Communication and Conflict | Couples Therapy | Regina Abayev, JD, LMFT
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Communication and Conflict

Why you keep
having the
same fight

It is exhausting to feel misunderstood by the person who knows you best. The argument is rarely about what it appears to be about. And the cycle repeats until someone understands what is actually driving it.

Let's Work Together
Conflict and communication couples therapy
What Is Actually Happening

This is not
bad communication

When conflict takes over, it rarely feels like a simple difference of opinion. It feels like a threat. You find yourself trapped in a loop: one of you shuts down, the other escalates. One criticizes, the other defends. You end the conversation feeling unseen, unheard, and further apart than when you started.

This is not bad communication. It is a protective cycle — and it has a structure that can be dismantled.

When we feel triggered, we do not act from our most grounded selves. We act from survival instincts learned early in life. These strategies worked once. Inside your relationship, they have become the walls keeping you disconnected.

What Couples Search For

"We have the same fight over and over and nothing changes."

"One of us always shuts down. The other keeps pushing. We never get anywhere."

"We are not even fighting about real things anymore. Everything becomes an argument."

"I feel like I cannot say anything without it turning into something."

If any of these sounds familiar, the problem is not a lack of love or willingness. It is a cycle that has not been interrupted. That is exactly what this work addresses.

The Three Patterns

How we protect ourselves
at each other's expense

Every couple in conflict is running one of three protective strategies. They feel like self-defense. To the other person, they feel like attack, abandonment, or dismissal. Understanding which pattern you are in is the first step to getting out of it.

Pattern One
Withdraw
Numbing out, going quiet, or leaving the conversation to avoid the heat. It feels like self-protection — keeping yourself from saying something you will regret, or simply surviving the moment.
To your partner, it feels like abandonment. Like you do not care enough to stay in it.
Pattern Two
Attack
Using criticism, blame, or contempt to regain a sense of control. It feels justified — you are responding to real hurt, real frustration, real unmet needs.
It leaves the other person unable to hear anything you are actually saying. The message gets lost in the delivery.
Pattern Three
Comply
Giving in to end the conflict. Saying what your partner needs to hear to stop the argument. The peace feels like resolution.
Nothing has actually been resolved. The resentment builds quietly. The same fight comes back, slightly larger, a few weeks later.

"Conflict is the beginning of consciousness. It is the moment where we stop projecting who we want our partner to be and start seeing who they actually are."

— Harville Hendrix

How We Change It

Structured work,
real change

This is not a space to vent while someone nods. Every session is designed to move something. The work begins on day one.

01
Slowing Down the Reactivity
We cannot change what we cannot catch. I help you slow down the interaction to identify the exact moment things go sideways. You learn to pause, regulate, and choose a response that moves toward connection rather than away from it.
02
Closing the Gap Between Intention and Impact
Most couples are not fighting about what they think they are fighting about. I pay close attention to tone, body language, and the unspoken energy underneath the words to help you understand what is actually being communicated and received.
03
Taking Accountability
Conflict changes when you stop cataloguing what your partner is doing wrong and start looking honestly at what you are bringing to the dynamic. Accountability is not about blame. It is about recognizing that you have more power to change things than you think.
04
Understanding the Pattern Between You
Most of what happens in conflict is relational, not personal. When you can see the pattern clearly, it stops feeling like an attack and starts feeling like something you can actually work with together.
05
Getting to What Is Actually Going On
Underneath most conflict is a hidden need for connection. We work to uncover what you are each actually asking for. Once that becomes visible, the whole conversation changes.
06
Building the Capacity to Repair
Every couple ruptures. What separates the ones who make it is the ability to find their way back. We build that capacity deliberately so that when things go wrong — and they will — you both know how to move toward each other.

In every disagreement there is a hidden need. The goal of therapy is to start hearing what the argument is actually about.

Ready to Stop the Cycle

The work begins
on day one

From the first session, I will ask you to do something differently. Not talk about doing something differently. Actually do it.

Let's Work Together

Other areas of couples work

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