Why do we fight in relationships?

Thursday, May 16, 2024. Revised and updated.

Why is conflict (which is inescapable in our most intimate friendships) so inherently fraught with peril?

Why do so many marital fights go so wrong… so fast?

• Harsh Start-Ups

It is an axiom of the Gottman Method of Couples Therapy that the way a conversation begins determines its end.

If a spouse brings up a conflictual topic in a harsh, abrupt, and aggressive way, they subordinate their desires and ardent wishes for something better to the anger of the moment.

Why do we fight in relationships? It all begins with a harsh start-up.

It is also true that bringing up tough subjects is not easy. Spouses rarely use “I -statements” or describe a longed-for remedy to the issue. That’s why I love the word “instead.”

But harsh start-ups don’t contain a recipe for renewal. They are more typically blaming and critical.

• Relationship Arguments: Defensive Deafness and Empathy Deficits

Gottman Method couples therapy tells us that a typical response to a harsh start-up is to be defensive.

Defensiveness is a poignantly human reaction, often lamented in hindsight. Defensiveness is devoid of empathy, validation or curiosity. It is a limbic response.

Interestingly, even though we can all identify with feeling defensive, the spouse with the critical agenda is usually annoyed and equally uncurious about the shame or guilt that may lie underneath the defensive response.

They feel unheard and invalidated, and they press their argument even harder. This leads to defensive deafness, raised voices, and increasingly blunt rebuttals.

Then, spouses start interrupting each other. Neither feels validated because nobody is listening. Both partners scurry to take the high ground as the more aggrieved partner (Benjamin, 2004).

Why do we fight in relationships? Because our reactive nervous systems are quicker than our new-fangled neocortex…

It’s interesting to note that the neocortex isn’t offline. Couples are more ambivalent about how they are reacting than they let on. But they become deaf to nuance and often miss repair attempts because they do not understand their critical importance. Even when they can see “the more…, the more” pattern of circular causation, provocative chestnuts fall from their lips, such as “I have an easier time talking to you if to weren’t such a… ( fill in unfortunate expletive here).”

• “All We Do is Argue…” The Roach Motel of Negative Reciprocity

As the argument escalates, both partners enter into a toxic state of negative reciprocity. This is not the same as an intense disagreement, which, although uncomfortable, might even be productive.

Both get louder, more aggressive, and more entrenched. Validation, acknowledgments, or empathy are impossible.

The argument has become a runaway train. And the debate has become somehow more symbolic, more essential than the original topic ever was.

• The Collapse of the “Couple Space”

At this point, our couple can only see an enemy. The “couple space” has collapsed. It has been replaced by what researchers Pizer and Pizer (2006) describe as a knot. The couple at this degree of entrenched escalation is incapable of seeing one another as individuals with a different perspective. They have also typically reached the point where declaring a time-out is highly unlikely.

Their nervous systems have tricked them into believing that this is a life-and-death conflict, and they are becoming stuck in the roach motel for lovers. With High-Conflict couples the pattern is predictable; neither will withdraw. Neither will yield. And both want to prevail (Gottman, 2011).

• Kitchen Thinking and Kitchen Sinking

At this point, negative reciprocity is well underway. Kitchen thinking and kitchen sinking expand the negative discussion to past offenses and character assassination. Researchers Jacobson and Christiansen, developers of the pre-Gottman Integrated Behavioral Couples Therapy Model, call this stage “vilification” (Jacobson & Christiansen, 1996). Gottman describes it as contempt, the most toxic of the Four Horsemen of marital conflict.

Couples therapist Dan Wile has been described by John Gottman as “a genius” and the “greatest living couples therapist.” When I trained with Dan back in 2014, it was like drinking from a fire hose.

Dan pointed out way back in 1993 that contempt involved criticizing behavior, feelings, character, and intent, all of which culminate in a globally negative interpretation of your partner. Dan is clear that criticizing intent is particularly hurtful because it is so cuttingly contemptuous, and assumes moral authority over an unworthy partner.

• “My Husband and I Argue Everyday…” Why? Because the Partner in Our Head is So Strong…

When we escalate and feel utterly invalidated, existential grief kicks in.

We are acting just the way our spouse most fears that we will (Real, 2007). Terry Real, another great thinker in contemporary couples therapy, calls this partner in your head a “core negative image.”

As Arthur Nielsen put it in his brilliant new book A Roadmap for Couples Therapy, ”the woman who fears abandonment feels abandoned, the man who fears assaults on his competence feels assaulted.”

This feeling of being besieged by your beloved reinforces criticality and defensiveness. Partners with reasons to feel shame or guilt feel it even more acutely and defend against it.

• Vengeance, Alienation, and Negative Sentiment Override

Contempt becomes a refuge because Nielsen says, “hurt people…hurt people.”

As these recurring escalation cycles become entrenched, couples feel hopeless and doubtful about their future together.

Respect and goodwill erode to the nubs. Even self-respect and self-confidence take a hit. Nielsen reports that many of his clients indicate during their assessment that “I don’t like the way I am with my partner.”

Over time, Negative Sentiment Override becomes the norm. Escalating couples gradually develop a hair-trigger response to one another.

We fight in relationships because they matter…

Gottman and Levinson (1999) point out that it doesn’t have to be this way. Couples can pierce the fog of war and perceive a crisis of meaning. They can take a deep breath and ask, “What’s happening to us?”

They can also seek science-based couples therapy to steady themselves and acquire new skills. Upon successfully doing so, many couples experience a new pride in their newfound resilience and fair-fighting skills (Feldman, 1979).

They can model this resilience for their children, which is the real dividend and lasting legacy of good couples therapy. If you read this far, let me know, maybe I can help.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

Are you ready for good couples therapy?

RESEARCH:

Benjamin.J. (2004). Beyond doer and done to: An intersubjective view of thirdness. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 73, 5-46.Feldman, L.B. (1979).

Marital conflict and marital intimacy: An integrative psychodynamic-behavioral-systemic model Family Process, 18, 69-78.Gottman, J.M., & Levinson, R.W. (1999).

What predicts change in marital interaction over time: a study of alternative models. Family Process, 38, 143-158.Christensen, A., Dimidjian, S., & Martell, C. R. (2015).

Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy. In A. S, Gurman, J. L. Lebow, & D. K. Snyder (Eds.), Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy, 5th Edition (pp. 61-94). New York: Guilford.Pizer, B., & Pizer, S.A., (2006).

“The gift of an apple or the twist of an arm:” Negotiation in couples and couples therapy. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 16, 71-92.Real, T. (2007) The new rules of marriage. New York: Ballantine Books.