Conflict is not a sign of failure. It’s simply a sign of difference—and, while uncomfortable, difference is not a threat, it is a normal and even necessary part of a relational growth.

Why does difference feel so threatening?

In the early stages of a relationship, many couples feel deeply connected—aligned in values, goals, even daily rhythms. But over time, as life unfolds, intimacy deepens and the emphasis on similarities subsides, differences naturally emerge. You might discover you process stress differently, communicate in opposite ways, or have contrasting needs for closeness and independence.

These differences can feel threatening—not because they’re inherently bad, but because they challenge our assumptions about love, safety, and being understood. What starts as a difference in opinion can quickly spiral into defensiveness, blame, and disconnection.

This is where couples often get stuck. The conflict isn’t just about the dishes or the finances or the in-laws—it’s about something deeper, such as feeling unseen, unheard, or unvalued. The beginnings of which are generally rooted somewhere in our early experiences.

The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, created by Drs. Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, offers a powerful lens through which to view these struggles. Rather than pathologizing conflict, the model sees it as a natural part of the growth process—a signal that the relationship is ready for its next stage of development.

Through this approach, couples can learn to:

• Understand their differences without being overwhelmed by fear
• Identify old patterns that keep unproductive conflict stuck on repeat
• Build emotional resilience, so they can tolerate discomfort without shutting down or lashing out
• Develop relational skills like self-definition, empathy, and collaborative exploration and resolutions.

It’s not about “fixing” your partner or finding the perfect script for every argument. It’s about learning how to stay present, curious, and connected, even when you disagree.

There Is Hope—and Support

Conflict does not mean your relationship is doomed. In fact, learning how to navigate difference with respect and curiosity can create deep intimacy and trust. However, it can be hard to do alone, especially when emotions run high and past wounds resurface.

That’s where couples therapy can help.

As a couples therapist trained in the Developmental Model, I help partners untangle the conflict cycle and understand what lies beneath the surface. Together, we can build a practical toolkit for communication, emotional regulation, and reconnection, and more. This toolkit is tailored to your unique dynamic.

No one expects you to have all the answers. But if you’re willing to lean into the discomfort with support, you can create a relationship that feels more honest, resilient, and fulfilling.

Ready to Break the Cycle?

If you and your partner feel stuck in conflict, you don’t have to stay there. Reach out and begin the journey toward greater insight, understanding, and connection.

Phoenix Norden

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You will choose to make yourself vulnerable if you believe that the rewards are worth it. Emotional vulnerability is an essential part of intimacy and feeling truly loved. We all have ways we reflexively protect ourselves from emotional hurt. For example, you might be smiley and pleasing (so you don’t offer any threat), or you might be stony-faced and grumpy (so you look tough and dangerous). You are hiding your deeper thoughts, feelings and desires from view so that people can’t use them to manipulate or hurt you with them. You feel vulnerable, so you act defensively.

Remember, the more important someone is to you, the easier it is for you to feel hurt by them. When a stranger ignores, rejects or attacks you, that’s bad enough; but when an Attachment figure does, the pain is so much worse. That pain causes your amygdala to see your loved one as a threat. In a committed relationship, you organise your life around an Attachment figure. A rupture in that relationship threatens not just your feelings but also your living arrangements, your financial security, and your connection with your children (if you have them).

So, when your partner is upset, insincere, grumpy, or withdrawn, you may feel very vulnerable to hurt. The instinctive response is to protect yourself. But when you put up your defenses, you sever your connection with your partner. This is an ineffective way to try to protect yourself. It destabilises the Attachment relationship, making you much more open to significant hurt in the long run.

To maintain your connection, you must accept your vulnerability to your significant other rather than fight it. Being vulnerable is part of acting with integrity. Consciously sharing what’s happening inside you does give your partner information they could use to hurt you. It’s a risk. But you are far better to take that risk and find out whether your partner can meet you and whether you can look after yourself when your partner is unavailable. Being vulnerable requires being Differentiated — knowing and showing how it is for you at the same time as being accepting of and interested in how it is for your partner. Being vulnerable also requires effective management of your neurobiology, i.e. good self-regulation. The impulse to protect yourself will arise and require managing. Remember, tolerating vulnerability is a hallmark of those who are Securely Attached. If that’s the kind of relationship you want, then make sure you are managing your vulnerability in a way that supports that goal.

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Learning how to be the kind of person who can have a successful long-term intimate relationship is a big mountain to climb.  There are many ups and downs along the way and it requires bravery and persistence.   We face similar dangers – anyone can be swept off the mountain by some avalanche of external circumstances (illnesses, injuries, losses…).  And yet, although we all have to climb the same mountain, the journey is very different for us all.

Some people come from wealthy mountain-climbing families.  They have athletic genetics and all the right gear. They start their journey being helicoptered in (by secure attachment and healthy differentiation in their upbringing) to a base camp half way up the mountain.  They still have an arduous climb ahead of them, but they are well equipped and well rested.  Also they will have guides with them  – a network of friends and family who have climbed the mountain already. This network can advise them on the best route and where the pitfalls are. They will also provide emotional support when the going gets tough, reassure them that the climb IS possible and the journey is worth the effort.  No-one can climb your mountain for you, but this kind of support makes it much more doable.

Other people come from families who have never left the coast, who don’t believe that the mountain exists, let alone having an opinion whether it is climb-able.  These brave explorers set off from the coast, with no gear, no accurate maps, to words of scepticism and doubt.  They have to travel alone and wade through swamps, bash through jungle, and travel countless tough miles, all of it uphill, before they even get to “base camp”.  Often they are exhausted and ill when they get there.  In no fit shape, health or equipment-wise, to tackle a serious peak.   They may need to rest and recuperate, get togther the right gear etc, before they can even consider tackling the summit.  They may even be very pleased with the view from base camp and consider it enough of an acheivement to have reached the mountain and proved the doubters wrong.

SO be careful when you consider your own journey to improving your relationship – don’t compare your progress to others.  Be realistic with your self about where you had to begin your journey from, how your upbringing equipped you, and how much support you have or haven’t had along the way.  No-one but you really knows what it’s taken and what it means to be where you are.

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Do you try hard to stay “logical” or “rational” when talking or disagreeing with someone?  On the surface this looks like a good idea – we want decisions made on factual information, not just emotions.  But, as fans of Star Trek will know, this is a doomed enterprise (pun fully intended, with apologies).

What we usually acheive is the exact opposite of being rational.   When I talk in an “unemotional” way, what I actually do is disown and deny the feelings that are the motivation for my opinion.  Emotion researcher Karla Mclaren (https://karlamclaren.com) stresses that emotions are a fundamental part of our cognitive system.  In other words, emotions are another way our brain sends us messages just like our senses do. We can’t think without feeling.

When we present our ideas and opinions as if they were devoid of feeling we are often trying to position ourselves as “better” than our more emotional partner.  It is common to use the fact that someone has emotions about a topic as a reason to dismiss their opinion.  There are several things wrong with this approach. 

Firstly it is rooted in a competitive, “win/lose” view of disagreements that is toxic to intimate relationships.  If your partner feels strongly about something, that’s an opportunity for intimacy, for knowing them better.  Rather than dismissive, be curious about why and what it means to them. 

Secondly, kidding ourself we are emotionless obscures our motivation and deprives both ourselves and our partner of crucial information necessary to make any decision or conclusion valid.  When we are not looking at all the facts, our choices are likely to be misguided.

Thirdly an “emotionless” presentation invites misunderstanding of our intention – our partner is forced to guess where we are coming from.  Because of the way human brains are wired, their guess will almost always be more negative or catastrophic than our actual position.  Leading to their emotional response to us being off-kilter and confusing to us.

Finally, and most importantly, when we deny or suppress the emotional aspect of our being, we issue an unconscious invitation to our partner to take care of it for us.  This leaves us feeling unnecessarily vulnerable and out of control because we are NOT in charge of our own life.  Our emotional well being is in the hands of someone else. No matter how much they love us, they cannot know or give us exactly what we need.  Frequently this results in us feeling frustrated and angry with them because of their inability to do an impossible job.  This dynamic is a recipe for mutual hurt and cannot be solved unless we reclaim responsibility for our own emotional well-being.

By contrast, the truly rational approach is to accept that you, like every other human, are full of feelings and they represent important information that needs to be acknowledged and understood.  As such this needs to be part of what we think and talk about, especially when we disagree with someone else.   When we talk about and take responsibility for our own emotions and show interest and care in those of our partner, then we are finally acting rationally in service of our goal of having a good relationship.

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Yet, the truth is we are always attracted to someone who is different from us.  An inevitable result is that our partner will see things differently, will have different preferences, and organise their priorities in ways that are alien to us. This creates conflict.  It doesn’t mean there is anything going wrong.

This is where we need to be persistent.  To hold on to what we think, want, or feel and keep treating it as important and worthwhile.  Yet, just to make the business of relationship even more challenging, we have to, AT THE SAME TIME, treat our partner’s perspective as being of interest and value.  To be open to them and how they feel and see things.

If you fall into the trap of trying to tell your partner they are wrong because they are different, you undermine your credibility and invite defensiveness.

If you fall into the trap of appeasement, of giving in for the sake of peace, you abandon your self and set the seeds of resentment and frustation.

If your idea is a good one then your job is to persuade your partner of its merits.  You will have to “sell” them the idea in a way that shows you are open to them.  Talk in terms that have meaning for them, that fit with their view of the world.  Successful persuasion involves a lot of empathy and, frequently, knowledge of what is important to the other person, of their world view. 

In order to be persuasive, you may need to persist past your partner’s initial self-protective reflexes, past their misunderstandings of what you meant, and past their fears of losing out or surrendering their power. 

You are likely to have to reach deep into yourself to understand and explain why this issue is important to you or why it is in their interest to do it your way.  This is why conflict, done well, is often a road to deepening intimacy.

If you are genuinely open to listening to your partner and how it is for them and what they want, you may find yourself looking for solutions that are different from those you first thought of.  Creative solutions that give you both what you are seeking – the wonderful “win-win” position that is quite outside the box but works well for you both.

It can happen but, in my experience, it takes persistance, persuasion and openness to create those magical moments of successful resolution.

The post Getting to resolution: In praise of persistence, persuasion & openness appeared first on Couples Therapy NZ.

Furthermore a colleague of ours at The Couples Institute, Stacy Lee, has written two helpful blogs to support our relationships during this stressful time.

In her first blog she raises our awareness of the normal struggles that we may face whilst in voluntary isolation (or in lock down) and offers tips on how to avoid these.  She also highlights the relationship gains that can come from working as a team https://couplesinstitutecounseling.com/relationships-covid-19-and-sheltering-in-place/.

In this second one, Stacy offers 75 different ways to connect whilst staying at home with your partner (and family) over this time.  This article can be of great use with or without this crisis and gives you an opportunity to review your relationship connection skills.  Have some fun, great connection is good for our mental health and immunity so check this out here https://couplesinstitutecounseling.com/ways-for-couples-to-connect-during-sheltering-in-place/

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This image encapsulates a really important lesson that many of us struggle to learn. If we want intimacy then we have to risk the vulnerability of authenticity, of being really honest. Among other things, being authentic means saying what is and isn’t OK for you. That’s what us therapist types mean when we talk about “setting boundaries”

The right-hand column in this picture is a good summary of what happens if we don’t do this. If we are not looking after ourselves by setting good boundaries we are likely to end up resentful and lonely. So why is it so difficult for many of us to set boundaries? Typically it is because (perhaps unconsciously) we don’t believe we are good enough, important enough, loveable enough or safe enough to get what we want. As a result of those kinds of insecurities about our worth, we fear that if we set boundaries we will be rejected or attacked.

That may have been true in the past, in our formative years, it may even have been true within your current relationship, but if you want the goodies in the left-hand column of the picture, then you are going to have to learn how to set boundaries with each other.

One key to setting boundaries effectively is to remember to talk about the positive side – what IS okay for you, what you DO want. So often we focus on what we don’t want (e.g. “Don’t fiddle with my hand, it tickles me”) rather than asking for what we’d like ( e.g. “I like that you want to touch me. Would you just hold my hand or rub it more firmly so I don’t get ticklish”).

Another approach I use, particularly when setting clean and clear boundaries represents a new way of operating in the relationship, is to say something like “I’m trying something new to help our relationship. Please bear with me if I don’t do it very well”. This signals my positive intention really clearly to my partner as well as giving them a warning that something new is coming their way.

Finally, remember that if you haven’t been taking the risk of setting boundaries and being assertive, it is going to feel uncomfortable but, as the diagram points out, that discomfort is minor and temporary compared to the lasting benefits that come from allowing yourself to be seen and known by your partner. That’s what intimacy is all about.

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Some people are really practiced at noticing what’s going on inside themselves, how they really feel, what they really want, owning how they behave and being able to explain why. For the rest of us, there’s therapy.

Whether it’s couples or individual therapy a big part of the process is recognising and accepting that quite a lot of what we do is outside our conscious awareness. Our mind is like an iceberg where the bit that we can see above the water (the bit we are conscious of) is only a fraction of all that is going on for us. Conscious thought consists of anything we can notice if we direct our attention towards it. We may not be aware of, say, a memory or a feeling until we focus on it, but when we do we can see it reasonably clearly.

If we can’t access it by focusing our attention, then it’s unconscious.  The point of the iceberg metaphor is that there is MUCH more hidden than what is above the surface.  For example, many of us have feelings or desires that we learned when we were young were not acceptable (for example through parental disapproval or teasing by our peers). So we trained ourselves to ignore, to suppress, to not even notice those feelings or wants. They went underground, into the bottom of our iceberg. But they didn’t go away and continue to influence our behaviour, our feelings and our expectations. So if we want to have some sense of control over our lives we need to learn about what is below the surface.

So how are we supposed to do that if it’s UNCONSCIOUS?? Well, we can learn a lot about the unconscious by reflecting on what we did and looking for discrepancies, for differences, between what we intended consciously to do and how we actually behaved.  So we learn about the unconscious by inference, by “filling in the gaps” between what we did and what we thought we were doing.

In my experience we often know, have a gut feeling or “felt sense” when the inference we are drawing is accurate.  It is by this means that we start to move things from the unconscious to the conscious, from the unknown to the known.  If we then hold on to that insight and notice if it plays out consistently we complete the shift and what was hidden to us becomes part of our understanding of ourselves and how we operate.  We then have the option of choice about whether we want to continue to operate this way or learn a different way to deal with things.

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Lots of couples have one person who is more self-centred and one who is more self-sacrificing. It can be very hard to acknowledge the unhelpfulness of these tendancies as there is a lot of judgment about these ways of being.   Further more we have usually learned these ways of operating as a self-protection in our formative years and, as a result, just think these ways of being are “normal” and that being “selfish” or “selfless” must be more extreme than what I’m doing. 

To make matters even harder, if this is a long standing way of protecting yourself, it can be hard for us to imagine what the alternative is.  Typically we fear that we will become like our partner (whose behaviour hurts and frustrates us).  We fear that “If I’m not self-sacrificing then I’m being selfish”.  Or “If I’m not self-centred then I’m going to be a doormat”.   But there ARE other options.

If you are one of the many people who tends to be a bit self-centred OR a bit self-sacrificing then try and accept this about yourself without getting defensive or ashamed about it.  You are far more likley to change this behaviour for the better if you start with a compassionate self-acceptance.  

The table below is intended to help you get clear about what the middle ground of having a solid sense of your self looks like across a range of aspects of relating.  Not everyone will necessarily fit every attribute described here – but it gives a general idea.

These are just a list of words – they are only of use if you explore what these words mean for YOU.  For example if you think you have a bit of a tendency to be self-absorbed, caught up in your own feelings (OR if you have a tendency to be a bit self-less, caught up in the feelings of others to the point of self-neglect) what does it mean to you to be “connected”?  For one person it may mean being more aware of and giving more importance to the experiences and feelings of others.  For another it may mean connected with my own feelings and thoughts.   You can then think about what practical steps you’d have to take to get more connected.  One person might need to ask more questions about their loved ones inner world, while the other might need to schedule time alone to check in with themselves.

 If you can see there is room for you to grow and change in this way – then it can be interesting to see if your partner feels the same about themselves.  Then the two of you can explore what practical steps you can each take in the relationship to make it more grounded.

Nic Beets

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