Conflict in Relationships: Does It Really Matter If There’s Conflict in My Relationship? + FREE Relationship Conflict Decoder

In my last two posts on the #1 thing that couples fight about and how to know whether you and your partner fight too much, I told you that conflict is inevitable in every relationship. Because when two people decide to share their lives, it’s only a matter of time before a difference in opinion, preferences, or dreams triggers a disagreement.

You know what this means?

It means that if you want to enjoy a happy, loving relationship, the goal isn’t to eliminate conflict from your relationship. As unpleasant as conflict can feel in the moment, it just isn’t possible or realistic to completely remove conflict from your life. So to some extent, it’s important to be comfortable with the idea that conflict will arise in your relationship from time to time—no matter how much you and your partner love each other and how long you’ve been together for.

At the same time, though, you don’t want to brush off just any kind of conflict that arises in your relationship and convince yourself that it’s simply part of being in a relationship. Because although conflict can be healthy and productive when you manage it effectively from a place of love, it can be harmful when you approach it from a place of anger, resentment, or ego.

When you approach conflict in an unhealthy way, it doesn’t just make daily life with your partner unpleasant and more stressful. It also takes a toll on you, your relationship, and your family. That’s why it’s so important to learn how to manage the conflict in your relationship effectively.

If you’d like some help with learning how to manage triggers or conflict in your relationship effectively so you can enjoy a more loving and less stressful relationship with your partner, stick with me until the end of this post. That’s where I’ll share the details about my online program From Conflict to Ultimate Love.

For now, though, let’s talk about why conflict in your relationship is NOT something you should just sweep under the rug.

Here are 4 big ways that relationship conflict can be harmful and toxic to you:

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1.  It Hurts Your Relationship

Let’s start with the most obvious way that relationship conflict affects you: it erodes the strength of your relationship.

If you and your partner are frequently bickering about the smallest things, yelling at each other, or giving each other the silent treatment, day-to-day life probably feels pretty stressful. You might feel mentally exhausted by the constant tension, worried that the smallest thing you say might trigger the next big fight, and hurt that your partner doesn’t seem to ever really “hear” you. And your partner might feel the same way too.

So what happens?

You either intentionally or unintentionally withdraw or pull away from each other and feel disconnected. Like many people, you probably put time and energy into nurturing relationships (and especially romantic relationships) to form a social bond with someone, feel connected to them, and enjoy companionship. So if you feel emotionally disconnected or distant from your romantic partner, there’s a good chance that you could be feeling dissatisfied in the relationship and lonely. That’s the exact OPPOSITE of how you want to feel in a romantic relationship, right?

In extreme cases, frequent unhealthy conflict in a relationship can also trigger violent or abusive behavior.

Now, when I say this, I want to be crystal clear that relationship conflict is NEVER an excuse for violence or abuse in the relationship. It’s not okay for your partner to hurt you physically or emotionally because they think that you “always cause drama” or “always pick fights” with them.

However, when there’s conflict or stress in a relationship and one or both partners don’t know how to manage it effectively, it DOES make violence and abuse more likely. And as I’m sure you can guess, violent and abusive behavior seriously harms a relationship by damaging trust, violating the right to respectful treatment, and destroying the sense of safety that’s an important element in a healthy relationship.

2.  It Harms Your Physical Health

Unfortunately, when you’re experiencing frequent unhealthy conflict in your relationship, it doesn’t just jeopardize your relationship. It also negatively affects your physical health. In fact, unhealthy relationship conflict can harm your physical health in a number of ways.

For example, research shows that when people experience repeated or ongoing negative conflict in their relationship, they develop more health problems and face more health-related limitations in their daily life. Relationship conflict can even harm physical health as much as smoking and low physical activity do. This is especially true for women in relationships with frequent unhealthy conflict.

Specifically, when you experience unhealthy conflict in your relationship on a repeated basis, the stress it causes can weaken your immune system and make you more vulnerable to illnesses, such as colds and flu.

Frequent negative conflict in your relationship also raises your risk of having a heart attack, being diagnosed with a heart condition, needing heart surgery, or dying of heart disease.

In addition, unhealthy relationship conflict increases your risk of obesity, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and high triglycerides.

And lastly, stress from frequent unhealthy relationship conflict can make symptoms of a disease more severe and increase the amount of time you need to physically recover from it.

3.  It Negatively Affects Your Mental Health

Your physical health isn’t the only part of you that can be harmed when you’re facing frequent unhealthy conflict in your relationship. Your mental health can suffer too.

After all, constant tension, anger, and resentment between you and your partner creates chronic stress that can even affect your ability to focus on other tasks, be productive at work, and make smart decisions for yourself in other areas of your life.

If you feel lonely, unfulfilled, criticized, or unheard in your relationship as a result of the conflict, you might eventually experience depression.

And if you’re always on edge about the next fight, walking on eggshells to avoid upsetting your partner, or worried about the future of your relationship, you might develop anxiety.

If your mental health begins to suffer because of conflict in your relationship, it may only feel more difficult to navigate day-to-day challenges with your partner and keep your relationship on track in the face of external stressors. However, the mental health effects of relationship conflict can also spill over into other areas of your life and affect your relationships with other people, your career, and your overall happiness.

4.  It Models Unhealthy Conflict Management for Your Kids

If you’re a parent, you probably already know that you should try to avoid getting into heated arguments or fights in front of your kids. After all, you don’t want your kids to be scared by the fighting or worry about the future of your family.

But what you might not know is that when you and your partner experience unhealthy conflict on a regular basis, it doesn’t just affect the well-being of your kids in the present. It also affects their relationships and ability to manage conflict effectively in the future.

Why?

Because when you and your partner deal with conflict in your relationship ineffectively, it models unhealthy ways of approaching conflict for your kids. Think about it this way:

Imagine that you come home from a long day at work expecting to see dinner ready for your family. You had a meeting to attend late in the day, so you asked your partner to make dinner. But when you get home, you see your kids watching TV, your partner working in the home office, and no dinner in sight. It turns out that your partner completely forgot that they were on dinner duty. Now there’s nothing for anyone to eat.

What do you do? Exhausted from a long day at work and stressed about how you’re going to feed your kids before they need to go to bed, you lash out at your partner. Maybe you yell something like, “Seriously? You had ONE job to do this evening, and you couldn’t even do that? Why can’t you EVER do anything right???”

Feeling attacked, your partner then hits back with, “For god’s sake, why are you always on my case??? Sure, maybe I forgot to cook dinner. But it’s not the end of the world! You don’t have to attack me for it! You’re so high maintenance! Why do you always have to get SO worked up about everything???”

And on and on the two of you go, yelling back and forth at each other while your kids watch on.

If you and your partner interact like this once and once only, it might startle your kids in the moment but then eventually become a vague and distant memory. However, if your kids see you and your partner interact like this on a regular basis, they’ll learn that THIS is the way people handle conflict in relationships. They’ll believe that yelling and using insults is the right way to communicate with someone during times of conflict. And they’ll carry these beliefs forward with them into adult relationships.

So as much as you might not want your kids to learn about unhealthy ways of approaching conflict and communicating with other people, they’re bound to pick up on them sooner or later if they see you and your partner modeling them.

Relationship Conflict Isn’t Something to Ignore

Conflict is inevitable in all kinds of relationships, including romantic ones. So it’s important to be comfortable with navigating relationship conflict in your everyday life.

This doesn’t mean, however, that you should always assume that conflict is okay and sweep it under the rug. Because as I’ve explained above, chronic unhealthy conflict is toxic. It erodes your bond with your partner, harms your physical and mental health, and even teaches your kids to approach conflict in unhealthy and unproductive ways.

That’s why it’s so critical to know how to manage conflict effectively in your relationship.

When you’re able to manage conflict with your partner effectively, you can strengthen your bond with them while minimizing stress, protect your well-being, and model healthy relationship and communication behavior for your kids.

You’ll also be able to spend more time soaking up the love and joy in your life instead of wasting all of your time and energy feeling stressed, anxious, angry, disappointed, or resentful. Sounds good, right?

Not sure how much you and your partner might be engaging in unhealthy conflict? 

Fill out my FREE Relationship Conflict Decoder.

It’s designed to help you gain clarity on whether you and your partner typically approach conflict in ways that can strengthen your relationship or in ways that can push the two of you apart.

If you know that you need to learn how to manage conflict more effectively in your relationship but aren’t sure where to start, I’d like to invite you to join me inside my 6-week online program From Conflict to Ultimate Love.

It’ll give you a complete road map for managing triggers and conflict in your relationship with less stress and more success so you can build a deeper, more loving connection with your partner.

Get all the details or enroll right here.

And finally, if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and courses.  

Until next time!

Vera

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