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Posts Categorized: Conflict Resolution
How To Deal With Your Defensive Partner
How do you stop defensiveness from harming your relationship?
Your partner hurt your feelings or crossed a line. You want to share how you feel, but you never feel heard. Better yet, you have tried so many ways to talk about your feelings and get nowhere. They respond with explanation and frustration. They may say, “I would have gotten that done sooner, but I was busy.” Or “You are always so critical.” While we can’t control how your partner responds, we can increase the chance that they will listen by communicating in a positive and constructive way.
Read More6 Steps to Prevent Your Partner’s Defensiveness
Defensiveness puts up a wall in your relationship. Stop it before it starts.
A defensive person is emotionally closed off, argumentative, and often exhibits negative body language like crossed arms. They will deflect the conversation away from the original issue and either refuse to engage or launch loosely related counterattacks on their partner. This doesn't sound like the kind of person you would feel safe expressing your hurt or concerns with, does it? So how do you stop yourself or your partner from jumping to the defensive?
Read MoreStop Pokémon Go from Ruining Your Relationship
Should you say "stop" to Pokémon Go for the sake of your relationship?
Pokémon Go has quickly become nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. With so many players and an incredible amount of media hype in a culture arguably already electronically obsessed, many are concerned about how this augmented reality game could affect relationships.
Read MoreHow to Resolve Relationship Fights
Conversations about conflict may be hard, but they aren't impossible.
You may have heard the statistic that only 7% of what you communicate is in your words. The rest is made up of body language and tone of voice. In order to be heard and understood in relationship fights, we need to keep calm, actively listen, and respond mindfully rather than just reacting.
Read MoreHow to Communicate Hurt to Your Partner
Every relationship could happily do without dramatic confrontations and the mess that ensues. So how do you have the tough conversation without the theatrics or name calling? Overcoming hurt is not a simple thing. Each of you have an array of feelings and it is important for both of you to share what you need.
Read MoreCouples Advice: How Control in Relationships Can Backfire
You will be shocked by what I learned about control in relationships while mountain biking.
Read More3 Things That Can Influence An Affair
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Co Parenting Tips When In High Conflict
3 mindful practices for co-parenting in high conflict situations
Our first impression of relationships comes from our parents, whether we like it or not. The good news is that parents have a unique opportunity to help children receive love and construct safe boundaries. Now and again, however, parents struggle in their relationship with each other -- sometimes resulting in separation and divorce, other times requiring repair. What's one to do when there are kids in the mix?
Read MoreOvercoming Holiday Conflict with Family
The holidays are supposed to be a time of good cheer and bliss. But, as we all know, this time of year can also be very stressful. For some people, it can even be overwhelming. If you have conflict with your family, the holiday season can be especially frustrating. Memories of bad holidays from your childhood come to the surface, you find yourself in the same room with relatives you avoid all year, and emotional pain bubbles up.
Read MoreConflict Resolution: How to Fix a Fight in a Relationship
Steps on How to Repair and Pick Up After a Fight
Let’s face it: in the heat of an argument you can say things that are hurtful, passive aggressive, or downright untrue. So can your partner. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it IS possible to pick up after a big blow out and repair your relationship, restoring it to a healthy place.
Read MoreCommunication Advice: How to Practice Fighting Fair in Your Marriage
From an Emotionally Focused Therapy and Attachment Perspective - By Jen Zajac, MFT
There are some couples who fight explosively and often, and others who seem to rarely get into a heated argument. Perhaps you can recall separate relationships you have been in where each has had a different “fight dynamic”. Regardless of how you define what a fight is, we all at some point encounter conflict, or disagreements, in our relationships. If our emotional needs aren’t attended to, even the small things that get dismissed or “swept under the rug” can develop into larger issues later down the line. Merely avoiding a fight does not resolve conflict.
Read More3 Ways to Stop Being Defensive
When your partner brings up something that is bothering her in your relationship, it can be easy to put up a wall and start to defend yourself. But what if you took a deep breath and were careful about how you responded? Your partner is being vulnerable when she tells you something that hurt her, so shutting down with defensiveness will only teach her not to open up in the future. Here are some ways that you can learn to stop being defensive and own up to your own feelings and responsibility.
Read MoreHow to Deal With Fear in Your Relationship
Overcoming the Obstacles that Keep You Stuck
Many arguments between couples have fear at the heart. Whether it’s fear of abandonment, fear of being rejected, or a fear of falling apart – sometimes you can lash out at the person who you want to keep the closest to you. Even though the fight might look on the surface like it’s about something else, if you look close enough you can often find that some sort of fear is hiding just under the surface. By managing your fears, you can begin to calm the storm that has begun in your relationship and heal the wounds. Here are some tips for how to conquer the fear in your relationship so you can move into a healthy direction.
Read More5 Ways to Prevent a Fight
Quick tips on how to stop fighting in a relationship
Arguments in relationships become a cycle — when a specific pain point or topic gets brought up, one partner gets defensive and the other pushes to get the point across. One partner might always flee, and then the other has to chase him. You might also experience arguments more when one person is exhausted after a day at work. These patterns become a comfortable cycle, even though they may be detrimental to your bond as a couple.
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