Conflict in relationships: how to fight better and repair

Is conflict in a relationship normal?

Yes, arguing is what happens when 2 separate people share one life and want different things. The difference between you is always there. What matters is what it does when it meets an ordinary Tuesday.

• Quiet is no proof of peace. In some quiet houses nothing is wrong, and in others somebody is swallowing something.
• Swallowed things come back. They return attached to the dishwasher, the timing, the tone on the phone.
• Stopping is the wrong target. Aiming to stop arguing usually produces a quieter house and a worse relationship.
• It has a cost. Conflict costs the body something, and slowly changes what each of you expects from the other.

Why does the same argument never get solved?

Because most arguments are about a lasting difference between you, and a difference has no solution. The Gottman Institute separates solvable problems from perpetual ones, and puts 69 per cent of relationship conflict in the perpetual group. That is one organisation’s figure from its own research.

• Solvable problems. They are situational, such as housecleaning, and a workable answer closes the subject.
• Perpetual problems. They rest on differences in personality or in the kind of life each of you needs: one of you plans and one of you improvises.
• Dialogue in place of resolution. Couples who cope talk about the difference with humour and affection, again and again.
• Gridlock. Couples who do not cope reach a point where the subject produces painful exchanges or icy silence and nothing else.

Ask it in the moment: is this a problem or is this a difference? A problem gets solved. A difference gets managed and revisited for as long as the 2 of you are together. Read more about why the same argument keeps coming back.

Which behaviours do the damage in an argument?

Four behaviours do most of it: criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. The Gottman Institute calls them the four horsemen and gives each one an antidote. The vocabulary is theirs, and I use it because naming a behaviour in the moment is half the work.

• Criticism. You attack your partner’s character where a complaint would name the thing they did, and they defend who they are. The antidote is to talk about your own feelings.
• Defensiveness. Accused, you find excuses and play the innocent one so your partner backs off, and the subject returns. The antidote is to accept one true part.
• Contempt. Sarcasm, ridicule, mimicking, eye-rolling. The Institute names it the single greatest predictor of divorce, and the antidote is slow: appreciation said out loud for months.
• Stonewalling. The listener shuts down and stops responding because their body is flooded, which from outside looks like indifference or punishment.

Read more about the four horsemen and what they miss, contempt and why a partner goes silent.

What happens in your body during a fight?

Your heart rate rises, stress hormones are released, and the thinking you most need becomes less available. That state is called flooding. You are worse at arguing while it lasts, and no decision of yours is involved.

• The break. The Institute’s antidote to stonewalling is to stop the conversation and calm the body, for at least 20 minutes.
• What to do in it. Music, a book, a walk. Rehearsing your case keeps the body where it was.
• The opening. In a study of 124 newlywed couples followed for 6 years, all 17 couples who divorced had opened their conflict discussions with more negative and less positive emotion than the rest.
• The physical cost. In a trial with 42 married couples, blister wounds healed more slowly after a conflict than after a supportive talk, and consistently hostile couples healed at 60 per cent of the rate of the others.

The newlywed finding describes one sample and is no forecast about you. What it shows is where the information sits: most of what decides an argument has happened before either of you has made a point.

What does unrepaired conflict turn into?

It turns into a backlog, and the backlog arrives as resentment, misheard remarks and vigilance. Nothing dramatic happens on the day. Each incident that nobody closes stays on the record.

• Resentment. It is a record more than a mood, and an apology that changed no behaviour closes no item on it.
• A change in what you hear. A neutral remark arrives as a dig, because you read it against everything behind it.
• Vigilance. One of you checks the mood before speaking and edits sentences in advance, managing the temperature of the house.
• One endless argument. All 3 meet in a single fight that never ends and keeps restarting in new clothes.

Read more about how to let go of resentment and walking on eggshells.

How do you fight better and repair afterwards?

You get worse at arguing and better at stopping, because a clumsy repair beats an elegant point. A repair is anything either of you does to stop the argument getting worse: a joke, a hand on an arm, “that came out badly, let me try again”.

• Start softly. A hard opening is difficult to recover from.
• Complain about the thing. The bins, the timing, the plan you did not know about. Leave their character out of the sentence.
• Accept one true part, early. Say the part you agree with before you defend yourself.
• Agree the break in advance. Agree the words and the minimum time while nothing is wrong, and whoever calls it reopens it.
• Ask about the worry. Almost every entrenched position has a fear underneath, and the fear is more negotiable than the position.
• Repair badly. A clumsy attempt that lands is worth more than a good one you never make.
• Finish it out loud. An argument that trails off into silence has been postponed, and it returns with interest.

A repair lands when the ordinary warmth underneath is in reasonable shape, so rebuilding that warmth is what makes the hard conversation possible. All of this assumes 2 people of roughly equal power who both afford to be honest. Where one of you controls the other, better technique gives the controlling partner a better vocabulary, and couples therapy is the wrong room.

These steps fail when you are both flooded, when contempt has arrived, or when the break is taken and never reopened. That is what the session is for.

Questions people ask

How much arguing is too much?

Frequency is the wrong measure. What matters is whether the arguments end, whether repair happens, and whether either of you is afraid.

Is going to bed angry a mistake?

No, a flooded body is unable to resolve things on demand. Agree that it is unfinished, say when you will come back to it, sleep, and then come back to it.

My partner says everything is fine and it is not. What then?

Make the conversation smaller and shorter, because pushing harder confirms the fear. Saying everything is fine is usually avoidance learned in a house where conflict was dangerous.

Is it normal to have the same fight for years?

Yes, because most conflict is about lasting differences. The content stays, and the way the fight goes is the part you change.

Is one person able to change the pattern alone?

Partly, because a softer start, an early admission and a proper break change what the other person responds to. What one person is unable to do alone is get the acknowledgement they are owed.

Sources

• The Gottman Institute, Managing Conflict: Solvable vs. Perpetual Problems
• The Gottman Institute, The Four Horsemen: The Antidotes
• Carrère, S. and Gottman, J. M., Predicting Divorce among Newlyweds from the First Three Minutes of a Marital Conflict Discussion, Family Process, 1999
• Kiecolt-Glaser, J. et al., Hostile Marital Interactions, Proinflammatory Cytokine Production, and Wound Healing, Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005

How this article was written. I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.