work for anyone?
Does it work for you?
Love yourself and be at home and in peace with your true self!
