What's Underneath the Conflict

I often find myself in the kitchen, starting an argument with my beloved husband over something trivial, when I realize that the fight I’m having with him isn't the real fight. It’s not about how my way of sweeping the kitchen floor is better than his. It’s not about how he forgot an item on our grocery list. All that is superficial, a distraction. Deep down, I know my surface argument is running cover for what's underneath.

Most of us have the same fight with our partners over and over again, dreading a rerun of the same tired scripts and hurt feelings. Our minds reach for well-worn arguments, and our bodies launch into stressed-out protective mode. We might panic and plead with our partners, fight with expert logic, freeze in overwhelm, or make a run for the nearest exit.

Despite our best efforts, we repeat the same content in conflict: dishes, to-do lists, money, in-laws, screen time. We talk it over after, determined to do better next time. We apologize, compromise, but nothing changes.

The old familiar fight keeps happening. We just feel a little more exhausted and discouraged the next time around.

Some of us might even wonder if "this is it," if the superficial conflict is all our relationship is destined for. We might think we've chosen the “wrong” person or question why this keeps happening across different relationships. Maybe we even start to believe we're bad or broken. 

This is not how relationships are meant to be.

When we find our conflicts on repeat, instead of giving up on ourselves in frustrated despair, we need to understand what's actually happening — and fix it.

Why the Same Fight Keeps Happening

Repeating fights have the same action-reaction pattern to them.

This might look like one partner raising their voice heatedly while the other goes stone-cold and silent. Or one partner might ask for space and step away, only to have the other following them insisting, "I'm not finished yet." Or maybe you both raise your voices, ending in an exhausted stalemate. Or, even worse, you might both go silent and withdraw to your separate corners, surrendering without speaking up for your needs and wants.

These surface fights often feel like chain reactions that end in total defeat. We both feel angry. We both feel unheard and misunderstood. We both feel like we're doing all the work.

We might even generalize from the specific argument to the belief that our partner always does this and it's always going to be this way.

No wonder we fight like our lives depend on it, even when it's "small stuff." We’re in it to “win.” We try to find safety in being right. We try to create security by exerting control. We over-explain or use unrestrained self-expression. We express our anger through retaliation, or try to protect ourselves by withdrawing.

These tactics aren’t meant to bring us closer together.

For more about what this kind of arguing looks like, "Safety Strategies That Always Fail" explores the surface patterns of the same looping fight.

Trauma Flashbacks Trigger Conflicts on Repeat

Beneath every recurring conflict fester old, untended wounds, twinging with pain when we get close to their vicinity, trying to warn us away because they're afraid of being hurt again.

This is because many of us with unresolved trauma, including complex trauma or CPTSD from childhood, carry the burden of old wounds that haven’t yet healed.

These places within us are deprived of light and oxygen, hidden from view, scarred over, and tender to the touch. We protect these unhealed parts of us because we don't want to feel the hurt we experienced in the past again and we’re afraid that getting close to it might make it worse.

These unseen trauma patterns drive recurring conflicts with our partners.

When something happens that reminds us of the past, these old wounds ache and activate, desperate for us to protect ourselves. These flashbacks happen subconsciously whenever our nervous system reads something as similar to the wounding — maybe our partner using a particular tone of voice, or looking at us a certain way, or even a specific smell, phrase, cast of light, or time of year.

Flashbacks are what's really happening, beneath the repeating conflicts. Our protective systems scan for danger, signaling false positives because we’re “better safe than sorry.”

The tragedy is, until we navigate the flashback and resolve the trauma it’s pointing towards, these flashbacks — and the behavior that accompanies them — drive us further and further apart.

This is why "better communication" doesn’t change anything.

Communication isn't the problem.

The real content waits below our daily lives, deep in our nervous systems, demanding our attention.

Flashbacks Need Care, Not Conflict

Once we realize that what’s actually happening is a flashback, repeating conflicts with our partners become ways to transform deep-seated patterns and beliefs we carried since childhood.

Intimate relationships are exactly where we heal.

When we know how to work with flashbacks together, present-moment conflict points us towards deeper places that long for care. When we can create the shared safety to clearly see what's underneath the same old fight, we can resolve it.

The moments when we're at our most intense — or most shut down – can become access points for us to reach the unhealed parts within us.

That's where we need to be willing to go, to shift this.

When we pause to see the pain underneath, we give ourselves a chance to heal together. And what was the source of ongoing pain — the same fight, over and over — becomes a way we can help each other create something new.

The intensity of conflict starting to spike in our bodies becomes a signal to turn towards the wounding. When we're willing to look at what's underneath the conflict, fights become a doorway to deeper intimacy and connection.

Real intimacy lives in the territory underneath the same old conflict. Being willing to go there — with support — is what transforms a relationship.

Instead of two people in love trying to survive each other’s worst moments, we become two people in love, choosing to brave the past and co-create a different present together.

It takes skill to navigate conflict from this vantage point, but when we do, new layers of connection and intimacy unlock. What’s been trying to come to the surface but didn’t have words now has space to be named, seen, and healed.

This is the work we do to enjoy nourishing and thriving relationships.

It’s so worth it.

"The 3 Foundations of Intimacy" has some good starting points for what’s required to do repair, when you're both ready.

And "How to Feel Deeply Heard" explains the different types of listening you can ask for — or offer— your partner, so you don't get stuck doing the “wrong” thing.