Conflict in Relationships: Help Make Peace, Not War

When we get into a scrape with the person we love we often wind up in a difficult place. We sometimes hurt and feel unloved. Maybe we get mad at our mate and sulk or lash out. These are very common positions that many couples engage in. No one likes them. They are difficult and unpleasant.

As a couples specialist I am always trying to understand how to explain relationships in the simplest ways so people can improve how they interact with the person they love. And as I was thinking about this concept it occurred to me that there are really two places we end up occupying after a fight. We are either doing something about our partners or we are doing something about ourselves.

Learning how to overcome anger can be a struggle, but you can definitely do it if you put your mind to it.

I was thinking about all the people we know who get mad. You know who they are. They are the ones we are careful around because we don’t want to get them upset. They are the ones who get mad out of nowhere and then there is a problem.

We all know someone or some people like this. Maybe it’s you. I know it’s me. When I was a little girl if something didn’t go my way I got mad. This is what I saw my mother do when she was disappointed or frustrated. This is what I learned to do too.

When people get upset, some of us just naturally think people know. It’s not uncommon to believe that if we get our feelings hurt, the person who hurt them knows what they did. We also sometimes believe that everyone else might know what happened too. Our thoughts, especially when we get our feelings hurt, are very strong and convincing.

Figuring out how to control anger issues in your relationship can be challenging. Everyone gets mad. Some of us even blow up.

Controlling anger issues in a relationship means blowing up less often and learning how to minimize the damage when, despite our best efforts, an episode occurs after all.

Dealing with anger in a relationship can be difficult. Anger can push us away from our partner, so learning how to control anger’s influence on our lives and partner is incredibly important. Many of us don’t develop effective tools for dealing with anger until later in life, if ever. If you’re reading this, maybe you could use a helping hand.

If you get angry at your mate, you are not alone. If you get really mad and yell or do other things to your partner when you get upset… again, you are not alone. Anger is pretty common in relationships. And this is not an article about how terrible it is. This is a message about what to do about it.

If you are human, you have felt jealous. You might even have some early memories of really feeling the pain of jealousy when you were young. I like to think it’s pretty common for all of us as we grow up to experience the hurt associated with being jealous.

But why do we keep feeling it and how to do we deal with it when we grow up and are in what we consider an adult relationship? Why is it we often still get re-injured or we re-injure our mate and it always centers around jealousy?

As a couple counselor I work with people in relationships. Often the difficult issues surround feelings of jealousy. So let’s talk about it and understand what happens to us and our partner when we feel it.

When we fall in love with our person we pretty much land in a wonderful place full of possibilities and promise that leads us to wanting more of this great feeling we are both sharing with each other. Falling in love is one of the most miraculous things we do as humans.

So why, after finding our person do we spend so much time trying to understand how they think and act and get frustrated in the process? Sometimes it can even feel as if we are partnered with someone we just don’t get. “Why do they do things the way they do?” We might be asking our self this question. Or, “Who thinks like that?” When we ask these questions we are not sure about our mate. They are so different we just don’t understand them.

Having an argument with the person we love is one of the most difficult events we can go through in a relationship. When we are not upset, our special person is our favorite individual. We love them. When we get our feelings hurt, or we get misunderstood or get angry at them, they turn from our loving soulmate to someone we war with.

And when we get pulled into an argument with our loved one it doesn’t matter what came before the argument. It doesn’t matter that we get along most of the time. It doesn’t matter that we had a great day just a few minutes before. All that matters is that we are hurt, feel unloved and now we are MAD!

I know every time I am feeling good and I say yes to something I always feel better. It’s as if good positive energy becomes bigger. I noticed this recently when I was reading an article about humans and their pets.

A recent study talked about how when pet owners look into the eyes of their pet, both animal and human get a dose of the pleasure hormone in their bodies. That hormone is called dopamine. And it happens naturally when we are engaged with our pet at a deep level.

Wonder how to stop arguing? If you have nothing to say that will help things, sometimes the best medicine is to remove yourself from the situation until you have some time to cool down and think.

Have you ever been so mad at your mate that you just can’t get yourself to talk with them? You know it’s not right that you refuse to tell them what is going on but there is something inside you that will just not budge. No matter what your thoughts are or what they are saying to you, you remain tight-lipped and silent.

Tag Archives: fighting

Conflict in Relationships: Help Make Peace, Not War

How to Overcome Anger, Because Mad Makes a Mess

How Your Husband / Wife Doesn’t Mind-Read, & Why It Matters

How to Control Anger Issues in Your Relationship

Dealing with Anger in a Relationship

How Jealousy in a Relationship Divides Us

Why Understanding in a Relationship is Hard to Come By

Why I Feel So Lonely After an Argument

Dopamine, Love, and Connectedness in Relationships

How to Stop Arguing with My Spouse, Boyfriend, or Girlfriend