Katheryn Kiker

A disclaimer: this blog article is NOT intended for those in abusive relationships. This is from the perspective that a relationship is healthy where both partners are trying to do their best to be supportive and navigate conflict.

One of the worst feelings is when you get into conflict with a partner. It’s like the person you love most in the world doesn’t make any sense anymore, and it can be hard to see them beyond what you’re fighting about.

Because of how awful it feels to fight, sometimes we avoid bringing up what bothers us altogether, sweeping it under the rug. Or we wait until we can’t take anymore and we explode, thinking how big the fight feels is a sure sign we’ll be breaking up. Sometimes we have gone through the same fight over and over and now feel so hopeless, wondering if there’s a way to be honest about how we are feeling toward our significant other without both people becoming triggered.

“These two conditions are universal: to long for a connection and to find ways to protect ourselves.”

Tara Brach, PhD.

This quote by Tara Brach really sums up a lot of our pain in relationships. When we’re fighting it brings out a natural tendency to protect ourselves, a mindset that often has us look at our partner under great scrutiny to see how we can defend ourselves against them. We can start tallying up their offenses which leads to resentment. Defending ourselves is at odds with our need for connection with our partners, and it can be hard to flip the script and see them as someone who loves us.

When you choose a partner, you are also choosing their flaws. When we begin relationships we are not really thinking about the parts we don’t like about the person, and have a hard time wrestling with it when we finally are exposed to them, and this wrestling may extend for years and years. Maybe some of us know what our deal-breakers are but we don’t really think about the fighting that happens because of difference in personalities. But whether you decide consciously or not to accept the other person, being in a relationship means you are opening yourself up to the possibility you may be hurt by those same flaws.

A skill that I help couples clients build is to change your perspective on conflict. Both parties can gain the mindset that it is inevitable that couples will fight, and bring up issues when you first notice them instead of when you’ve reached a breaking point can make a huge difference. We all have our own ways of being inconsiderate and we can incorporate this as a fact in our relationship- instead of when our partner does something to upset us it means we have to defend ourselves and get into protective mode, we can try to remember the specific ways we can trust our partners, how they show us they care, and what they do bring to the table despite their limitations that often lead to these disagreements. Being mindful of the ways our partner loves us before we come to them with how they’ve hurt us can be very effective.

When we get more preventative with the issues that bother us and see our partners as flawed humans trying their best to make us happy, it changes the situation from turning into a fight (because we’re hurt and holding onto the belief our partner did it on purpose and doesn’t care) to giving our partner feedback because we have a larger understanding of their fundamental care for us. It may take a bit of work to start to notice when we are beginning to protect ourselves and communicating with our partner, but it is the work worth doing in any relationship.