Three Considerations After A Fight

By Dr. Michael Gold, PsyD, MA, MA, LSW

Fights don’t have to destroy your relationship. Here are considerations that can help you repair after a fight:

Even happy couples fight. Depending on your experience with conflict, a fight with your partner may feel terrifying. You may think having a fight indicates the relationship is broken, out of control and about to end. It is easy for a belief like that to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is important to remember that all couples fight. Research shows that both couples that avoid conflict and volatile couples that fight passionately can have stable, happy marriages (1); actually, in a surprising find, research shows that couples that bicker routinely and argue intensely are the only ones to still have romantic marriages after 35 years together (2). This is not an invitation to turn tearing each other to pieces into a lifestyle, but it should make you feel that repair is possible, and your relationship can withstand conflict when both partners have the skills to repair. A skilled couples therapist can help you learn some of those skills.

Consider that your memory of the fight may not be that great. It is common after a fight to keep thinking back to what was said, trying to work out what happened in your mind. The problem is you only get to remember an event once. Each subsequent recollection is not a recollection of the original event, but of what you remembered last time. Each time you remember what was said, your brain changes the memory a little, usually so it matches your current feelings about the situation (3). For example, your memory may downplay the intensity of a fight with someone whom you now like again, but when it is someone whom you still dislike, you may remember previous fights as much more intense than they really were. Sometimes couples become trapped in gridlock, because they each insist they have the right memory of an event. The truth is… who knows? While it’s likely each person does remember most facts correctly, repair does not have to involve perfect agreement on what occurred. Each person’s memory of the event is true and accurate to them. My favorite author, Joan Didion, writes about this in a beautiful essay called On Keeping a Notebook:

“That’s simply not true,” the members of my family frequently tell me when they come against my memory of a shared event. “The party was not for you, the spider was not a black widow, it wasn’t that way at all.” Very likely they are right, for not only have I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters. […] Perhaps it never did snow that August in Vermont; perhaps there never were flurries in the night wind, and maybe no one else felt the ground hardening and summer already dead even as I pretended to bask in it, but that was how it felt to me, and it might as well have snowed, could have snowed, did now. How it felt to me.” (4)

Your partners’ memory of a fight is how that fight felt to them, and your insistence on what you imagine is factual accuracy is unlikely to help you repair. Accepting their feelings about it is one of the first steps in the repair process.

Attempt to repair and accept your partner’s attempts. Whether or not couples fight is ultimately irrelevant; what keeps couples together is the ability to repair. Repair can be almost anything (5). It can involve a long conversation in which the couple discusses their issue again calmly and gently, acting like their own therapist. It can be a sheepish smile and a simple “I’m sorry,” that is accepted with a head nod. A simple smile can be a repair attempt. It can also involve no words at all. It may be as simple as one partner walking into the kitchen as the other partner is washing the dishes: one partner grabs the drying towel and approaches; the other partner quietly passes them a plate, which they dry and place in the cupboard; then another plate; then another. The balance is restored. It can be as simple as one partner gently touching the hand of the other partner. The partner touched considers the gesture for a second, takes a deep breath, reciprocates. “I’ll make us a cup of tea, ya?” “I’d like that,” the other replies. An indication that togetherness continues, that affection can survive.

I think sometimes couples think that every repair must be a long, drawn-out therapy session. Or that it must involve scripted exchanges including specific words said in a specific way. The truth is that a repair is about intention, intention expressed, and intention received. If you are the partner making the attempt, I suggest first giving your partner some time to cool down, at least 30 minutes after the fight has ended. After that, approach in a gentle, intentional way. Each partner gets to make the decision if they will accept the repair attempt. Refusing a repair attempt will distance you from your partner. Accepting a repair attempt will bring you back closer. A couples therapist can help you process regrettable incidents and repair; they can also help you look at how your communication may get in the way, and help you strategize better ways of communicating.

References:

1, 2, 5 Gottman, J. M. (1999). The marriage clinic: a scientifically-based marital therapy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

3 Bridge, D. J. & Paller, K. A. (2012). Neural correlates of reactivation and retrieval induced distortion. The Journal of Neuroscience, 32(35), pp. 12144-12151.

4 Didion, J. (1968). Slouching towards Bethlehem. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.