How to Make Up After a Fight: A Couples Counselor’s Guide

Making up after you have been in a fight with your mate might be the most important skill you can learn in your relationship. For most of us it would seem like we should already know how to do this, but believe me, as a couples counselor this is one of the hardest things we learn on our relationship journey.

So if you are looking for guidance, here it is. First off, this is not easy. If it were simple we would all know how to do it already. Second, you can learn how. You have learned so many things in your life this is just something else to put in your tool box. Third, everyone can learn it.

All of us who are in a relationship have many things in common. First off, we all probably want it to work. We most likely want to live peacefully with the person we love. Another thing we probably all agree on is that we don’t want to fight. We just want to get along and experience good feelings with each other.

Yes, I believe we can all agree on what we want. Now here’s what we don’t want. We don’t want to get our feelings hurt. We don’t want to get mad at our mate. We don’t want to feel bad about ourselves or work too hard for our partner. I bet we can all agree on what we don’t want too.

As a counselor I often intervene with couples when they start to argue about who said what and who remembers what because that conversation can sometimes turn into a fight. I usually go into some sort of education to help them understand that they each have different brains, life experiences and ways of processing how information is received and stored.

This conversation helps reduce some of the tension and then we can continue our work in the session. But recently I fell victim to feeling so violated because my husband did not remember something I had told him three times!

Can you notice how when you are in a bad mood your relationship suffers? This pretty much happens to all of us. I know it happens to me, plenty. I will feel depressed, or anxious or worried about something and then I am in some kind of mood and then no one feels good around me.

I also know that if I am in such a mood, I am usually unaware that I am in a mood in that moment. After the mood passes I can look back and see how my upset feelings really impacted the way I acted. This is good to do, notice yourself after you have had an upset.

When you read the title you might say to yourself, “I don’t do that, I don’t withhold affection or love from my person.” The truth, though, is we all do it. Every one of us who is in a relationship does it. That’s because that’s how humans act when they get their feelings hurt. We don’t love our other when we are suffering. That’s a fact.

Think about it. You and your mate are having a disagreement. You feel they did something to you. They feel you did something to them. You are both mad at the other. Are you withholding love from your person then? Of course you are. We ALL do this.

I was talking with a friend recently and he told me something very interesting. He said that the two most common words used in all of history, the two words written about the most throughout time are the following: love and freedom.

Wow, I thought. These are such profound longings that in all the words used since the beginning of modern humans, love and freedom are what people write about the most. So I think it’s only fitting that you and I explore what these mean in our relationships, and I think they are exactly what everyone is after.

We all get wounded by the people we love. This is part of being human. The hard part though, when we are in a relationship, is putting the pain between you and your partner.
And we do this almost instinctively. We get our feelings hurt and boom the wall comes up or we tell them incredibly strongly how much they hurt us.

This pattern is pervasive with couples. I see it in my therapy practice. I live it in my own life. When I am hurt I am unable to ask for what I need. My instincts are to fight. I don’t raise my fists or anything, but my insides look for someone to blame. I usually become angry on the inside after I feel hurt and I express it, sometimes loudly.

There are lots of reasons to get mad at the people we love. It just seems to happen, sometimes right out of the blue. We don’t plan on getting angry, but as we all know, anger can just come out of nowhere and when it does—well, watch out. Anger is not very pretty.

I know I have been working on decreasing my anger for a long time. It’s not that anger is bad. It’s just that when we say harsh things, yell, or swear at someone we love… Well, there could be a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of damage. I just got tired of cleaning up the mess I made when I got angry.

Some of us just do a lot in our relationships. We listen to what our partner wants. We think about their needs and we do what we can to make them feel taken care of and happy. Many of us do this just automatically because we are kind, caring people. And so, it feels terrible when it appears “my husband still isn’t satisfied” or “my wife is never happy.”

But how many of us just get exhausted doing and doing everything we can and our partner is still unhappy? They are still not satisfied with all our help. And besides not having our partner happy, we are now exhausted because we have run out of gas.

I know this couple who are good friends. They have been together a long time and are good together in a lot of ways. But the other day the wife was telling me about something that was bothering her about her man. She told me that when she just tries to help him, he becomes irritated and then gets upset with her.

This has been happening a lot lately, and she says and she feels bad about it. The situation makes her frustrated. And as I listened to her, I realized that these two are such beautiful people; they are just having an innocent misunderstanding. This is what my mind saw: he wants to be independent, and she wants to be helpful.

Tag Archives: fighting

How to Make Up After a Fight: A Couples Counselor’s Guide

Why It’s So Hard to Make Up After a Fight

Why We Get So Mad When Our Partner Forgets What We Said

How Mood Affects Our Relationships

One Reason Withholding Affection Happens in Relationships

Love and Freedom: Two Things We All Want In Relationships

Emotional Distance in Relationships & How Pain Separates Us

Why Misunderstandings Make Us Mad

My Wife is Never Happy! What Do I Do?

How to Deal with Misunderstandings in Relationships