Why Your Communication Skills Don't Work During Big Fights, From A Couples' Therapist

As such, learning how to argue well is an important part of a healthy relationship. Developing skills like speaking, active listening, repair, and compromise can lead couples toward harmonious disagreement where they ultimately come to win/win outcomes. However, there are two types of difficult conversations: first, the type where we are able to access our "communication skills" even if we feel a bit frustrated or upset and, second, the type where our nervous system is hijacking our cognitive system and all the skills we might usually know to use. 

When couples are able to use their communication skills, they can access their ability to be "relational." Relational functioning requires being able to behave in ways during conflict that make the other person feel safe. Some of these behaviors might be:

In my book I Want This To Work, I call these types of conversations "Hot Conversations." They are the types of conversations that take us "offline" and make it hard for us to access our relational skills. These types of conversations tend to be in response to conversations that feel relationally threatening. Relationally threatening conversations might be disagreements where there is:

This conflict cycle is fueled by pain, fear, and our hijacked nervous systems. You'll know you are in a hot conversation when:

So what do we do?

We need to learn to have a different set of conversation skills, the type that focus on calming our nervous systems more than focusing on resolving the problem. These "HARD" conversation skills include:

Whereas at other times we want to encourage taking time to listen, understand, and problem solve, these types of conversations take a different route: to calm the nervous system so you can return to your relational capacities. 

When your nervous system is overwhelmed and you don't have a lot of reserve of goodwill toward your partner in the emotional bank account, you might need to take a step back to calm down before continuing a conversation. Learn to take breaks, even when it is hard so that your nervous system can take time to cool down. 

Even though you need to take a break, it's your responsibility to also make sure your partner feels safe within the relationship. Further relational threat will only make things worse. So if you need to go for a 20-minute break rather than storming out, say something (even if it's brief) to let your partner know you'll be back. You might say something like "I need to get some air. I love you and will be back soon." This is attending to attachment and security needs within your relationship.

Once you're ready to come back, don't just jump into the conversation. Take time to repair. You might apologize to each other, offer a hug, make a joke, and let the other person know how much you love them. 

As you can see in this example, the person is not talking about the finance issue but rather the way in which they talked about the finance issue. Taking time to debrief helps you to better understand what happened that wasn't working well so you can continue to grow, change, and improve your communication.

Each time you take time to go through the HARD conversations model, you and your partner will learn to trust each other more deeply and to feel safer with each other within your partnership. This trust and safety will then allow you to revisit your disagreements using all of the other communication skills you know to use—speaking, listening, offering empathy, and compromises—so you can ultimately connect and get to a resolution.