What is a conflict avoidant couple affair?

June 10, 2024. Originally published March 11, 2017. This article was part of the original Why Couples Fight Series from the OG CTI blog. Revised and updated.

I’ve helped many couples recover from their affairs. Sometimes, I see a type of couple known as Conflict Avoidant couples.

This will not be a laundry list of sins or a catalog of moral deficits.

It will review the emotional interplay between different types of couples and the intrinsic meaning each type of affair pattern reveals about the couple's dynamic.

Each is archetypal of a classic marital impasse or chronic problem that the affair seeks to alleviate.

Like all affairs, a conflict-avoidant couple affair has a straying spouse (we'll call them the involved partner or IP) and a hurt partner (we'll call them the HP). Conflict-avoidant couples can have either partner in the role of the Involved Partner. The essential characteristic of conflict-avoidant couples is a smothering blanket of civility and regulated courtesy.

The IP is typically wracked with mounting dissatisfactions because the couple has never mastered the ability to fight fair or have frank discussions about their differences. Conflict-avoidant couples are often poorly differentiated. When I studied the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, I found that, unlike other models, it had a particular approach to working with Conflict-Avoidant couples.

Research typology of conflict avoidance affairs

Research tells us that Conflict Avoidance affairs typically start with couples in their twenties and thirties. The first affair often begins before the couple has been married for 12 years. These affairs are usually brief, superficial, and have little emotional involvement. The Hurt Partner frequently presents in therapy as sporadically angry but also paradoxically super-reasonable and "here."

“The Conflict Avoidant couple affair is an affair born of mounting frustration, poor communication, and opportunity's reoccupation with a new baby or career pursuits, a common tipping point.

Conflict-avoidant couples are often seen as ideal.

Ironically, to friends and family, the conflict-avoidant couple seems perfect. The couple is superficially thoughtful, regulated, and polite, but the partners are so profoundly invested in avoiding conflict that they collaborate in presenting an "as-if" “relationship. They focus intently on how things should be, but not as they are.

On rare occasions where courage is mustered, and differences are brought up, it is common for the listening partner to remind the tentative complainer that "some things are just not worth fussing about."

The perfectionistic lens is so intense that the partners even have difficulty noticing their dissatisfaction. This denial of reality is often a breeding ground for depression. As a result, resentments and unresolved issues continue to pile up.

As usual, the history of the family of origin tells us a great deal. In my Family-of-Origin Interviews, I typically see that these couples learned that conflict was to be avoided for the greater good of the family. They were constantly urged to be sunny and optimistic.

Their parents taught them that anger is always wrong. In many cases, they were even punished for mild negativity, such as disagreeing. As a result, these partners never learned to value differences, discuss problems, or even acknowledge that problems existed in the first place. Entrenched values from class and culture are sometimes the backdrops to these parental attitudes.

Intrinsic meaning of the affair in conflict-avoidant couples

Conflict Avoidant affairs are emotionally shallow and are rarely severe. They are a strategy to demand attention and challenge the status quo. Therapists recognize that the real issue for these couples is not infidelity; it is the habitual tendency to avoid conflict itself.

All-purpose therapists often make the mistake of relaxing their therapeutic effort, thanking the Therapy Gods that they were sent an infidelity case.

They think that because the Conflict Avoidant HP is quick to forgive, the affair is framed as a momentary lapse in judgment. The therapist mistakenly believes their work with the couple will be light duty. This is how an inexperienced therapist can let you down.

Conflict-avoidant affairs become a habit.

Partners prone to conflict-avoidant affairs tend to continue infidelities seriall”, “ven into subsequent marriages, long after their first marriage has collapsed under the weight of their many prior indiscretions.

I have seen clients carry their tendency to engage in conflict-avoidant infidelity into their second and even third marriages. A Conflict-Avoidant Couple Affair pattern that remains untreated eventually mutates over time into a Split-Self Affair pattern.

Unless the underlying conflict avoidance is confronted, the affairs usually continue. And yet, amateur couples therapists often miss out on the fact that the couples' tendency toward conflict avoidance sets them up for failure. The pattern of conflict avoidance is far more critical than infidelity.

Science-based couples therapist knows that premature forgiveness is highly problematic... amateur "all purpose" therapists see them as an "easy" couple" because "forgiveness" is on the table from day one.

The straying partner is often the first to contact us. They take great pains to fall on their sword, accepting total responsibility. The complete acceptance of responsibility by the IP is the hallmark of the Conflict-Avoidant Couple affair.

It is the only affair pattern where the involved partner expresses remorse and occasionally befuddlement.

One husband asked me after six workplace affairs over four years:

Please help me understand...how could I do that to Nancy?

Conflict Avoidant couples tend to enter couples therapy... and then the involved partner reveals the ongoing affair.

It's unusual for the in’olved to want their affair to be exposed unconsciously exposed. Their affair partner is a third wheel and is usually the least important person in the therapy office. These affairs exist to be revealed or uncovered.

The motivations behind the affairs are genuinely confusing to the Involved Partner because the lessons we learn in our families of origin often bind and blind us in unexpected ways.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.