You’ve likely heard of love languages, author Gary Chapman’s categorisation of the ways a person prefers to receive love: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time or physical touch. Understanding your partner’s love language can help you show them that you love and care for them in the way that will most resonate for them. It may also help you see instances when a partner is trying to show you love, but you aren’t feeling it because they aren’t “speaking” your language.
But our communicative preferences aren’t limited to the ways that we want to give and receive love. We also all have our own ways of navigating conflict.
On the “On Air” podcast with Ryan Seacrest, former monk and now life coach Jay Shetty described the three fight styles he writes about in his book “8 Rules of Love.”
When a conflict arose in his own relationship, Shetty said, “I used to be the person who wanted to solve it and fix it right now.” His then-girlfriend (now wife) “didn’t want to talk to me for two days. She wanted to think about it.”
At first, Shetty explained, this made him feel like he was the only one who cared about the relationship. But he came to see that her taking some time to think was the way she showed that she did care. The two were exhibiting different fight styles.
Different thinkers have their own names and categories for the way that people tend to approach conflict.
Shetty calls them “fight styles” and outlines three predominant ones. His personal style, he said in the podcast, is “venter”: “I want to talk about it and fix it and solve it right now.”
His wife, on the other hand, is a hider. “She needs time and space to think about it,” Shetty said.
Another style is the “exploder”: “The person wants their emotions to be heard, felt and seen,” he said.
Though it’s hard to imagine assigning a positive value to someone labeled an “exploder,” Shetty told listeners that “none of these are good or bad, and none of them are bound by gender. We can all be any of them.”
The point of identifying fight styles isn’t to try to call out your partner’s faults or for either of you to change your ways, but instead to bring an awareness to the conflicts that arise in your relationship.
“Now that you are aware, you actually don’t take it personally and you can actually respond more effectively,” Shetty said.
For example, he explained, when he and his wife have a conflict, and he, the venter, wants to talk about it now while she, the hider, wants to wait two days, “we meet somewhere in the middle.”
“That way I don’t have to be too patient and she has time to think about it,” Shetty said. This compromise also prevents misunderstanding the other partner’s motive.
Author Lena Morgan, a former midwife, has proposed her own categories of what she calls “fight languages,” which she describes in her book of the same name. She names five:
Knowing your fight language and your partner’s can provide insight into why your conflicts fall into a certain pattern, Morgan told HuffPost.
An amplifier, for example, might say, “It doesn’t need to make sense. I know what I’m feeling. I want you to acknowledge what I’m feeling.” An analyser, on the other hand, would contend, “It’s facts over feelings. I don’t care how you’re feeling about it. What’s the black and white? What’s the truth of the situation?” When these two types find themselves in a relationship, their motivations are at odds — and understanding this can help them work through conflict.
Here is how a near-universal conflict in relationships might play out for Morgan’s five types. If an ignitor is told they are loading the dishwasher wrong, they will likely blow up. “If someone tells them ‘You’re not doing this right’ or ‘You always mess this up,’ then they’re going to have that big, angry, explosive response because they were trying and they were told they weren’t good enough,” Morgan said.
An amplifier might say that they are trying but feel unappreciated and misunderstood. A negotiator “is going to come in and say, ‘I was just trying to help. I was just trying to fix things,’” Morgan said.
“The analyser is going to respond by saying, ‘The way I did it makes way more sense. And if you don’t want to do it this way, that’s irrational,’” she continued.
Finally, an extinguisher might say nothing at all or simply say “Fine, whatever,” in the hopes of avoiding the conflict entirely.
Like Shetty, Morgan refused to rank one language over another. “Each fight language has protective and productive traits to them,” she said. The protective traits are to protect ourselves but can prevent us from connecting with others, while productive traits are more helpful to everyone involved. She also emphasised that a person’s languages can change over time and with different contexts.
Both Morgan and Shetty have quizzes on their websites you can take in order to determine which is your fight style/language. (I can attest to their reliability: I scored a “hider” on Shetty’s and an “extinguisher” on Morgan’s, true to my conflict-avoidant tendencies.)
Raquel Martin, a practicing psychologist and professor at Tennessee State University, told HuffPost that she would be more likely to use the phrase, “conflict styles.” A fight, she said, sounds like “me against you,” while with a conflict, “it’s me and you against the issue.” She added that every couple will encounter conflict in their relationship, but “the dissolution of relationships is not conflict — it’s poor conflict resolution.”
In other words, conflict-resolution skills, or a lack of them, could make or break a partnership.
Learning your partner’s fight language can help you comprehend things they have been trying to tell you for some time, Morgan said.
“It’s like helping to translate what this person’s been saying this whole time is important to them, or helps them feel understood or the resolution that they’ve been seeking out with you that you just haven’t even been catching at all because it wasn’t in a fight language that you understood,” she explained.
We are perhaps born with tendencies to prefer one fight language over another, but our fight languages are influenced over time by cultural norms and the dynamics of all of our relationships. We all adapt our fight styles in response to the reactions we get from other people.
On a practical level, identifying your fight language and your partner’s can help you know when to press pause in an argument and schedule a time to come back together to work though the issue. It can change the experience dramatically, Morgan said, if you know when to say, “I gotta hit pause. I know that I’m getting reactive, and nothing productive happens here.”
Martin mentioned four common conflict-related behaviours and ways that someone could deal with them. First, there’s withdrawal (“hider” or “extinguisher” behaviour), which might simply indicate the need for some space, not necessarily a refusal to address the issue. Here, she suggested that the couple agree on a later time to revisit the issue.
Other people may “need to release the emotions immediately,” Martin said — these would be “venters” or “amplifiers.” While the release of these emotions might be intense, “if you guys have discussions about setting expectations and standards for healthy expression during that, you can actually still have a productive dialogue.”
Then, Martin said, “there are people who need to problem-solve immediately. They want to fix it.” These could be a “venter” or a “negotiator.” This behaviour can be tricky if the other person feels like they are trying to “fix” their feelings or make those feelings go away rather than addressing them. The problem-solver may also need reassurance that leaving a conflict unresolved doesn’t spell the end of the relationship.
Finally, Martin said, some people’s style is aggressive. This might look like them “using sarcasm, subtle jabs that are never quite subtle” or being passive-aggressive, she said. Someone may come to this conflict style due to a fear of saying things directly, Martin explained. But it isn’t a way to communicate honestly, and it compromises a feeling of safety. This isn’t a conflict style to work with but to work your way out of: “It’s important to create more of an environment where they feel comfortable sharing their emotions,” Martin said.
Your personal conflict style, however you choose to identify it, can change from one relationship to the next and with your station in life. For example, Martin said, “The person who takes time to process it, they could have been the person who was explosive previously, but then they realised that that is what contributed to the breakdown of their relationships, and they decided to do better.”
As far as conflict styles go, it’s less important what you call them and more that you understand what makes your partner tick and what will set them off when it comes to conflicts between the two of you.
“If you want a relationship that’s going to thrive... you need to understand how they handle conflict the same way you need to understand how they communicate, because conflict is another form of communication,” Martin said.
“I think it’s healthy to understand that when you’re in a relationship with other people, you have aspects of compromise,” she added. “Compromise doesn’t mean that anyone is giving up anything.”
Martin explained that “if it’s me and you against the conflict, that’s us winning.”
