How to have a good fight

Why do we fight?

No one really gets into a conversation with the intent to fight. Fights just emerge. Or do they?

Most fights don’t begin because someone simply said the wrong thing. We often confuse disagreements with fights, but disagreement itself isn’t necessarily the problem. Things tend to escalate when we move from what happened to what we think it means.

Underneath the argument, the questions can start sounding more like:

“Do you care about me?”
“Can I trust you?”
“Do I matter?”
“Are you trying to control me?”
“Am I failing you?”

Sometimes it’s easier to argue about the unanswered text, or the dishes in the sink, than to say, I’m scared that I don’t matter to you right now.

The fears underneath our conflicts can be shaped by many things: our childhood experiences, previous relationships, insecurities, betrayals, temperament, and the relationship we are currently in. 

Different topic, same patterns

Ever wondered why you end up feeling like “oh, gosh, it’s happening again!” (I always read this in sad Taylor voice, so I had to put in this reference here)

We often keep fighting about the content while the emotion underneath remains unaddressed. Partly because acknowledging that emotion can require an uncomfortable amount of vulnerability.

It is much easier to say, “You never listen to me,” than, “I feel unimportant when I’m trying to tell you something and I can’t reach you.”

In relationships, we often fall into pursuer-withdrawer dynamics where one person persistently pursues the other for conversation, reassurance, or resolution, while the other person tends to feel overwhelmed and withdraws from the conversation. Typically, the pursuer may also be the person who protests more in conflict, while the withdrawer emotionally shuts down. That withdrawal then makes the pursuer more anxious, so they pursue harder. The harder they pursue, the further the other person withdraws. The content of the conversation may change with time, but the relational dance continues to follow the same beats.

When conflict becomes a tug of war

I often imagine conflict as a knot: something that requires two people to come together with their own perspectives, experiences, ideas, and tools to untangle together.

That sounds easy enough conceptually. In practice, it asks a lot of us. Qualities such as curiosity, emotional regulation, humility, and vulnerability take centre stage here. Something equally important is also the willingness to entertain the possibility that another person's experience can be valid without invalidating our own.

However, instead of untying the knot together, we often end up playing tug of war.

We defend our perspective, gather evidence, correct details, explain our intentions, point out contradictions, examine the exact words the other person used, and try to establish the “objective truth.”

Meanwhile, the person in front of us may be falling apart emotionally. And underneath all our arguments, both people may secretly be hoping for some version of the same thing:

Please see what’s happening to me.

The harder both people pull, the tighter the knot becomes. And the tighter it gets, the harder it becomes to loosen without damaging the string altogether.

At some point, the conversation is no longer about understanding. It becomes about winning, proving, defending, and standing your ground. And when your sense of self feels threatened, defending your position can begin to feel almost synonymous with defending yourself.

The Gottman way of things

You may already have heard of psychologist John Gottman’s Four Horsemen: four destructive communication patterns that are associated with relationship breakdown.

1. Criticism: Attacking your partner’s character rather than addressing a specific behaviour.

Antidote: Gentle start-up. Use "I" statements instead of "you" statements, and state what you feel and need without blaming.

2. Contempt: Treating your partner with disrespect, mockery, or sarcasm and communicating from a position of superiority.

Antidote: Build a culture of appreciation. Regularly express fondness, gratitude, and respect for your partner.

3. Defensiveness: Deflecting responsibility through excuses, counter-attacks, or self-protection.

Antidote: Take responsibility. Accept even a small part of the responsibility and validate your partner’s perspective.

4. Stonewalling: Withdrawing emotionally, tuning out, disengaging, or shutting down from the conflict when overwhelmed.

Antidote: Physiological self-soothing. Take a 20-minute break to calm your body down before re-engaging in the conversation.

The Good Fight

Having the knowledge or the information is separate from actually putting these skills into practice, especially when we’re furious, frightened, ashamed, or hurt. 

Information alone rarely overrides patterns that we have spent years rehearsing.

We pick up these behaviours subconsciously and automatically over the years, and they stay with us, even if we cognitively understand as adults that they’re unhelpful. If conflict in your family meant yelling, sarcasm, blame, or silence, those responses may feel far more instinctive than calmly saying, “I’m feeling overwhelmed, and I need some time to myself before we continue with this discussion.” Thank goodness for the brain's neuroplasticity; these behaviours aren't hard-coded and set in stone. Therapy often helps shed light on what needs to be relooked at and reconsidered in our lives. It can help us notice what we’re repeating on autopilot and experiment with different ways of responding.

If I had to reduce “fighting well” to a few practices, I would start with these:

1. Regulation before reaction

Notice when you’re getting activated. Literally notice it.

My heart is beating faster.
My face feels hot.
My stomach is sinking.
My breathing is shallower.

Naming the experience creates a small but important gap between feeling something and acting on it.

You don’t have to react or say something you don’t mean. Don’t try to change the feeling or ‘get over it’. Just stay with it. Emotions often rise, peak, and shift when we allow ourselves to experience them without immediately acting on them.

Taking a time off sounds easy, doesn’t it? The hard part is recognizing when you need to take a step back. Because when you don’t, the fight escalates and leaves you both worse off than before. Learning to recognise when a discussion has stopped being productive and is veering towards verbal aggression, yelling, sarcasm, or covert insults is an important part of learning how to fight well.

2. Listen before constructing your defence

You do not need to prepare the perfect rebuttal while the other person is speaking. Try listening for what they are attempting to communicate beneath the imperfect wording. What hurt them? What are they afraid of? What are they asking you to understand? Keep in mind that understanding does not automatically mean agreeing.

3. Ask questions (from a place of curiosity)

I recently read a post about how questions can be more romantic than compliments and it really stayed with me. Questions communicate curiosity and the underlying belief that there’s still more to know about someone. Questions that arise from curiosity also break assumptions and tell someone that we may not know them fully. Human beings are dynamic and constantly evolving. The person you love is not a puzzle you finished solving three years ago.

4. Allow yourself to absorb differences

Not every disagreement needs a winner. Two people can experience the same interaction differently without one person necessarily being irrational, malicious, or wrong. And not every recurring difference will eventually disappear if you communicate perfectly enough. Sometimes maturity in a relationship means figuring out which differences require change and which require accommodation. Besides, do you really want everyone to think like you and see the world exactly the way you do? Where’s the fun in that?

5. Distinguish impact from intent

When we hurt someone, we naturally want to explain what we meant. Conversely, when we're hurt, we naturally want the other person to understand what their behaviour did to us. Both of these matter. Intent provides context. It does not erase impact. Impact tells us something important about another person's experience. It does not automatically prove malicious intent. Repair becomes possible when both realities are allowed into the room.

6. Tolerate an imperfect conclusion

Our brains are wired to seek some form of closure or clarity. We search for the last piece of the puzzle to make it all make sense. Sometimes, the last piece doesn’t come in the shape or form you had hoped for. Sometimes you expect one piece, but uncover ten more in the process. Conclusions rarely ever arrive neatly packaged. People have dimensions to them, and it is only natural for these dimensions to occupy conversations that leave you with some answers, but not all. That can still be progress. 

7. Attempt to repair

Every relationship experiences ruptures. What you choose to do after it matters. Do you attempt to reconnect in any way known to you? And does the way you attempt repair actually reach the other person? Repair might involve an apology. A hug. A handwritten note. Someone making your favourite meal because words are difficult for them. Humour returning to the room. A quiet, “Are we okay?” But gestures alone are not accountability. If harm has been done, meaningful repair also requires recognising the harm, understanding its impact, and making a genuine attempt to respond differently next time. Repair is not about producing the perfect apology. It is extending your hand and saying, in some form: I know we got lost there. I still want to find my way back to you.

Vulnerability and effort are the building blocks of repair. And that is difficult when we have spent years learning to dress ourselves so beautifully in our defences.

A necessary caveat

Not every conflict is a shared knot. The idea of collaboratively untangling conflict assumes that both people have enough emotional and physical safety to participate, and that there is some basic willingness on both sides to listen, reflect and repair.

Abuse, intimidation, coercive control, threats and repeated degradation are not “communication problems” that two people need to solve more skilfully together. In these situations, the task is not to learn how to fight better. It is to recognise that collaborative conflict requires safety, and that safety may no longer exist in the relationship.

Untangling the knot, together

If you are standing on opposite ends pulling harder, the knot tightens. At some point, both people have to come over to the same side and look at the knot together and figure out the best way to untangle it. In this process, you may learn how the other person approaches the knot, what they do with it, how they think, where they get stuck, what frustrates them, and what scares them. Maybe they don't arrive at the perfect technique. Maybe neither of you does. But sometimes your eyes soften because you recognise something more important than a perfect solution. You see a person trying. Showing up beside you. A person choosing to stay beside you instead of pulling against you. And maybe, sometimes, that is what love looks like.