Normal Conflict in Love

People who come to me for couples counseling often ask “what’s normal” in a happy, healthy relationship. In some ways this is a difficult question because there is a wide range of variation in how couples get along. I also generally try to steer couples away from thinking in terms of “normal,” or “healthy” because when things aren’t going well they can use these terms in blaming or judgmental ways towards each other. However, I can say a few things about what’s reasonable to expect in well-functioning relationships and properly handled conflict, and then how things shade over into distressed relationships and toxic conflict.

Some friction, disappointment and hurt are inevitable in any relationship. It’s how these are dealt with that make all the difference.

In his extensive research following couples over decades, John Gottman found that “both conflict-avoiding and volatile, passionate couples can have stable, happy marriages.” Along the same lines, “anger in marital interactions did not predict divorce, whereas contempt and defensiveness did so reliably.” More on contempt and defensiveness in a moment.

In a fight, it’s normal to feel hurt and want to strike back (though again, how you do it matters). As Dan Wile points out, in a fight it’s normal to overvalue our own positions and undervalue those of our partners (a variation of the fundamental attribution error). In a fight it’s hard — if not impossible — to be completely empathic with your partner, and as much as we might not want to curse, as Dan says, “sometimes nothing but a good swear word will do!”

In part, the difference between happy and unhappy couples is a matter of degree. For example, virtually all couples have some degree of a pursue-withdraw cycle. This is where one partner tends to take on more of the relationship maintenance and be more emotionally expressive, while the other tends towards being quieter and more solitary or autonomous. Happy couples manage to balance these qualities out and have some acceptance for each other. On the other hand, distressed couples get into a cycle in which they blame each other for those traits. Pursuit turns into attack and withdrawal becomes shutting out.

At this point, negativity bias kicks in, and we over-personalize each others’ behaviors — seeing them as expressions of not caring, not prioritizing us or the relationship, etc. The attack and withdraw positions intensify into what Gottman calls “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”: criticism and contempt on the attack side, and defensiveness and stonewalling (shutting down) on the withdrawal side. As the “Four Horsemen” title implies, once these become prominent features in a relationship — and in the absence of outside help — they spell doom the vast majority of the time. It could be said that they are “normal” elements of distressed relationships. Unless corrected, they predict the relationship’s eventual demise with a high degree of accuracy.

Criticism and contempt prompt feelings of shame and inadequacy, while defensiveness and stonewalling trigger feelings of abandonment — it is self-evident that none of those feelings will sustain happiness on a chronic basis.

Also common in distressed relationships are power struggles and talking in absolutes. These are somewhat related and are both expressions and causes of ill-will. Talking in absolutes includes the frequent use of universal quantifiers such as “always” and “never,” rather than more moderate expressions like “a lot of the time,” “often,” “rarely,” etc. Ultimatums are another form of absolutes. Examples are threats of ending the relationship, demands that things happen on a certain timeline, and so forth.

Power struggles are characterized by an opposition of wills. This can be as simple as a “yes it is,” “no it’s not,” type argument, through more complex conflicts involving multiple overlapping areas of disagreement where each person is digging their heels and trying to force their points, to highly involved and destructive “tit-for-tat” exchanges of threatening behaviors and communications.

All of these negative communications and behaviors are desperate individual measures attempting to restore a sense dignity, respect, being cared for, connected, comforted, and accepted, among other things. In that sense they are normal human responses. Unfortunately however, what they create is the opposite of what is wished for, with the result that both parties continue to miss what really matters to each other. When we feel increasingly unheard in this way, we feel more urgency to try to get our points across, which leads to more exaggeration (universal quantifiers, ultimatums), which results in more feeling of threat, and so on.

In well-functioning relationships, by contrast, these things are normal:

• Doing and saying things that engender trust and show caring even when we are upset. Couples that stay together show a ratio of 5 positive communications for every one negative during conflictual conversations (Gottman). In non-conflictual conversations it’s more like 20:1!
• If we can’t manage that in the moment, we repair as quickly as possible afterwards.
• We actively look for and think about the good in our partners: what they do, how they are, and what we appreciate about them.
• We label and express our own emotions rather than blaming, and cultivate awareness of our partner’s distress and what’s difficult for them too (see Kelly Eden’s excellent Labeling Emotions — it works with adults too!).

• We are careful to moderate our language and behavior, and speak and act respectfully, including restraining ourselves from exaggerated and negative characterizations of each other, and avoiding the Four Horsemen.
• We don’t argue extensively about who said or did what — we accept that we have different perspectives, memories, values, and ways of being in the world, and there’s no absolute “truth” that makes one of us right and the other wrong.

Of course there are many more things that are normal in satisfying relationships (e.g., see Stan Tatkin’s 10 Commandments), and many ways of saying them, but that’s a fair set for starters.

(I’m a psychologist with a private practice in Noe Valley, San Francisco)

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean?

My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence

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