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How to Fight Better
Setting a positive tone might be more important that what you fight about.
Posted September 28, 2015
A recent study about how well couples resolve fights found that how we begin a conflict is much more important than how we end it (Gottman, Driver & Tabares, 2015). What the researchers called “pre-emptive repair,” which involves setting a positive tone in the first 3 minutes of conflict, was decidedly the most effective contribution a partner could make toward conflict resolution.
The researchers described effective early repairs as including humor, warmth, empathy, assertions of individual responsibility, and self-disclosure. Very rarely did these early repairs address directly the content of the fight (Gottman et al., 2015). They were more often aimed at emotional connection and establishing warmth or understanding and less often at logic, rationality, problem solving, and winning.
Mid-conflict repairs were significantly less effective. And repair attempts that occurred in the last 3 minutes of conflict, when tempers were running high and/or damage to emotional connection had already been done, were the least effective in facilitating conflict resolution.
These findings run counter to our standard “repair” lens, in which a fight runs its course, then one partner offers an apology to compensate for bad behavior during a fight, and the other partner accepts the apology and forgives the behavior
Part of the lesson of this study is to behave less badly in the first place. The criticism, hostility, and rejection that partners use as weapons in a fight have consequences that reach further than the boundaries of the conflict. They erode trust and connection, damaging the foundation for future conflict resolution and future repair attempts. They exacerbate the intensity of the fight and increase the likelihood of emotional disconnection.
Another piece of the lesson is that the emotional tone we adopt with respect to conflict may be more important than what we fight about. According to the theory of “negative affect reciprocity,” when one partner feels negative emotion, the other partner tends to mirror that emotional tone. The same tends to be true of positive affect (Carstensen, Gottman & Levenson, 1995).
Experimental research suggests that expressing and experiencing positive emotion in fights is beneficial for both partners, even if it’s not entirely authentic, or requires concentrated effort, in the moment (Ben-Naim, Hirschberger, Ein-Dor & Mikulincer, 2013).
One study found that diminishing negative emotions and focusing on positive emotions during conflict is constitutive of good emotional regulation. When one partner assumes and maintains a positive mindset during a fight, it can reduce the heart rates of both partners, as well as increasing the positive emotional expression of the other partner (Ben-Naim et al., 2013).
The same study, however, found that if we simply suppress negative emotion, not putting words to our negative feelings, things tend to get worse. Suppressing negative emotions during conflict actually increases the cardiovascular arousal of both partners and heightens their experience of negative emotion (Ben-Naim et al., 2013). This is likely because we’re good at reading the subtle cues of our partner: sighs or unhappy faces that convey as much, if not more, of the negativity they’re feeling.
Staying positive during fights with your partner is, admittedly, a tall order. It requires you to remain hopeful, to not be derailed by the anger or frustration of the moment, and to hold on to whatever you know to be good and strong about yourself and your relationship. But you may find practicing this, or setting it as a personal goal, to be immensely beneficial. Too often individuals work against their own needs and goals in a fight. If what you want is connection and warmth and reassurance, it’s to your advantage to foster those qualities in yourself and to signal, whenever possible, your intention to stay positive.
References
Ben-Naim, S., Hirschberger, G., Ein-Dor, T. & Mikulincer, M. (2013). An experimental study of emotion regulation during relationship conflict interaction: The moderating role of attachment orientations, Emotion Vol 13, No. 3, 506-519.
Carstensen, L. L., Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1995). Emotional behavior in long-term marriage. Psychology and Aging, 10, 140–149. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.10.1.140
Gottman, J. M., Driver, J. & Tabares, A. (2015). Repair during marital conflict in newlyweds: How couples move from attack-defend to collaboration. Journal of Family Psychotherapy Vol 26 (2), April, 85-108.
