Overwhelmed or Flooded? Here’s How To Calm Down During Conflict

If you ever find yourself feeling overwhelmed during conflict, then this article is for you. We describe the psychological experience of flooding: when you white out or shut down or get hijacked by your own emotions. Usually, this happens during a fight with your spouse and it never helps resolve the issue you’re facing. In this article, we talk about what flooding is and how you can calm yourself down in order to navigate through conflict more successfully.

Here’s The Best Thing You Can Do After a Fight With Your Spouse

Having a fight with your spouse is a stressful, upsetting experience that can leave you bewildered, frustrated and feeling stuck. In this episode, we want to give you a straightforward strategy that you can use to help break yourselves out of a downward spiral of increasing conflict and unhappiness.

The Top 10 Rules for Fair Fighting

Every marriage has conflict. As we often point out, it is not so much how often you fight, but rather what you do when you fight and afterward. Do you repair after conflict? Do you work together during conflict to get to the bottom of issues? Today we have 10 Rules to help you fight fairly.

conflict, argument, marriage counselling, marriage, spouse

How To Break Out of The Same Old Arguments

The same old arguments … the same old cycle. In the marriage counseling world, we call these negative interaction cycles. The topic or concern or issue may change but it’s usually the same pattern: one spouse is more demanding or trying to get a response and the other avoids or dismisses or withdraws. And then it escalates from there. Today, we’re going to help you get started on breaking out of this pattern!

Figure Out What Your Spouse is Actually Upset About

Ever get the feeling that your arguments as a couple are going nowhere? Or maybe you find yourself thinking, “There has to be a better way to solve conflict than this!” Well, there is: turns out there are some essential skills that work for both husbands and wives and can actually lead to deeper intimacy rather than lingering resentments.

How To Get Your Husband (or Wife) Into Marriage Counseling

This has to be one of the most common questions I get emailed about. Turns out, if you can take a little time to understand why men or women react differently to the idea of counseling, then you can dial in your approach to help you and your spouse get the help you need!

Is Your Wife Nagging Too Much? It Could Be Your Fault!

Nagging is our subject for today. We’ve got some insights for you today! For example, did you know that there is a good reason why wives nag more than husbands? And that it is not actually because there’s something wrong with the wife? This is like mythbusters for marriage!

Help! My Spouse is a Perfectionist!

Perfectionism is not too far from any of our hearts. Certainly, anyone who is on Facebook or Instagram knows that we, just like everybody else, tend to present the perfect image of ourselves on these channels. But: we want to ask the question, how does this affect our marriage?

Can You Fix Your Marriage Without Dredging Up The Past?

This is a great question! Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just leave all the past behind, turn over a new leaf, and start afresh? Continue reading

Stop Bottling Up Stuff In Your Marriage

I find it’s pretty easy to avoid conflict. I kind of stockpile the issues until it gets really big and then I feel like I’m ready to talk. But the irony is: that’s actually when I’m least ready to talk. As soon as I open my mouth I know it’s not going to go well. So if avoiding conflict and bottling everything up until I burst isn’t the answer, is there a better way of approaching conflict?

I Want To Fix Our Marriage and He Doesn’t. Now What?

Here’s today’s question:

“Background: I grew up in an abusive home (my father is an addict and a bully, but my mother never reported his abuse to authorities or tried to explain that what he was doing was wrong- we just pretended that nothing had happened afterwards) and my husband grew up in a home with not much affection or healthy communication.

What To Do When Your Spouse Offends You

So, your spouse just blew it.

Again!

How can you move from the place of being offended – and maybe feeling like a victim – to feeling like you’ve moved the dial on your marriage in a positive direction?

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Helpful Resources for Conflict