Couples: When Conflict Escalates

What happens when you and your partner have been arguing more lately, and your arguments have been getting worse? Perhaps the situation looks something like this:

You have said things that you regret and don’t mean, and it feels like you use everything that you have said against each other each time. You really love each other and you want to stay in your relationship, but you are worried that the conflict has taken on a life of its own and at some point it will become too much.

Conflict in a relationship is practically inevitable. You will disagree. One or both of you won’t be at your best, and conflict will flare up. My suggestion is to take a moment when you are getting along well, when the stakes are low, and have a philosophical discussion about conflict. In other words, talk about how you fight. Here are some ideas that might help get you started.

First, the bad news: people speak carelessly all the time, even to the people they love the most. When people whose words have power over us get things wrong – which they do, because they are human – these words can have lasting negative effects.

Here’s the good news. You know this already, but it bears repeating: the mind goes places we sometimes wish it did not. But just because an idea pops into your mind doesn’t mean that you subscribe to it; and just because your mind entertained the notion that something was possible doesn’t mean that you believe it to be true. Messed-up thoughts about our partners occur to all of us. Sometimes, especially when we are stressed, these messed-up thoughts slip straight from our brains and out of our mouths. And of course we cannot un-say them or un-hear them, can we?

It sounds dire, but what if we consider that people get stuff wrong about each other all the time. Your parents got stuff wrong about you. If you have children, you will get stuff wrong about them. Your partner will get stuff wrong about you, and you will get stuff wrong about your partner. Just because you said things to each other doesn’t make them true.

But what if the stuff you said about your partner actually is true. And maybe all the stuff your partner said about you is true. Fine, let us assume for a moment that it is, and neither you nor your partner is a perfect angel. What are the implications of the fact that you are not in a relationship with a perfect angel? When you each think about each other’s flaws, is “fixing” what is wrong with them a condition of remaining in the relationship? If not, what makes it worth remaining in the relationship despite these imperfections?

On the other hand, what if it turns out that one of you, or both of you, took a bit of poetic license in the heat of the moment? What if it turns out that you wanted to win the argument or push back because you felt attacked? What if your discussion leads you to discover that “Conflict” has taken on a life of its own, separate from that of the relationship that you both want to nourish? Wouldn’t it be ironic if you found yourselves working as a team in order to diminish the influence of Conflict on your relationship?