How to take a timeout - a tip for couples.
Hard pit in your stomach. Another in your throat. Ringing in your ears. Maybe tears are stinging your eyes, maybe your nails are leaving prints on your palm. Do you relate with feeling that way after saying something terrible to your partner? Maybe right before?
Maybe the way I’ve described above doesn’t fit your experience, but I’m going to go ahead and go out on a limb and say that if you love someone dearly, at some point or another, you’ve gotten to a point in a fight where you’ve said something awful, and it’s made you feel miserable. The words hang heavy in the air, so far from where the argument started, and can feel so hard to repair from.
These experiences are why it is so important to know when you and your partner need to take a break. This is a difficult thing to do, it is only natural for us to want to argue until we “win”, but if we really reflect on it, we can probably recognize that after a certain height of tension, resolution rarely follows. The moment we feel the pull to dunk on our partner, we’ve lost sight of the idea that we’re actually on the same team, and that their loss is a hit on the both of us.
John Gottman has done extensive research on the power of agreeing to a ritual around taking a break from escalating tension. If we can recognize that we need a break from the conversation at hand instead of continuing to stoke the flames of tension, we’ll fare far better. To make sure that you do it with integrity, agree to some rules beforehand. Find a gesture or phrase to use that will bring some immediate levity to the moment, and know honoring the break is a serious commitment from both of you. The end of the break has to be something you both agree you’re ready to do - ideally it should be between 30 minutes to 24 hours, long enough for your body to physiologically relax, but not so long that the conversation is forgotten. If that means going to sleep angry, but giving yourself a chance to recover, so be it! Establish the spaces you’ll go to - you want to find ways to keep some space so that you can actually calm down. Talk about what you need to do during the break so that you can really push your body to relax - a run might be perfect for one partner because it feels relaxing and distracting, but it might be the opposite for a partner who knows that they’re just going to stew about the fight the whole time. When you both agree you’re ready to talk, see if you can find a way to find your connection before getting back into it. It may feel forced, but saying 3 things you like about each other (and no, this is not an opportunity to be passive aggressive!) will really help you remember that you’re fighting for your relationship, not against it. Know that if things get heated again when the conversation restarts, you shouldn’t power through! It is even more important to take another break, and potentially reflect on what you’re actually trying to say, versus what you’re trying to make your partner feel.
It’ll be hard to ask for a break. It’ll be hard to grant it. It’ll be tempting to use the break to vent to your best friend and prep your debate performance - but don’t! Force yourself to relax, push yourself to remember the things that you love about your partner that help you do these hard things, and come back ready to talk genuinely and directly about what you want, and what you need.