How to avoid couple conflicts?

“Love is an activity, not a passive affection; it is a continuous being, not a sudden start ”says Erich Fromm in his book The art of Loving.

This definition is just one example of what we can understand by loveSince there are many ways of understanding a phenomenon as complex as this one and it is not something easy to pin down. In addition, each person will have their particular vision of love according to their past experiences.

Given this fact, however, stands the fact that relationship conflicts seem to be not uncommon, and although its origins can be diverse depending on each case, its consequences are usually very negative for most of the people who experience them.

The origin of love

To understand the nature of love conflicts, we must first ask ourselves how love is born. Given the overwhelming number of interpretations on the subject, here we are going to focus, above all, on an approach typical of current Psychology through which We will answer the question of how love arises and evolves, why do couple problems arise and what we can do to increase satisfaction with our relationship.

The first of all is to ask ourselves what is happening so that, suddenly, we become so in love with that person, why can't we stop smiling when we think of her and everything around us seems to turn pinkto. In these initial phases we are in a state of continuous activation, attentive to each sigh of the loved one and continually thinking about her and everything that reminds us of her person. That makes us feel like we are in a perpetual cloud of happiness.

Well, we can divide that activation that we live in the infatuation stage into two types.

1. The biological root

On the one hand, we feel a great physiological activation due to the impulse to various chemicals produced by our body and that could well be called "happiness drugs", since various studies reveal that being madly in love activates the same areas of the brain as cocaine addiction.

Some of these substances are: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, estrogen and testosterone, each with a specific function in love.

2. The cognitive and emotional part

On the other hand, there is also a cognitive-emotional activation. In other words, obsessive thoughts such as: "I like it", "I love him / her", "it is for me" are produced at this stage and various feelings are mixed such as interest and fear of rejection.

This aspect of falling in love, however, technically also belongs to the realm of the biological, since what happens in it is due to physical and chemical processes. However, it is easier to describe it in psychological terms.

How to deal with the problem of couple conflicts?

This initial phase of falling in love wears out over the months. This means that after the years it is no longer as obsessive a love as at the beginning, which is completely adaptive, because otherwise we would not be able to take care of our children or attend to our responsibilities by having our partner in mind 24 hours a day, without worrying about more things.

The love that appears after this phase is a love that is linked to an increase in the degree of long-term commitment. This phase of falling in love has a strong cultural component and is affected by the uses and customs of the area in which it is lives, but also by the daily habits of the members of the couple and the commitments and "contracts" that they establish between them. It is, let's say, a more relaxed emotion and no worse than the previous one.

The stage of confrontation?

It is in this second stage where couple conflicts tend to surface more easily.

Many times, the germ of these problems is found in certain preconceptions that people have about relationships that are totally irrational. For example:

1. "Love is a feeling that is born or dies without us being able to do anything to remedy it. It doesn't matter what we do. This belief can be combated from the point of view that love is not something that comes and goes by magic, but rather it is something that we ourselves build day by day with each of our actions.

2. "Opposite characters attract". Unlike, there are studies that indicate that the similarity between the members of the couple is a predictor of success for the couple.

3. "If he loves me, he must accept me as I am, without trying to change me." It is clear that when we fall in love with someone we fall in love with the person they are at that moment, not with the person we could become (otherwise it would be problematic). However, eSo it does not mean that we cannot help our partner to improve as a person and to file those aspects of the personality that do not please either of the two.

4. "If he does not attend to my needs, it is because he is selfish." If he does not attend to your needs, it may be for many things, for example that you have never told him what those needs are that you have or that the other person has not learned to understand them. Believing that the other person should be there to provide us with what we need at all times does nothing more than prepare the ground for love conflicts to appear.

5. "For a couple to get along, you have to give up attending to your own needs and individuality." This is not true and giving up our individuality (for example by abandoning our old friends) is much more harmful than beneficial, both for the couple and for each individual.

6. "We should never argue." Regarding this issue, we are also going to refer to what was found in certain studies. These indicate that the couples who show the greatest satisfaction are not those who argue the least (since normally those who do not argue it is because things are kept) and not those who argue excessively. The happiest are those who argue in their midst.

7. "Living together implies sharing absolutely all aspects of our life." Here we again refer to the fact that it is necessary that both members of the couple maintain their individuality. For example, it is not necessary that both have identical hobbies: on Saturday mornings he can go to martial arts class and while she can go to yoga class, or vice versa.

Extra keys to keep crises at bay

The above are some of the many irrational ideas that one can have about what a couple should be and that hinder its normal course.

But in addition to banishing these myths, there are many more things we can do to maintain love and not fall into continuous couple conflicts. These are details that apparently seem very simple and common sense (and they really are), but that many times in day to day are not so easy to identify and put into practice. Let's see what they are.

1. Let there be dialogue

A fundamental element for a successful relationship to flourish properly is the communication. We must use a precise vocabulary to express what we like and what we don't, since it is a mistake to wait for the other person to guess what we need.

To manifest these negative aspects that we dislike about our partner we can start by saying something positive first, continue to state in a very specific way what the problem is and express our feelings about it, admitting our role in the problem. In this way, reaching an agreement will be easier.

2. Externalize love

Also important give and ask for displays of affection. Normally with the passage of time we tend to think that our partner already knows that we love them, but apart from demonstrating it on a day-to-day basis, it is elementary to express it in words: say “I love you”.

3. Change of scene

Some couple conflicts are the result of the incarnation of harmful dynamics and routines for both members of the couple, such as poor management of the time available to dedicate to the partner.

Therefore, another of the things that helps to increase satisfaction is to flee from the routine by making room for leisure activities, both as a couple to increase complicity and separately to maintain other social relationships and not lose our individuality.

summarizing

Fundamentally we can say that love relationships always require attention and care, not only in the initial phases in which it is easier due to the intense physiological, cognitive and emotional activation that we discussed at the beginning. But if we know how to properly take care of the aspects mentioned here and those that the couple considers most relevant, the happiness that we will obtain will far exceed the effort invested in it.