Conflict — Arguing and Fighting

Is it normal to argue and fight in a relationship?

Yes, it is completely normal to argue and fight in a relationship, as everyone experiences relationship turbulence. Arguing 'well' is an acquired skill that improves with practice. However, if your disagreements are becoming nasty, frequent, or aggressive, leading to unresolved conflict, silence, rejection, hurt, and resentment, it's time to see a psychologist. Psychologists are experts in human behavior and relationship foundations, offering couples counselling to help break repetitive cycles of communication breakdown and teach skills to manage conflict without intense fights. They can also help explore deeper issues like anger, aggression, sadness, avoidance, anxiety, and depression that may contribute to arguments.

Conflict — Arguing and Fighting

Yes, it is completely normal to argue and fight in a relationship, as everyone experiences relationship turbulence. Arguing 'well' is an acquired skill that improves with practice. However, if your disagreements are becoming nasty, frequent, or aggressive, leading to unresolved conflict, silence, rejection, hurt, and resentment, it's time to see a psychologist. Psychologists are experts in human behavior and relationship foundations, offering couples counselling to help break repetitive cycles of communication breakdown and teach skills to manage conflict without intense fights. They can also help explore deeper issues like anger, aggression, sadness, avoidance, anxiety, and depression that may contribute to arguments.

Yes, it is completely normal to argue and fight in a relationship, as everyone experiences relationship turbulence. Arguing 'well' is an acquired skill that improves with practice. However, if your disagreements are becoming nasty, frequent, or aggressive, leading to unresolved conflict, silence, rejection, hurt, and resentment, it's time to see a psychologist. Psychologists are experts in human behavior and relationship foundations, offering couples counselling to help break repetitive cycles of communication breakdown and teach skills to manage conflict without intense fights. They can also help explore deeper issues like anger, aggression, sadness, avoidance, anxiety, and depression that may contribute to arguments.

Yes, it is completely normal to argue and fight in a relationship, as everyone experiences relationship turbulence. Arguing 'well' is an acquired skill that improves with practice. However, if your disagreements are becoming nasty, frequent, or aggressive, leading to unresolved conflict, silence, rejection, hurt, and resentment, it's time to see a psychologist. Psychologists are experts in human behavior and relationship foundations, offering couples counselling to help break repetitive cycles of communication breakdown and teach skills to manage conflict without intense fights. They can also help explore deeper issues like anger, aggression, sadness, avoidance, anxiety, and depression that may contribute to arguments.

Why Do We Argue and Fight?

Unless you clone yourself, it’s impossible to have a relationship with someone who agrees with you about everything — who would really want that, anyway? Disagreements and healthy debates in relationships help us change and grow, while offering us new perspectives which we might never be able to access. When you spend your life with another person with different needs and beliefs, disagreements are inevitable. Fighting and arguing, though, doesn’t necessarily need to be hurtful.

In most relationships (couples or otherwise) fights will inevitably centre around a few key issues. In a marriage for example, each of you may envision a different lifestyle for the both of you —maybe you love television and your spouse craves quiet time alone, or perhaps your spouse likes to be pedantic about cleaning, and you don’t value cleanliness in the same way — there are some differences between people that will never change; and as independent individuals, like it or not, we cannot control another persons behaviour. What we can do, however, is learn to communicate empathically: that is, understanding the needs and feelings of the other and communicating for the sake of honesty and compromise. Maybe the core of your arguments is that you find your partner’s family is intolerable — this is a challenging issue, and it may always be challenging. We are unable to control anyone else’s behaviours aside from our own. With good communication, an issue such as this, can be managed without constant fighting and arguments. Stubborn conflict is never a means to an end.

Fighting and arguing will often follow a predictable cycle; it starts with a single issue or two, but when you begin arguing, both sides are willing to say just about anything to “win.” Soon, you’re fighting about the entire history of your relationship, everything you’ve ever thought, done, or said, and everything about your future. It doesn’t have to be this way. We’ll show you how to break this cycle so that you can stay focused on the issue at hand.

The Role of Better Communication

Every couple wants better communication, but for most people, it’s tough to hone the skills necessary to actually master good communication. It’s easy to point the finger at your spouse, but good communication is a joint undertaking. By mastering better communication skills, you make it possible to discuss disagreements without being the antagonist.

Research suggests that some communication styles are more damaging than others. Those include:

Unfortunately, these behaviours are all too common in most relationships or marriages, and study after study has shown that they are major predictors of divorce. There are better ways of communicating, but you must be
willing to put in the work!

How The Three Seas Counselling Can Help

Three Seas helps you address your issues in a variety of ways. First, we’ll work with you to understand the core problems in your relationship. From there, we help you tackle each problem one by one, in a healthy and kind way. We’ll give you assignments for home so that you can practice what you’ve learned, and we’ll watch you discuss issues while offering meaningful feedback on what you can do better.

If we notice a prolonged pattern of unhealthy communication, we’ll work directly to help you disrupt this pattern. And if life stressors, mental illness, or unspoken disputes are at the heart of your challenges, we can help you address these, too. Our couples counselling practices are comfortable, discrete, and easy to find, and our Client Connect Team are warm and helpful

If you are tired of frustrations caused by old problems or feel your partner isn’t listening to you, call us and make an appointment to see a psychologist for couples counselling — (03) 9809 1000

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