The best way to argue without making things worse is to stop focusing on who’s right and start focusing on your behavior during and after the argument. Look at your words, your tone, and your timing because those are going to determine whether a mild disagreement escalates into something more disruptive.
There’s a moment after an argument where we ask ourselves, “Is it me? Am I the problem?”
On the surface it feels like you’re beating yourself up, but it’s actually a beautiful question to ask because it means two things.
(1) You’re self-aware enough to have the balls to ask it, and (2) you recognize a part of you that’s open to taking responsibility for the role you play in interactions with others.
Not many have the courage to do that.
And it’s a hard question to answer honestly, because who wants to admit to being a problem?
So you sit there going back and forth, wondering whether there’s a nugget of truth in it.
Did you really do something that was out of line? Possibly.
The question “am I the problem” is worth asking.
The answer is rarely yes or no. It’s more often: here’s what I did, here’s what it cost, and here’s what I’m going to do differently. And getting comfortable with that level of self-honesty is how, in time, you’ll learn to argue without making things worse.
Being the Problem vs. Playing a Part in the Problem
The problem with being the problem is it assumes one person is responsible for causing an argument. That everything went wrong because it was someone else’s fault.
And the ‘innocent’ person on the receiving end was just standing there, minding their own business, while the ‘instigator’ single-handedly destroyed their peace.
That’s rarely what happens.
What’s more common is one person gets triggered by something the other said or did, or didn’t say or do.
There’s a displeasing back and forth exchange which creates a snowball that gets bigger and bigger, until both parties finally lose control of where it rolls.
So, who’s really the problem here? The triggered? Or the responder?
If we can all take a moment to be totally honest, we’d see the role we both play.
The question then stops being about who’s the problem, and becomes what did I do that kept this argument going?
This assumes a relatively equal dynamic. If one person is controlling or unsafe, that’s a different conversation entirely.
When Playing a Part Becomes Being the Problem
There are four behaviors which are the ultimate relationship killers 1.
If you recognize any of these creeping into your interactions with others on a regular basis, you’re moving past just playing a part.
Defensiveness: when you respond to a concern by protecting yourself instead of hearing the other person out. It signals you’re the victim. And if you’re the victim that must mean the other person is the attacker, which may not be the case at all.
Criticism: attacking someone’s overall character, rather than behavior that felt inappropriate at the time. “You’re always so selfish” lands very differently from “that felt selfish to me.”
Stonewalling: shutting down mid-conflict to avoid the discomfort of the conversation. It feels like self-protection to you. To the other person it feels like you don’t care enough to listen, and aren’t interested in resolving things.
Contempt: the most damaging of the four. It’s the eye-rolling, dismissiveness, or cruel comments that communicate you see the other person as being beneath you.
These aren’t one-sided sins.
Anyone can get defensive when triggered, criticize when frustrated, stonewall when overwhelmed, or show contempt when fed up.
But when they show up consistently in your reactions, it’s driving a lot of the damage.
Looking Back at an Argument Honestly
A few weeks ago, a friend called me up crying.
She’d just had what felt like the mother of all fights with her boyfriend of two years.
I won’t go into the detail.
There were deep sobs in between bouts of rage. Then calm reflective moments, which flipped back to tears, disbelief and more rage.
During one of the calmer moments she asked if she was overreacting.
Now, I know them both fairly well. They’re pretty cool, emotionally stable with no worrying traits, so I wasn’t going to fall for that trap of slagging him off to make her feel better.
I was merely the objective listening ear.
Plus, I knew it would only be a matter of time before I heard from her other half, and how awkward would things be when they eventually made up. And they did eventually make up.
You know what happens when you’re privy to two sides of an argument?
You hear two different stories.
Two different sets of justification for why they weren’t the ones at fault. And, in the case of my friends, two variations of the same question: “Am I the problem here?”
Most people who ask this are genuinely trying to be fair to themselves and to the other person.
The issue is they’re reviewing the argument inside a version of events that already leans slightly in their favor, without realizing it.
It sounds like this:
“I didn’t say anything THAT bad.”
“They raised their voice first.”
“I was just explaining myself.”
“They weren’t taking me seriously.”
These feel like honest assessments, and they’re not exactly dishonest, but they’re incomplete in a way that’s hard to detect because each person is assessing the argument through one point of view. Their own.
The more we introspect, the more we start to ruminate which typically involves asking ‘why’ questions over and over 2.
“Why did they do that?”
“Why are they so mean?”
“Why does this always happen to me?”
These kinds of rumination questions are outward facing, and spiral inducing.
They pull us away from useful self-awareness and reflection, and into the land of self-protective storytelling.
The stories we come up with feel true, but aren’t the full picture. Because at that point we’re piecing together explanations and overweighting our own version of events without realizing we’re doing it.
And placing all the blame on the other person, which is a cop-out.
We also take credit for what went well, and blame others for what didn’t 3.
This self-serving bias is present without us being aware of it. And of course, our own biases are worth questioning, especially if it’s our goal to repair an argument.
The way to look back at an argument with more honesty is to shift from attaching meaning to incomplete thoughts and guessing other people’s intentions, to reviewing our own reactions.
Not what we meant, but what we did.
And not how we felt, but what we said and how we said it.
Words, tone, timing, and actions are the real facts of the story, whereas the mental guesswork we do is not.
Think back to the words you used, timing of what you said, and the actions that may have led to escalation.
A useful external check is to ask someone who’s seen you argue.
Someone you trust, who has your best interests at heart. Not a yes person.
They’ll placate you under the guise of being kind, but that’s not helpful.
Growth requires challenge, and having someone in your corner who’s willing to be honest with you is rare, and worth more than you know.
How to Handle Future Arguments Better
Arguments happen, and will happen again.
No one is going to ever be 100% on the same page, at the same time.
And no one is going to always understand you, or agree with your point of view 100% of the time.
There’s no guarantee we won’t be part of the problem again. But there are ways we can manage ourselves, and the way we disagree, argue or fight in future.
If you want to get a grip on your role in any argument, there are specific types of questions you can ask yourself. How, What and Why questions (but not the self-pitying kind of ‘why’).
Most of us argue to win, and being right is one hell of a power play.
What we don’t realize is that having the desire to win is an empty, low-level goal. It feels justified in the middle of a disagreement, but doesn’t get us anywhere useful.
Higher-level goals are what lead to healthier disagreements 4. And healthier disagreements protect the relationship we have with ourselves, as well as the people who matter.
How and what questions focus on what’s happened
These questions place the spotlight on ourselves, instead of staying locked on what the other person did wrong.
The first step in arguing better is to understand the role we play in that argument.
What actually happened. What we said. What we did.
And we need to be able to take accountability with a healthy dose of self-honesty, otherwise those post-fight hangovers continue to feel heavier and heavier.
Some example questions:
Why questions focus on what you actually want
Inward ‘why’ questions, when done well, shift us out of playing the blame game, and closer to finding resolution, understanding and compassion.
This is where you reconnect with your deeper desires and needs.
Some example questions:
After your next argument, set aside ten minutes. Pick one ‘how’ and one ‘why’ question that feels most relevant to your situation, then answer them in that order. Write down what you learned. Use those same two questions as a mental check-in next time you feel angry, disappointed or frustrated with someone you care about.
Stop Defensiveness Before It Starts
If this article got you thinking about your own patterns in arguments, the Defensive… Who Me? challenge is a free 5-week email series that helps you spot and shift defensive reactions before they take over.
Just fill in your name and your email address below.
Footnotes
- The Gottman Institute identified these as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. While Gottman’s research focuses on romantic relationships, the patterns show up across all kinds of interpersonal relationships. Even, in some instances, the relationship we have with ourselves.
- Eurich, T. (2018). Insight: the surprising truth about how others see us, how we see ourselves, and why the answers matter more than we think. Currency
- Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self‑serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction?Psychological Bulletin, 82(2), 213–225. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076486
- Leslie, I. (2022). How to disagree: Lessons on productive conflict at work and home. Faber & Faber
