Summary
Joe Hudson challenges the common assumption that a good relationship is one without fights. He shares how he and his wife used to measure their relationship health by how few fights they had, but now recognize that fighting is essential—what matters is how you fight, not whether you fight.
He draws an analogy to biological systems and financial markets: all living systems require tension to stay healthy. Just as muscles need exercise and financial markets need small corrections to prevent catastrophic collapses, relationships need regular friction to stay vital. Avoiding conflict stagnates and kills a relationship. The key metric is whether you fight with love, an open heart, and respect—or whether you lose yourself in abuse and reactivity.
Key Concepts
- Relationship health is measured by how you fight, not how often
- All living systems require tension to stay healthy
Key Quotes
“We don’t judge it by how much we fight. We judge it by how we fight. That’s how we’re judging our relationship.”
“All life requires tension. If I’m going to breathe, my lungs have to have tension. If a cell’s going to exist, it has to have tension.”
“The avoidance of the friction is an amazingly detrimental thing to a relationship because it basically kills it, it stagnates it.”
“Are you fighting with love? Are you fighting with an open heart? Are you fighting with respect? Or have you completely lost your nervous system?”
Transcript
and so we have this fight and we do it wherever we want to do it we don’t we don’t hide our fights and the two people who were there were like that was a fight they just like they didn’t they didn’t even know it was a fight Welcome to our series on how to have great fights in romantic relationships fights where you deepen your connection where you learn from each other where you grow get over your trauma and fall more and more in love with each other over time I have taught thousands of people through this journey and I’ve coach some of the most notable names in Silicon Valley the best way to make use of this series is to go to our Channel and to watch them in order and remember don’t trust anything I say make sure you test it out for yourself I remember this time with my wife we we had gone through this phase of fighting all the time I mean our fights were so horrific and we had leared that the fights were just basically verbal abuse that we were abusing each other and so we had like stopped fighting and we started tracking our Rel relationship by like how often we fought right so it was like we were doing good if we weren’t fighting as much and we were doing worse if we were fighting more and now days that idea is like ludicrous to us right and it’s not like we don’t judge it by how much we fight we judge it by how we fight that’s how we’re judging our relationship so we have been in situations recently this happened we were like preparing for a retreat we’re both tired we’re going into this thing that’s just like it it’s a super intense thing the the Retreats that we do like we work from 7:30 in the morning until 10:30 at night 7 days in a row and so it’s definitely where we’re going to be like most afraid and so we have this fight and we do it wherever we want to do it we don’t we don’t hide our fights we just s like yeah this is our fight so we’re having our fight and we’re doing it and we’re doing in front of the folks that we like are facilitating with right like and the end of it it was like this three or four minute fight in the end of it I was like oh I’m I’m like it’s really hard to fight with you and I’m I’m glad we resolv that I love you and the two people who were there were like that was a fight they just like they didn’t they didn’t even know it was a fight but for us it was a fight and it was it was an important fight and so the reason that we don’t judge it by how often we fight anymore is because fighting is really really important and the reason that it’s important is because it’s like all life requires tension if I’m going to breathe my lungs have to have tension if a cell’s going to exist it has to have tension so as we grow as we live as we’re alive as we change as people there’s going to be tension and the more transformation that we have in our life the more tension there’s going to be there and so we need to address that tension for us to be vital and alive and healthy there’s this great metaphor and I think there was a guy who wrote The Black Swan and he has this idea that basically financial markets need to have tension on a regular basis for them to be healthy and so he says big collapses in the market happen because little collapses aren’t allowed to happen because of monetary policy as that sounds weird but an easier way to think about it is we’re healthy physically because we physically give ourselves tension through exercise and if we don’t then we’re unhealthy and the Falls are really really big so any kind of system requires kind of a regular tension to stay healthy and it’s the same in a marriage or in a relationship there’s some tension that’s really required the question is how do you handle that tension and that’s the really important part but but if you judge your relationship by how many fights you have well then you’re you’re kind you have the wrong metric for a healthy relationship it’s how you fight are you fighting with love are you fighting with an open heart are you fighting with respect or have you completely lost your nervous system are you completely complely out of control are you are you being abusive are you being mean are you have you lost yourself are you being who you want to be in that fight so you some people might not even call it a fight but I’m going to call it a fight here because it’s just so important that we have that friction in a relationship so the avoidance of the friction is an amazingly detrimental thing to a relationship because it basically kills it it stagnates it and so that having that friction is is just critical it’s just how you have it that’s important hey everybody thanks for watching the video if you’ve made it this far then your partner is probably pretty lucky you’re dedicated to making the relationship better if you want to make sure that you get everyone in the series hit subscribe below also the connection course is so pivotal if you really want to deepen your connection with one other person or just how to connect with people in general and it is the tools that you need to be able to take this video series as a course so I highly recommend it we have them on a regular basis you can find it at artof accomplishment. comom and enjoy