How To Turn Conflict Into Caresses – Conflict Resolution for Couples
To turn conflict into caresses, one of the first things to understand is that fighting and arguing is normal in a relationship. You are two different people, you see things two different ways, and occasionally you are going to feel strongly enough about the way you see it to battle with your partner about something. Instead of looking at conflict as bad, if you can begin to see it as something healthy couples have from time to time you can relax some when it rears its ugly head. It makes conflict resolution for couples much easier when you don’t see conflict as some huge failure or bad omen for your relationship.
The next thing to understand about conflict is that we usually revert to the emotional age of 5 year olds during conflict. We attack, slam doors, throw things or feel like throwing things, we scream, we hate on our mates in various ways. Poor behavior is just part of conflict. It happens for me, it happens for you.
But here is a key thing to understand. Bad behavior during conflict only lasts for a few minutes. The screaming and shouting and door slamming us usually over within 5 minutes or so. Then we retreat to our corners and start to cool off. Within a few minutes to a few hours, we usually start to return to adulthood and stop thinking/feeling like 5 year old’s emotionally.
Once you can understand that the lousy things you said or that your mate said were just part of an emotional reaction to conflict, you can begin to stop taking it personally. You can begin to let it go some. You didn’t really mean the hateful things you said, they didn’t really mean the hateful things they said.
After a few minutes to a few hours, when we’ve both cooled off some, the next step is to stop the cold war between you. The cold war is where you are each waiting for the other to apologize. The longer you wait, the more relationship damage will occur. So once you’ve cooled off enough, you can go up to your mate and say something like this:
“Sorry we fought, are you okay?”
When you reach out this way you are not attacking your mate, and you are not admitting fault. You are just telling the truth. You ARE sorry you fought. Now you want to reach out and heal the rift between you caused by the conflict.
This is where powerful conflict resolution for couples begins. You have to be the adult and stop waiting for an apology and reconnect. All good things can come from this. Soon you can go from conflict to caresses when you reach out after a fight.
Try that, see how it goes after your next fight. There is a lot more to this, like communicating to resolve the issue, and how to handle other things so you aren’t in constant conflict. But this will get you off to a good start. For videos on conflict resolution, click here.
