3 Reasons Fights Can Propel A Relationship To Evolve
The desire not to rock the status quo is a commonality shared among so many of us. Perhaps we have a fear of confrontation, or a desire to always keep peace. Maybe we only want relationships for the fun of it, and when it gets hard we disengage.
Two years ago, my ex and I went separate ways after a decade long relationship. Enough years had passed for me to start noticing the cyclical nature of relationships. One valuable lesson I’ve learned: as much as you get along with somebody, there isn’t a control switch for when the fun takes a pause and things get real. In those moments, the health of your relationship hinges on you and your partner’s capacity to navigate confrontation in a way that allows each other to be heard.
I’d like to preface my use of ‘real’ to include interactions outside of arguments and fights. Doing life with somebody for the long run includes making life altering decisions, laying down roots for the start of a family, solidifying a deep network of social bonds. You know, the good stuff that really impacts each other’s realities.
However, there will be times where you find yourself in the midst of a fight. If you are struck with frustration, anger and discontent with your partner, take it as an opportunity for relationship growth!
The caveat: in order for a relationship to grow from something so raw, both people have to be willing to see a continuity in the relationship. They need to have both feet in the door and deeply want to see a tomorrow with each other.
Here are three reasons fights can facilitate relationship growth.
1) It pushes you to learn how to be more vulnerable
Vulnerability with your partner gives you the permission to be more than the mask you show the world. Our inner struggles, pain, and insecurities play a hand in shaping our identity. Often times they are the driving force for many of the things we do or don’t do. They are also responsible for a lot of the regrettable actions we have made in our lives.
Being single, I find that any personal limits I’m pushed towards can be drowned out if I really don’t want to deal with it. In a partnership, this can be very different. Avoidant behavior can lead to problems in the long run. A pause in communication can lead to unnecessary misunderstandings, unspoken wants or needs. The little things add up and will compound into a giant ugly mess.
Early on in my relationship, fights we had because of unspoken insecurities were exhausting. Initially, those fights were met with a lot of ego and verbal coercion to get each other to capitulate. Looking back, the coercion and arguments were just a way to get the other to agree so that the insecurity didn’t have to be dealt with and the ego protected.
Learn to communicate your fears with your partner. Being vulnerable is also an exercise of calibrating a balance point between the compassion you give, while preserving the authenticity of your own self-compassion. It’s always better to err on the side of vulnerability.
2) It creates an opportunity for the two of you to build a new middle ground
I’ve always imagined relationships like a Venn diagram. Where each circle is a representation of an entire universe. Universes expand — just like how we continually grow as individuals. Where the circles meet, is where you and your partner’s universe can intermingle. Where two frequencies can resonate and create a new harmony. Each individual brings their own experiences into this social experiment — the goal is to elevate each other’s experiences — for life to flourish further.
The relationship dynamics that two people establish on day one of their relationship is based on a snapshot of who they were at the time. As we learn and grow into more of who we are meant to be, we gain perspective. Of course, this means that whatever our beliefs about ourselves we held before might need to be reexamined. What no longer serves us as we move forward in life will need to be shed.
By year three, my ex and I had started making new moves in life. Change was inevitable. What it meant to us was that the current relationship dynamic at the time wasn’t working anymore. What we did know however, was that we wanted to continue being together.
In my experience it usually starts off like this: one partner is happy with the way things are but the other partner isn’t. This could be due to a myriad of factors, most of it summarized by the coziness of being in a comfortable routine with your life and partner.
Wants and needs change. Emotions change. Feelings change. If left unspoken, misunderstandings, contempt, discontent, and the like will start springing up.
Ideally, communication happens before things start boiling over.
If you find yourself in a fight because of the desire for change, take it as an opportunity to reevaluate the dynamics of the relationship. Hold space where the both of you can lay everything on the table, and examine what needs to be changed. Unfortunately, somebody is going to have to sacrifice a little bit of their comfort within the relationship in order to make space for an updated reality of the other. Be patient with each other and find a new middle ground that works for the both of you. Find the new parameters for the give and takes of a relationship.
The transition phase into the new middle ground will test your limits. At some point, trust that things will normalize and the fabric of your relationship reality will smooth out again.
3) Learn about what motivates both of your protective mechanisms in the face of confrontation
The ebbs and flow in my past relationship was something we acclimated to as the years progressed. We understood that things wouldn’t always be amazing. That’s just the way life is.
In instances when there was a feeling of suffocation or difficulty, or where we’d get stuck in a rut, weird things would happen. For example, an issue I struggled with was walking the line of narcissism in order to reclaim some form of autonomy. That would lead my ex to be more reactive to her emotions of jealousy. In turn that would create some sort of feedback loop of reactive emotions between the two of us.
To break this down further, the feeling of being suffocated was more so a response to my life circumstances and my impatience for not getting what I wanted in life immediately. These feelings of suffocation would creep its way into my relationship. I would react to the suffocation not knowing it was stemming from my desire for instant gratification, and frame it in a way that would impact my relationship.
At first, these manifestations of my darker nature were all reactions based on something I wasn’t aware of. I wasn’t introspecting in the right places! So we would argue about problems that were actually external to our relationship. These things would arise, and eventually through years of communication, we found the root cause of what those arguments really stemmed from.
The more I had a grasp on what my protective mechanism was trying to ‘save’ me from, the less hyper-corrective my future reactions would become.
Develop the capacity to acknowledge each other’s darker aspects of humanity. Confrontation can stem from various emotions. Whether it’s resentment, outrage, contempt, impatience, frustration, jealousy or the like. Make an effort not to invalidate your partner’s emotions.
In the face of anger, ask yourself these questions:
- Is there the ability to maintain an open channel of communication?
- What happens when either you or your partner are overwhelmed with emotion?
- Does somebody say they understand, or they are listening, but are only listening through a frame of reference that validates their reality?
- How do you or your significant other react in the midst of confrontation?
- Is the motivation coming from a place where there is a need to regain some form of autonomy?
- Is it happening because of past trauma or unresolved personal issues?
Get to the root of why a fight is happening.
The reasons for confrontation and fighting can be an outlet for unspoken insecurities. Ask yourself, if the reason for a fight is a way to protect your own ego. At its worst, an ego protective mechanism can lead people to take out their frustrations and discontent on the people around them.
Our loved ones are always the easiest targets. Make sure that you are not using the people around you as an outlet!
It’s good to remind ourselves that we don’t know everything about ourselves! Your partner can be the truest reflection of who you are — long term relationships will do that. They will challenge you to check yourself often. It’s a privilege to have somebody to want to share the process of doing life with you.
Allowing for a space where both people in a relationship can act on their anger, discontent, or resentment can help shed light on some deeply important core beliefs that you each hold.
Remember that every relationship is a give and take. In an ideal world, there is some form of equality within the social dynamics between two people. What that equality looks like is dependent on the type of individuals that get together.
There are aspects of ourselves that we get to only discover within the dynamics of a relationship. If there is a practice of regularly checking in with each other — having open dialogue on what works and no longer works within the relationship, than major conflicts can be mitigated.
