Too Tired to Fight: 13 Essential Conflicts Parents Must Have to Keep Their Relationship Strong - Hardcover

Mitchell MACP, Erin; Mitchell PhD, Stephen

 
9780593714270: Too Tired to Fight: 13 Essential Conflicts Parents Must Have to Keep Their Relationship Strong
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 059371427X ISBN 13: 9780593714270
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

How couples with kids can transform 13 common relationship fights into closer connection, from popular Instagram counselors Erin and Stephen Mitchell (@couples.counseling.for.parents).

Parenting changes a couple’s relationship in fundamental ways, but most parents are too exhausted from the demands of life, work, and engaging their kids to prioritize their relationship. This can lead to repeated conflict and an overwhelming sense of anxiety, anger, hurt, and loneliness…just when you need your partner’s support the most. The good news: conflict is actually a sign that you are trying to connect with your partner—you’re just stuck in an old pattern of communication.

In Too Tired to Fight, Erin and Stephen Mitchell use their 20-plus years of counseling experience to walk couples through the 13 conflicts that are not just normal but necessary to keep a partnership strong once kids enter the picture, including:

  • The “Your Parenting Is Wrong” Conflict
  • The “I’m More Tired Than You” Conflict
  • The “Stop Choosing Your Family Over Ours” Conflict
  • The “Sex Life? What Sex Life?” Conflict

In each scenario, they show how this conflict plays out—and offer scripts, questions for reflection, and their tried-and-true Conflict to Connection Equation that couples can use in the moment to communicate true repair and resolution. Their secret: by expressing your feelings and intentionally listening to your partner—not just venting or reacting to your stress-response system—you can work through the “pain points” of parenthood together and actually make your relationship happier and healthier as a result.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Erin and Stephen Mitchell are the cofounders of Couples Counseling for Parents, a company focused on providing access to research-informed, psychologically sound online education for couples. Both have a clinical education—Stephen, a PhD in medical family therapy, and Erin, a master’s degree in counseling psychology—and they have a combined 23 years of experience providing counseling and education. They have been married for 16 years and have three kids.

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Part I

Why Conflict
Is Good for Your Relationship,
and How to Do It the Right Way

Í

Introduction

What Kind of Couple
Relationship Do We
Want to Have?

Imagine a situation where you find yourself pushed to the breaking point. Maybe it's first thing in the morning. You were up with your child several times during the night. Now you're exhausted, getting breakfast ready for everyone, when your partner comes into the room and casually says on the way out the door, "Hey, I think I forgot to tell you, but I have a work trip the last two days of this week."

Can you feel your body tense just imagining this scenario? You feel your insides turn, your blood boil, and a deep feeling of loneliness wash over you. Over the course of your parenting journey, you've felt more and more disconnected from your partner, and this is just one example of many in which you feel unseen and unknown by them.

How did you get here? You set out to be a harmonious family-happy, unified, and strong. You want your kids to learn what a healthy relationship looks like by observing the two of you together. You don't want to fight! Yet as time passes, you find more than anything that you are just trying to make it to bedtime without irritating the other too much.

Now imagine that instead of absorbing this surprising news into your body and getting hot with rage at your partner-instead of erupting in anger-you choose a different path. You use this difficult, challenging, and yes, irritating moment to instead find connection. You work through this difficult situation together-and in so doing, model conflict that leads to connection for your kids.

Seems impossible, right? It doesn't have to be.

We are Erin and Stephen Mitchell-partners in life as well as in our business, Couples Counseling for Parents. Parenting changes even a strong relationship in all sorts of ways, and even couples who are on solid ground before the kids arrive can feel absolutely rocked and unsteady afterward. This isn't easy, but it is normal.

We have talked with thousands of couples over the years, and all of them have experienced this disconnected feeling at one point or another. When they share their hopes and dreams for their family with us, we hear over and over some variation of these two statements: 1) We know our couple relationship is the foundation of a healthy family, and 2) it's harder than ever to make each other laugh and enjoy each other's company now that we're dealing with the day-to-day drudgery of parenting.

You are not alone! Parenting can be messy and unpredictable. It can also bring you closer together as a couple . . . if you let it. What these couples are really saying to us is: "In the midst of all this stress, we are struggling to remember we like each other. Can you help us?"

We have three kids of our own. We know these struggles firsthand. We know the amazing upsides of parenting: the quiet moments of sitting down together and reveling in the beauty and wonder of the children we are raising. We also know what it's like to lose our patience with our kids-and with each other! We know what it's like to look at each other and say, "Really?! You're tired? Well, let me tell you about my night . . ." We know what it is like to feel like the person you want more than anyone in the world to understand and empathize with what you're going through for some reason just doesn't. But thankfully, we also know what it is like to regroup as a family and a couple after these moments and talk about what it means to repair.

Take a moment and reflect on the following:

What do I want for my family?

What kind of relationship do I want to model for my kids?

What kind of relationship do I want to have along the bumpy, beautiful road of parenting?

When my kids are grown and out of our home, what kind of relationship do I want to have with my partner?

If you're like us, you want to show your kids how to support and love one another on the good, bad, and truly awful days. You want to show them their parents can have a conflict with each other, but that the partnership can still remain strong even amid disagreement. And you want to remain close with your partner even in the midst of those chaotic parenting moments, knowing the two of you are ultimately on the same team.

This is why we wrote Too Tired to Fight: to help parenting partners transform these messy moments of conflict into experiences of healthy resolution and repair, and to give couples the skills to turn conflict into connection.

Who Is This Book For?

Too Tired to Fight is for all parents in romantic relationships looking for health and connection.

Maybe you bought this book in the middle of the night when you were the only one awake feeding your baby, feeling alone and unsupported. Maybe you are a couple with older kids, and you realize you have been waiting and hoping your communication would get better once they got a little more mature-but the problems remain. Maybe you bought this book because the resentment you feel toward your partner is eating away at you, and you worry that your marriage is going to crumble under the weight of it.

This book is designed as a tool for you to work through conflicts with your partner and come out on the other side feeling connected and stronger than ever.

How Do I Use This Book?

In part 1, we are going to talk about fighting once kids enter the picture: why it seems to happen more, and why it feels so different. We will also enable you to view conflict as a signal that you and your partner are trying to connect. Then we are going to give you our tried and true equation for engaging in healthy conflict: the conflict-to-connection equation. This will be your guide to resolve conflicts in the moment as you're experiencing them.

Then in part 2, we'll walk you through the thirteen most common conflicts we've helped countless parenting couples through-hot-button situations that turn so many couples sideways, like the "stop micromanaging my parenting" conflict, the "I'm more tired than you" conflict, the "Sex life? What sex life?" conflict, and the "I am carrying the mental load" conflict. In each chapter we'll introduce you to a couple and their experience with this conflict-what the trigger to the conflict is, why it's important to engage in it, and how this fight often goes wrong. These case studies are based on compilations of stories we have heard from the hundreds of thousands of couples we have had the privilege of interacting with. Then we'll take you directly into a counseling session between us and the couple in trouble to show how the conflict-to-connection equation can transform these fights into healthy conflicts that lead to lasting connection. At the end of each chapter, we offer sample scripts to give you a handle on the "But how can I actually say that?!" question that inevitably arises when we consider having an old conversation in a new way. We will also provide questions to get you reflecting and connecting to yourself and your partner.

Finally, at the end of this book, we have "A Quick Guide to How to Engage in Conflict in Front of Our Kids," "Sample Scripts for Addressing the Conflict with Our Kids," and "Sample Scripts to Address the Repair with Our Kids."

The Ultimate Goal:
Not Being Too Tired to Fight

We want you to come away from Too Tired to Fight knowing you are not alone when seemingly small things can turn into stuck communication patterns, resulting in dead-end dialogues. The solutions we present in this book will allow you and your partner a better option than just trying to "make it until bedtime."

We are sure that you can find connection through the conflicts you will inevitably face as parenting couples. We also know that after you practice these...

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Verlag
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
059371427X
ISBN 13 
9780593714270
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
304
Kontakt zum Hersteller
G.P. Putnam's Sons
https://www.penguin.com/putnam/

1745 BROADWAY Attn: Madison Forsander
NEW YORK
NY
10019
USA
Verantwortliche Person
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