Are We a High-Conflict Couple?
Every couple disagrees, but some relationships reach a point where conflict begins to dominate the experience of being together. Arguments escalate quickly, familiar grievances return, and conversations that began with a reasonable concern leave both people feeling angry, hurt, or increasingly alone in the relationship.
You may know exactly how the next argument will unfold. One of you raises an issue, the other becomes defensive or withdraws, and the conversation deteriorates from there. You recognize what is happening, perhaps even while it is happening, yet seem unable to stop it. Later, when things have settled, you may wonder how two people who care about each other can continue having conversations that leave them feeling so far apart.
Over time, the anticipation of conflict can become almost as difficult as the arguments themselves. You become sensitive to changes in tone, interpret ordinary questions through the history of previous disagreements, and begin protecting yourself before your partner has said very much.
How Conflict Changes a Relationship
Repeated conflict gradually influences how partners understand each other’s intentions.
A discussion about money may evoke longstanding concerns about fairness or responsibility. A disagreement about parenting can revive years of frustration about whose needs have received greater consideration. Each new interaction is understood partly through the experiences that preceded it, making even relatively minor disagreements difficult to resolve.
Research has consistently associated destructive conflict processes with poorer relationship outcomes. In longitudinal research, John Gottman and Robert Levenson identified patterns of negative interaction, defensiveness, and withdrawal associated with later marital dissolution. Other longitudinal research has linked frequent conflict and withdrawing behavior with subsequent declines in relationship satisfaction.¹ ²
These findings help explain how repeated interactions can influence the quality of a relationship over time. Couples develop expectations about one another, and those expectations begin shaping how they listen, interpret, and respond.
Pursuing & Withdrawing
One of the more painful dynamics in couples involves a partner who wants to discuss a problem and another who finds the conversation increasingly difficult to tolerate.
The person seeking engagement may feel dismissed or unimportant and push harder to be heard. The other may feel criticized, overwhelmed, or convinced that nothing they say will help, and withdraw further. Both can feel profoundly misunderstood, even as each person’s response reinforces the other’s distress.
This interaction, commonly described as the demand-withdraw pattern, has been studied extensively. Christensen and Heavey’s research found that the roles partners assume can depend partly on who wants change on the issue being discussed. Subsequent longitudinal research associated demand-withdraw interactions with declines in relationship satisfaction.³ ⁴
Understanding this dynamic allows us to examine what each partner experiences during the interaction and where a different response might become possible. It also helps explain why two people can leave the same argument with remarkably different understandings of what happened.
Resentment Changes the Meaning of New Conflicts
Resentment develops when hurt remains unresolved and begins influencing how later experiences are interpreted.
A forgotten commitment may evoke previous occasions when someone felt unimportant. A disagreement about finances may bring forward years of feeling alone with responsibility. A partner who has repeatedly experienced criticism may become defensive before understanding what the other person is asking.
The couple begins responding to an accumulated history of disappointment. Even a sincere attempt to address the current issue can be difficult to hear because previous experiences have made reassurance less convincing.
Working through resentment involves giving those experiences sufficient attention, understanding their continuing influence, and addressing injuries that have never been adequately resolved.
Contempt & Hostility
Contempt can be especially damaging to a relationship because it communicates disdain for the person with whom you are in conflict.
It may appear through ridicule, sarcasm intended to humiliate, eye-rolling, or speaking to a partner as though their feelings or opinions deserve little consideration. Over time, these interactions can make vulnerability feel increasingly risky. People become less willing to share what hurts them when they expect their concerns to be dismissed or used against them.
Gottman and Levenson’s longitudinal research identified associations between negative emotional interaction patterns and poorer marital outcomes.¹ Their findings underscore the importance of addressing entrenched hostility and restoring enough respect for difficult conversations to become productive.
In therapy, this may mean working first on how partners treat one another during disagreements so that the substantive issues can eventually receive the attention they deserve.
Wanting to Leave
Repeated conflict can change how people think about the future of their relationship.
During an especially painful argument, leaving may seem like the only way to end the distress. One partner may threaten divorce or begin imagining life apart. After the argument, the urgency can recede, particularly when there are moments of affection or connection that remind both people why they chose each other.
Living with that uncertainty can be exhausting. You may still love your partner and have serious doubts about whether the relationship can become a place where you feel understood and at ease.
These questions deserve careful exploration. Therapy can help clarify what has led to thoughts of leaving, whether both partners remain willing to work on the relationship, and what would need to change for continuing together to feel possible.
For couples in which one partner is seriously considering leaving and the other hopes to preserve the marriage, discernment counseling offers a structured process for deciding on the direction of the relationship.
Responsibility Within High-Conflict Relationships
One of the challenges in high-conflict relationships is that each person can become so focused on what the other has done that examining their own behavior feels almost unfair.
A partner may have legitimate reasons for feeling hurt or angry while also responding in ways that deepen the conflict. Both people may contribute substantially to an escalating interaction, although responsibility for individual behavior and injuries can differ considerably.
In couples therapy, I pay close attention to these distinctions. Understanding the interaction requires examining each person’s behavior, the effect it has on the other, and the history that makes certain responses especially difficult to change.
Accountability becomes possible when partners can acknowledge the effect of their behavior while remaining engaged with the hurt and concerns that brought them into conflict.
Intimidation, coercive control, threats, and physical violence require careful clinical assessment, including whether conjoint couples therapy is appropriate and safe.
Children & Parental Conflict
Children are attentive observers of the relationships around them. They notice hostility, changes in mood, and the tension that can remain in a household long after an argument has ended.
Research has examined how children understand and respond to conflict between their parents. Rhoades’s meta-analysis found associations between children’s emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses to interparental conflict and their adjustment. A later meta-analysis by van Eldik and colleagues similarly documented associations among characteristics of parental conflict, children’s responses, and child maladjustment.⁵ ⁶
The way parents handle disagreement is important. Constructive conflict allows children to observe adults expressing different views, considering each other’s perspectives, and finding ways to resolve disagreements. Research examining constructive interparental conflict has associated these interactions with greater emotional security and better social problem-solving in children, although outcomes vary with the broader family context.⁷
Children can become particularly distressed when they feel responsible for managing conflict between their parents. They may begin monitoring moods, intervening in arguments, taking sides, or worrying about whether their family will remain together.
Helping parents recognize these effects can become an important part of addressing the conflict, particularly when the relationship has been strained for years.
Can a High-Conflict Relationship Change?
Couples who have spent years arguing in familiar ways can develop different ways of relating, although the work requires both people to examine responses that have become deeply ingrained.
The process begins with understanding what happens during conflict, including the moments when each partner becomes defensive, overwhelmed, or convinced that the other is unwilling to listen. We work on recognizing those moments earlier and developing the ability to remain engaged while discussing difficult subjects.
Accountability is an essential part of this process. Partners learn to acknowledge their contribution to an interaction, understand its effect, and make different choices even when they remain upset with one another.
In my work with high-conflict couples, I take an active role in sessions. When the familiar dynamic emerges, I slow the conversation down and intervene when necessary. We examine what each person was trying to communicate, what the other heard, and how the interaction developed.
These moments provide an opportunity to understand the relationship in a way that can be difficult when discussing an argument after the fact. With practice, couples can begin recognizing the same dynamics at home and responding before the conversation deteriorates.
Getting Help for High-Conflict Relationships
Living with repeated conflict can be lonely, particularly when the person you most want to feel close to has also become the person with whom you have the greatest difficulty communicating. Couples may spend years trying to resolve the same disagreements, becoming increasingly discouraged about their ability to understand one another.
My Conflict & Communication work addresses recurring arguments, destructive escalation, accumulated resentment, and difficulties with repair. Couples experiencing especially intense or entrenched conflict may benefit from longer couples intensives, which provide additional time to work directly with the interaction.
I work with couples in person in Hermosa Beach and throughout California by telehealth.
If you are ready to do the work, let’s begin.
References
Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: Behavior, physiology, and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(2), 221–233.
Johnson, M. D., Horne, R. M., Hardy, N. R., & Anderson, J. R. (2018). Temporality of couple conflict and relationship perceptions. Journal of Family Psychology, 32(4), 445–455.
Christensen, A., & Heavey, C. L. (1990). Gender and social structure in the demand/withdraw pattern of marital conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(1), 73–81.
Heavey, C. L., Christensen, A., & Malamuth, N. M. (1995). The longitudinal impact of demand and withdrawal during marital conflict. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63(5), 797–801.
Rhoades, K. A. (2008). Children’s responses to interparental conflict: A meta-analysis of their associations with child adjustment. Child Development, 79(6), 1942–1956.
van Eldik, W. M., de Haan, A. D., Parry, L. Q., Davies, P. T., Luijk, M. P. C. M., Arends, L. R., & Prinzie, P. (2020). The interparental relationship: Meta-analytic associations with children’s maladjustment and responses to interparental conflict. Psychological Bulletin, 146(7), 553–594.
Constructive interparental conflict and children’s outcomes: A systematic research synthesis. (2026). Summary available from Information for Practice, NYU Silver School of Social Work.
