Tired of the same old argument with your partner, despite trying hard to keep the focus on the present moment? Perhaps you’re fed up with how easily the same old argument creeps in and leads to the same wounds being poked at. You wonder if it’s worth bothering trying to make your point, because your partner will use the ‘same old argument’ tactics of disowning their part in the mess and making you the bad guy.
The ‘same old argument’ has enormous powers to hijack the emotional and rational parts of the brain so that communications between partners work on auto: looping around, tuning the other out, using the same trite phrases and having the same sinking feeling of defeat and hopelessness. The ‘same old argument’ happens unconsciously, and it feels like you have little control over how or when it takes over
until that bitter taste in the mouth tells you that you’ve been rendered powerless, back in the same helpless and unsatisfied place.
Emotional and physical inflammation is triggered in ‘same old arguments’
Huw, a forty-year old car magazine editor talked himself out of telling his wife Aurora, a forty-one-year old event planner about his excitement. He was a buzz with energy having listened to a podcast about losing weight and it filled him with hope that he could follow it and reach his goals.
The thought of telling Aurora met an internal brake, as if he’d screeched to avoid running someone over (himself). He had rehearsed her dismissive stance, bringing him down to earth with a nasty bump. That tiny moment of rehearsal set up a stress response in his system, an inflammatory signal that he was not safe and it was mirrored in his physical state. Stress hormones increased his heart rate, made his head throb, his stomach cramp, and his mouth dry. No way was he going to risk telling Aurora anything.
Huw’s exuberance became a precursor for danger emotionally, so he threw it out and felt only the bitterness of the rehearsed dismissal. No wonder he couldn’t hang onto good feelings! They were standing in for evisceration from a loved one.
Aurora asked Huw if he was okay when he was quiet at dinner. He answered in monosyllables, afraid of being belittled if he shared his new found information. Aurora’s imagination errupted with images of being shut out, anticipating being excluded from his life. Inflammatory emotions triggered her outburst as she tried to force an entry and find a place she could feel safe inside him. But he was immovable. Aurora’s emotional system sensed a threat, hiked up her inflammatory markers to manage the stress, put her immune system into overdrive, until she was exhausted and left in a huff.
‘Same old arguments’ and the anticipation of them have a direct impact on the immune system, with inflammatory markers in the blood common in couples who are caught in this trap, as reported in an article from Psychoneuroendochronology, 2023. Even when couples make conscious attempts to be more positive and avoid the ‘same old arguments’ the harmful effects on their immune systems did not recover.
The ‘same old argument’ happens in anticipation, before the real world experience
The ‘same old argument’ had taken place again without either of them being conscious of it. Both Huw and Aurora had experienced an internal visceral and real iteration of the ‘same old argument,’ priming them for the real thing, which then just becomes the acting out on the world stage of their inner ‘same old argument.’
‘Same old argument’ is a closed loop, acting on it’s own fuel of familiar repetition
The anticipation of the ‘same old argument’ is like the precursor inflammatory marker in the blood. It’s a sign that just the rehearsal of the destruction can alert the immune system to get ready for the onslaught.
At that point Huw’s and Aurora’s rational brains were sidelined. Logic and reasoning were irrelevant. All Huw and Aurora were focused on was getting ready for the same looped conflict where he experienced her as demeaning and crushing him, and she experienced him as being cold, and rejecting.
The conflicts were old, from childhood experiences with parents, now repeated with each other: and in doing so imprisoning one and other to act out the familiar drama. However poor their emotional and physical immune systems became, weakening them individually and as a couple, it was the familiarity that kept it going. The same old argument flowed in all the usual places, up and down in waves. But it was relieving because it was predictable and gave them a sense of mastery: “I know what’s going to happen so I can handle it.”
Breaking the ‘same old argument’ loop for invigorating communication
Anticipating the same old argument before it’s happened is the toxin that needs to be eliminated so that Huw and Aurora can be released from their self-imposed prisons, and create a more real and alive dialogue that is both relieving and nourishing.
An article in Nature, 2024 describes sleep cycles, during which neurons send out a variety of different amplitude brain waves that push and get rid of the daily debris. It’s a flushing out of stuff that the brain no longer needs after it has taken in its nutrients. If the debris was not flushed out, the risks of dementia and other cognitive declines is heightened. In the same way, Huw and Aurora build up toxic debris when they retain their ‘same old argument’ closed loop just because it’s familiar and predictable. Their emotional lives and with it the ability to communicate in a healthy way is poisoned and decayed, spreading the waste matter to the whole of their relationship: making it a “shit show.!”
Huw and Aurora can attempt to flush out their debris, comprising of the anticipated threats posed by one another.
Flushing out the same old argument debris and facing reality
First both have to get out of their routine ways, times and poses where they rehash these same old arguments. An article in Discover Psychology, January 2024 reviewed a variety of different activities and their intensities which promoted fresh, enlivened, and creative thinking. Getting out of usual environment and moving about, even if it was for a short walk was enough to reorganize the souless boxed in thinking.
Huw and Aurora are prone to being commandeered by their familiar auto-pilots to anticipate and act out the unhealthy same old argument dramas. They each need to give their minds the opportunity for expansion, mixing things up and reorganizing so that they are not bound by the familiar patterns.
The equivalent of moving around outside and taking a short walk might include the following:
1. Taking a mental walk by reading a novel and getting immersed in other character’s lives. That escape from their own set patterns of relating will evoke emotions that they would not otherwise feel. Their emotional system would learn that it is safe enough not to have to create inflammatory markers, and allow an experience of feeling intensely and then letting it go.
2. Watching a movie together involving romantic/family relationships that have a range of emotions from happy, sad, scary, surprising, disgusting, humoros, and frustrating features, and then talking about the characters afterwards. This will become a proxy or template for expressing feelings without fear and cutting the loop that would otherwise stymie their communications.
3. Choose to take walks, ride a bike, swim, play a musical instrument, and or dance to music before preparing to talk to the other – prior to the anticipatory signals of stress showing up. That’s the time to flush it out before it begins in earnest, allowing for something creative and less threatening to appear. It can be emboldening, strengthening, and ultimately change the course from the same old argument to new ones that can be stimulating rather than dreaded and avoided.
Copyright, Jeanette Raymond, Ph.D. 2024
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