If You Get Conflict Right, Your Relationship Can Thrive

Photo by Lauren Richmond on Unsplash

“If we fought like that, we’d still be married.”

I was watching the movie Life As We Know It on Netflix. I’m a big fan of rom-coms and their two hours of predictable plot twists and sappy demonstrations of love. Towards the end of this movie, one of the supporting characters says this line about his past marriage.

His words stuck out to me. They seemed so counterintuitive to everything we see in the #instagram relationship. You know the relationship where the husband brings home flowers every Wednesday after work, or the couple seems to take an exotic vacation every 6 weeks? Few people ever share the tears, the raised voices, the long periods of silence on a long car ride after vulnerable and real hurts have been expressed.

Conflict can feel isolating. It can feel like you are the only person with problems and everyone else is bopping around, peachy and super content.

To just break the surface tension, let’s just agree to be real here. Every couple fights. Every marriage has conflict. But fighting and conflict aren’t always bad things. It’s how you manage and address the conflict that comes up that will dictate the quality of your relationship.

Before Conflict

There are three main zones that surround any potential conflict you may have in your relationship. They are: before the conflict, during the conflict and after the conflict occurs. There are steps you can take in each of these zones that will go a long way towards strengthening healthy conflict and rooting out the unhealthy expressions of conflict in your relationships.

Identify hot buttons

No matter how mature we like to pretend to be, we all have hot buttons. The sooner you can get past the undeniable and start to actively identify what your hot buttons are, the better.

My wife and I know the areas of our marriage and our personalities that are pressure points. She knows my insecurities and I know hers. We’ve worked hard to identify those areas so that we aren’t purposefully leading each other into opportunities for unhealthy conflict.

We’ve also learned that when we need to have a moment of healthy conflict, it’s rarely a good idea to spring it on the other person. No one likes to be blindsided, so bringing the need for the conversation up days in advance can go a long way towards giving time for preparation and good emotional connection.

Identify tactics to break the unhealthy conflict cycle

Even if you list out your hot buttons, you’ll still fall into moments of pressing on those insecurities. We’re only human which means we do stupid things even when we know we shouldn't.

Therefore, it’s also helpful to talk with your significant other about how you both personally plan to break the conflict cycle when you start pressing into unhealthy areas. Maybe you need to physical distance, so you need to go for a walk. Maybe you need quiet. Maybe you like to write out your thoughts so you need a pen and paper. The point is: find a strategy that works for you and let your partner know it before the conflict breaks out.

During Conflict

You may be thoughtful and sweet before conflict, or remorseful and apologetic after a conflict. But in the middle of the conflict, that’s when the gloves come off. Instead of just letting loose, you can use a few tactics to fight fair and turn moments of conflict into healthy connection points in your relationship.

Time-outs

Relationship coach Kyle Benson says that “One of the best ways to prevent your fights from escalating out of control is to take an effective time-out.” He starts off by saying that the first step is establishing an agreed-upon sign to initiate a time-out. If you or your partner call for a time-out, you both need to honor that, know what that means, and ideally have a plan in place for when you come back together after the agreed-upon length of time.

“Summer Before Fall”

Craig Runde and Tim Flanagan wrote Building Conflict Competent Teams, a book which shares many helpful tips and tricks for dealing with conflict. One tactic to use while in the middle of a conflict is summer before fall, or as they explain, “summarizing another’s view before falling into an explanation of one’s own view.” Often you are tempted to just keep speaking over the other person, but practicing this technique can transform your ability to work through conflict well.

Have boundaries in what you say

Words sting and no matter how hard we try, harsh words stick with us and cling to our hearts. Knowing this, try to avoid crossing lines during a conflict that you wouldn't normally cross in your regular communication. My wife and I, for example, work hard to avoid swearing at each other during conflicts or arguments. We know that high emotions can lead to hurtful words, so we have lines like that in place that help us during a conflict or argument.

After Conflict

Arguments are inevitable — no one is able to avoid them completely. Even if you follow the best advice, you’ll still end up on the backside of conflict, needing to know how to approach your significant other with wisdom and grace.

Saying sorry

Saying sorry seems so simple, but so few people actually do it really well. Saying sorry never includes phrases like “I’m sorry if” or “I’m sorry that you.” If you really listen to what is being said in those apologies, the person isn’t taken ownership for their actions. They’re shifting the blame. A great apology is genuine, takes ownership, empathizes with the person who is hurt and doesn't assume that one sentence will make everything better.

Learning from the past

Part of the conflict resolution is learning and thinking about the role you played in the process of getting to that stage of the conflict. Every conflict is different in nuance but there are definitely core themes that you will continue to come back to time and time again. Even if you didn’t start the conflict you can still learn from the situation and work hard to have a positive impact on the future conflicts that may develop.

Getting it right

Most people view conflict as a negative thing and as a source of tension to be avoided in a relationship. Emotions can be messy and negative conflict can leave hurtful scars. Cutting out conflict from a relationship isn’t the answer, however.

If you can learn to manage good conflict in your relationship, you can thrive. With good guard rails, time-outs, and genuine apologies, conflict can strengthen your similarities, unite your differences, and keep you moving forward in great harmony.