Inside this Article
What if I told you that conflicts are good for your marriage?
“Wow, Coach, how can you say that?”
Healthy conflicts are necessary for any relationship. They increase trust, foster understanding and make connections between partners even stronger.
Unhealthy conflicts, on the other hand, lead to built-up resentment, reduce trust, increase anxiety and can damage your relationship over time.
The issue is, in my years of experience as a marriage counsellor, most couples do not even know when they are having unhealthy conflicts. This may be a result of past relationships or childhood experiences.
To help you out, I have outlined 5 signs that you are having unhealthy conflicts in your relationship.
1. Name Calling – Using insulting or demeaning words.
Name-calling is a harmful behaviour where you use insulting or painful words to demean or belittle someone. It is a form of verbal abuse that can have serious emotional and psychological effects on your partner.
Examples of name calling include calling someone names based on their appearance (e.g. “Such a fat person”), intelligence (e.g. “You are very dumb”) or personality traits (e.g. “You are so lazy, you never help”)
Name-calling is a common sign of unhealthy conflicts in marriages. When you resort to name-calling in your marriage, it is a big indicator that you are both struggling to communicate effectively and respectfully resolve your differences.
In the end, by the time you’re both done calling each other names, you would have pierced hard at your partner’s insecurities, leaving them embarrassed and ripping off whatever safe environment for vulnerability you might have created in your marriage.
Now, if you have children and they see you as parents calling each other names, it can harm their emotional development. In the future, these experiences can come back as trauma in their own relationships. To find out how to resolve conflict amicably, read through this article.
2. Yelling – Screaming, shutting the other person down
Not allowing your partner to speak in an argument, excessively interrupting and controlling the conversation, and always throwing tantrums and shouting to have the last word.
Do you know what the difference between a safe space and a toxic environment is? It is the ability to be vulnerable and still be heard without being shut down or feeling judged.
When you constantly want to dominate conversations, interrupt your partner, or seek to have the final say, it is a clear sign of a problem in your communication and conflict resolution skills.
No one likes a controlling environment. Marriage is a partnership, not a competition.
Speaking in a manner that wants to control every conversation reflects an underlying power imbalance in your relationship. Because you want to maintain your sense of superiority, you feel the need to dominate the conversation which isn’t a good strategy for resolving conflicts.
Constantly interrupting or talking over your partner’s voice shows that you lack respect for your partner’s feelings or opinions. Rather than anybody feeling heard, this can lead to frustrations when trying to find a common ground.
You can’t hear them because you’re speaking over their opinions. They can’t say more because they know they are not being heard. Controlling communication is also a form of emotional manipulation.
If a partner keeps up this form of communication over time, it can damage your relationship. When your partner knows that their needs and feelings are not being valued, they will rather go into a shell of their own leading to feelings of resentment, distrust and emotional distance.
3. Stonewalling – Refusing to speak or respond, keeping malice
Shuts down every attempt to have a conversation. Uses days of silence to punish the other person. Makes the other person repeatedly beg before having a conversation.
A lot of couples stonewall in marriages without even knowing what their action is called. According to the Gottman Institute, men are more likely to stonewall with approximately 85% of men prone to this character.
What then is stonewalling?
This refers to a situation where one partner puts up a wall, refusing to engage in conversation with their partner or shutting themselves off entirely. Think of it as one partner setting a wall between them and their partner.
Examples of stonewalling include refusing to speak or respond to your partner, holding grudges, and using silence as a form of punishment.
Stonewalling is often used as a strategy by partners to avoid addressing difficult conversations. By refusing to engage in a conversation with your partner, you may hope that they will avoid confronting you and the emotional discomfort that comes with it.
However, having difficult conversations is one of the key ways to handle conflict in a healthy manner. When you don’t address issues that are causing discomfort in your relationship, you are setting the ground for emotional disconnection to set in.
Withdrawing your emotional response from your partner is a form of emotional manipulation that does not solve conflicts. Instead, it further leads to frustration and reduces emotional connection.
4. Keeping Scores – Piling up past offences to nail the other person.
Bringing up several unrelated issues to score a point. “You are always late” “You did not pick up the kids last week.” “You left the dishes in the sink”.
While growing up, as children, we would usually keep the past actions of our friends to heart so we could revenge. However, doing this as an adult does not help with resolving conflicts in your relationship.
Keeping scores is the practice of counting and accumulating past actions of your partner that might have hurt you to use against them in a future disagreement.
When you bring up unrelated issues to make a point or “win” an argument, even when the original issue has been resolved, you are setting a destructive pattern that can significantly damage your relationship.
Instead of resolving the present issue, bringing up a past offence to make your point can escalate it. The conversation can quickly become a recounting of past events of both partners making it difficult to find a solution.
This can affect your connection as a couple negatively. If your partners know that you will hold their past mistakes against them, do you think they will be willing to be vulnerable around you?
5. Taking Advantage – Manipulating the other person, gaslighting
Shifting blame and never taking full responsibility for their part. Using tears, threats and violence to make the other person feel guilty. Never owning up to wrongs or giving sincere apologies for their mistakes.
Taking advantage, which includes manipulating, gaslighting, shifting blame, using emotional tactics, and avoiding accountability, is a harmful pattern that can severely damage a relationship. It creates an unhealthy power dynamic where one partner dominates and controls the other.
For example, Imagine a couple, David and Sarah. if David expresses concern about Sarah spending too much money, she might accuse him of being controlling and say he’s just trying to keep her from achieving her goals.
She also frequently shifts the blame onto David. If they get into an argument, she might claim that he provoked her or that she was only reacting to his behaviour. She never takes full responsibility for her actions or offers sincere apologies.
Anytime an argument is going out of her hands, she might threaten to leave him or harm herself if he doesn’t do what she wants.
From this instance, you can see how gaslighting, shifting blame and emotional manipulation can create a toxic environment where there is a negative emotional imbalance between couples.
It is difficult to have healthy conflicts when one partner constantly feels undervalued, lonely or isolated.
Wrapping Up
The problem is not that we have conflicts but that we allow unhealthy patterns and behaviours to build during and after conflicts.
I created a resource titled The 3C’s Guide – In this resource, I have broken down conversations and checkups you should be having to prevent unhealthy conflicts and escalations.
You will learn how to proactively resolve issues, have difficult conversations and communicate your feelings and needs in a safe and healthy way…
