3 Ways to Help Conflict Go Over More Smoothly with Your Partner
How to navigate and recover from hard conversations with the one you love
Conflict is one of the most confusing and difficult things in any relationship. In these moments of tension and misunderstanding, it’s easy to want to throw the whole thing away.
After all, if we really loved and understood one another, we would never fight, right?
“Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”— Ronald Reagan
Julie Schwartz Gottman recently published a book called Fight Right. As soon as I saw the title, I was curious and excited that an authority on relationships was writing about the components of healthy conflict.
Her encouragements in that book include the fact that conflict is normal, that there are good and bad ways to resolve conflict (and specific behaviors we need to avoid), and that we must be willing to let our partner shape us—both during and after conflict.
“It’s only human to have conflicts. It’s even humane to have conflicts — often, it’s exactly the right thing to do. But we…
