You know when you're in argument with your partner, and you say that thing, maybe that thing you've been thinking about for a while, and you finally just say it out loud, and in that moment, it's 100% true. You really believe that that thing should be said, and you mean it. And then at 2am lying in bed, staring at the ceiling while your partner's sleeping next to you, you replay it over and over, and slowly realize you didn't actually mean it. And you know, at 2am the argument is technically over, maybe pause, but like your brain refuses to let it go, you're running through what was said, cringing a little bit, going like, I can't believe I did that. Did I really mean it? Do I actually feel that way? Maybe it was something like, I can't do this anymore, or you never actually care about me. Or fine, then just leave. And I know some of you have been here, what about I hate you, and in the dark and quiet of 2am you know it wasn't the truth, but you said it anyway, and now you can't unsay it today. We're getting into something I see in my work with couples all the time, the moment when feelings stop being information and start being treated as facts, when the emotion is so big, so hot, so consuming, that it feels like the whole truth of the relationship, and I'm going to tell you about a couple that I worked with many years ago whose story changed the way I think about this, because what happened in our sessions didn't just help them, it gave me one of the simplest, most powerful tools I've ever handed a couple. And by the end of this episode, you're going to have it too. So go grab a warm drink and let's dive in. Welcome to relationship reset, a podcast for high achieving couples who've been together for over a decade and don't want to feel like roommates anymore. I'm Katie Roessler, relationship strategist and couples counselor with almost 20 years of experience helping ambitious couples reconnect, strengthen communication and turn their relationship into the best part of their success story. This podcast is about using practical tools and a lot of real talk to help you understand your patterns. Stop feeling stuck and discouraged and start working on your relationship in ways that actually fit your busy life. Because your relationship shouldn't be the cost of your success. It should be the best part of it. So let's dive in. Okay, so the couple I was talking about, we're going to call them, call them Sarah and Mark. They had been together for over a decade. Mark. Had spent years traveling heavily for his work. He was away for weeks at a time, constantly in airports, hotels, the whole thing. And Sarah had held down the fort, the kids, the house, life, all the works. She was very capable, very strong, definitely hyper, independent, and honestly, she'd gotten pretty good at not needing mark around. Then Mark's job changed, and suddenly he was home a lot. And you might think, Oh, wonderful. That's what they've always wanted, right? Like now they get to be together, and the kids have their father there, and in many ways it was, but here's what nobody tells you about the transition from hardly ever home to always home. And listen up, because I worked with military families for years. It's an adjustment, a real one, because the system that kept everything running, Sarah's system, the one she'd built and controlled, now had a new variable in it, and neither of them quite knew how to recalibrate, so they were in my office trying to figure this out. The tension that had been manageable when Mark was away started surfacing. Arguments. Felt like they came out of nowhere, friction over small things, right? It was like, Hey, how you did that? I don't like but it wasn't said that nicely. And Sarah, who is the first to say it, is a feeler, she would go from zero to 100 faster than either of them understood. She'd feel something, and then she'd feel it at a full volume, rage, frustration, and sometimes at the peak, she'd say it, I hate you. And Mark, who's more of a thinker, logical, measured process internally, would hear those words and completely shut down. Because what do you do with that? What is the right response when the person you love looks at you and says they hate you? He didn't know, so he'd go cold, and she would feel abandoned, and the whole thing would spiral. When we started working together, they were completely exhausted, not because they didn't love each other. They knew that in the quiet moments there was still a lot of love there, but because they were stuck in a pattern that neither of them had the tools to break. So let's look at three things here. First, what's actually happening in the brain when feelings hijack the argument? Second, the distinction that changed everything for Sarah and Mark and third, how to use that distinction as a real tool in your own relationship? Okay? So number one, your feelings are absolutely real, but they are not always facts. Here's something I want you to understand about what happens in your nervous system during a heated argument. The gottmans like to call it flooding, when your heart rate climbs above 100 beats per minute, when stress hormones are surging, when your body has essentially decided that there's a threat in the situation. In that state, your prefrontal cortex, think your forehead, that part of the brain that's there to help you understand the context to think before you speak or act really looking at Hey, what could the consequences be? Goes almost completely offline, if we're not careful. What you're left with is your limbic system, your threat response system, fight, flight, freeze or fawn, and your threat response brain does not do nuances. It does danger or safe, not gray zone, right? Attack or withdraw, true or false. So when Sarah said, I hate you, she wasn't lying. In that moment, flooded and overwhelmed. The feeling of hatred was completely real to her. Her nervous system was producing it like a fact. The problem is, it wasn't a fact. It was the loudest feeling in a very overwhelmed situation. So she said it. There's a concept I use with clients that I first learned through the work on the adaptive child, this idea that when we get triggered in our relationships, it's often not just the current situation we're responding to. It's the current situation, plus every unresolved version of that wound we've ever carried. The argument about the dishes isn't just about the dishes. The argument about feeling unheard isn't just about today, we're arguing with the present moment through the lens of every past moment that felt the same. And for feelers, my fire people you know who you are, people who process life primarily through emotion. This gets amplified because feelings aren't just information. For a feeler, they are the experience. There's no stepping back and going interesting. I seem to be feeling angry. It's just angry completely, totally. This is the truth angry. I like to call it righteous rage. Sometimes. Have you ever noticed this in yourself or your partner, that some people can feel something at a 10 out of 10 intensity and genuinely believe it's the full truth of the situation? That's not manipulation, and that's not drama. That is a nervous system doing exactly what it was built to do, just doing it at the wrong time, in the wrong context, aimed at the wrong person. Which leads me to the second point, the question that really cracked everything open. So here's what happened in one of our sessions, I asked Sarah a question, just a simple, quiet question, and I want you to pay attention to how she responded, because this is where everything shifted. I said, Sarah, when things are calm between you and Mark, when you're not in the middle of an argument, when it's just a regular Tuesday, do you love him? She didn't hesitate, yes, of course I do. So then I asked, so is it possible that what's actually true is that you love him, but in those moments you really, really don't like him, that the dislike is so strong, it's taken over, but underneath it, the love is still there. She got quiet, and then she said, Yeah, and I watched something shift in her face, not just relief, though there was definitely some relief there, and especially for him too, but recognition like she'd been handed the right words for something she'd never been able to name before. And I know that seems really silly. It's just saying you don't like the person. But again, when we're such a feeler, that what we feel is hate or we believe that's what we're feeling, sometimes giving more vocabulary to the experience can help. Here's what I hate you, is really saying I am so frustrated, so overwhelmed, so unseen right now, that I want to make an impact. I want you to feel the weight of what I'm feeling. And she knew, because she knew mark, that those three words would land, they would cut straight to his heart. They'd make him feel the impact she was feeling. Now, some people would say that's cruel, but it's not that's a person without the right tools reaching for the sharpest thing available. And when you love someone for a long time, you know exactly which words are the sharpest. You know, in long term relationships, our partners tend to become like the target for our most unsafe feelings. We wouldn't say these things to a colleague or a friend or a stranger, but our partner, they get the full weight of it, because, on some level, we trust that they'll still be there. The problem is, I hate you isn't just an expression of feeling, it's also a statement of fact in the mind of the person hearing it. And mark every time those words came, really heard. She hates me, not. She's overwhelmed, not. She needs something she doesn't have words for, just she hates me, and he'd shut down completely. So here are the five words that changed their relationship once Sarah had that recognition that what she was actually feeling was intense dislike, not hate, not a desire to end the relationship, not the truth of how she felt about Mark as a person, because when we like or dislike someone that is more based on their actions, when we love someone that's about choice, that's about really who they are as a person. So once she had that recognition, we had something to work with. I asked her, What if, instead of I hate you. You said exactly what's true, which is, I don't like you right now, she laughed at me, and so did mark. It felt almost too simple, but then we talked about what those five words actually do. First, it's accurate. She doesn't hate him, she doesn't want to leave. She doesn't want him to leave, she doesn't want to destroy the relationship. She is feeling intense, hot, overwhelming dislike in this moment. That's absolutely true, and saying the true thing, even when it's uncomfortable, keeps you grounded in reality, instead of escalating into a story that isn't real. Second, it contains the timeframe. Right now, this is one of the most powerful little phrases in relationship, communication, write down the beans, not always, not forever, not as a verdict on you as a person or on us as a couple, but just right now, which means it can change, which means there's a way through it. Okay, third, and this is the part that mattered most for Mark, it doesn't shut him down. I hate you. Is a wall. There is nowhere to go for that. No response that helps, no repair that's available, but I don't like you right now. That's a door left open. It communicates I'm flooded. I'm struggling. Something is really wrong for me right now. It's an invitation to eventually come back to each other, even if that can't happen in the next five minutes. And here's what happened when Sarah actually tried it the next time things got heated, because they do. Tools don't eliminate conflict, sorry guys. They just change how conflict moves. She caught herself, felt the fire, felt the urge to say the sharp thing, and instead said, I really don't like you right now. And she clenched her fish. She showed me how she did it, and Mark was able to respond way better. He didn't shut down. He took a breath and he said, Okay, I'll give you some space. When you're ready, we can talk. That was a first and years of arguments for them to be able to change the pattern was powerful. Now I want to be careful here. I'm not saying this phrase is magic. I'm not saying one sentence fixes years of patterning. What I'm saying is that the right words at the right moment can interrupt a cycle long enough for something different to happen, and when something different happens, once it becomes possible, and when it becomes possible, it becomes a path you can take. So Sarah had a tool that she could use that didn't shut mark down, but made it very clear to him there was a problem, and she learned over time to stop letting things boil up. And Mark learned over time how to be more part of the family, rather than a visitor, and it took some really deep conversations about what they both wanted, because she'd been doing things for so long by herself. He was able to start honoring her feelings, and she was better able to understand more of his logical side. So I want to spend a moment talking to the mercs in the room right now, the thinkers, the ones who hear the big feelings and don't know what to do with them. When your partner is flooded, when they're saying things at maximum intensity, your job is not to respond to the content of what they're saying as if it's a calm, reasonable statement of fact, because it isn't, it's a flare. It's a signal that something is very wrong in their system right now, and they don't have the capacity to communicate it any other way yet, shutting down, going cold, going silent, leaving the room feels to a flooded feeler, like abandonment, like confirmation that they were right to be upset, and it takes the argument from hot to something colder and more damaging. What actually helps is acknowledgement, not agreement. You don't have to agree with anything being said, but acknowledgement something like, I can see you really upset right now. I'm not going anywhere. Can we take 20 minutes and come back to this? Maybe even go take a walk together. Or if they're like, No, I cannot be beside you right now, then they go for the walk and you make sure you stay there. That's it. You're not fixing it. You're not solving it. You're just staying and staying for a flooded feeler is everything. It takes the nervous system a minimum of 20 minutes to come down from this flooded state 20 minutes. So whatever you're trying to resolve in the middle of the argument, you're not going to resolve it. The wiring isn't available. The most productive thing you can do is agree to pause, agree to come back and actually come back. So here's your homework. There are two parts. Okay? You can do it this week. Part one is a conversation in a calm moment, not during or after a fight, just a regular moment, sit with your partner and talk about the phrase I don't like you right now. What would it mean for you as a couple of you used it? What does each of you need when the other person says it? Does the feeler need acknowledgement? Does the thinker need a specific timeframe for when you'll come back? Get specific, make it yours. Now part two is internal. The next time you feel a strong emotion rising, even outside of your relationship, at work with the kids anywhere, pause for just five seconds and ask, is this what I feel? Or is this what's true? You're just building the muscle. You're just practicing the pause. Okay, if you try either of these and want to share what happened, or if this episode brought up something you want to explore more, I'd love to hear from you. And if you feel like you and your partner are stuck in a pattern that's bigger than one phrase can fix, that's exactly what a relationship game plan call is for. It's free, it's 45 minutes, and we look at exactly what's happening and what would actually help. You can find the link to schedule your call in the show notes. Here's what I want to leave you with today. Loving someone and liking them in every moment are two completely different things. Long term Love is not a feeling you sustain at maximum intensity every hour of every day. It's a choice you make over and over again, even in the moments when the feeling is loudest and messiest and most confusing. Sarah and Mark didn't fix their relationship with five words, but those five words gave them a foothold, a place where honesty and care could coexist in the same breath. And from the foothold, they built something steadier you can too. Your feelings are real and they are not the final word. Okay, everyone. I'll see you next week before you go, I want to leave you with this. The effort you put into your relationship is one of the most important investments you'll ever make. How you communicate and grow together shapes your home, your leadership and the example you set for the people around you. Relationship work is truly legacy work, and it quietly impacts more lives than we often realize. If this episode resonated, consider sharing it with someone you care about, a partner, a friend, or another couple who's building a full life and wants their relationship to be the best part of it, too. And if you're enjoying these conversations, make sure to follow or subscribe to relationship reset. Leaving a rating or review also helps this message reach more couples who are ready to grow with intention. I'll see you next week.