Quick summary: A relationship is not healthy simply because conflict is rare, because disagreements often carry a deeper question about whether each person feels safe, heard, and able to rely on the other. Naming your own emotion, pausing to settle rather than walking away, and asking what happened for your partner protect the bond and support mental well-being on both sides. Trust grows from small repeated acts of attention and from repair after a rupture, which matters more for the relationship than winning the argument.
As a therapist and advocate for healthy relationships, I have seen many individuals use the lack of conflict in their relationship to gauge its overall health. While having no conflict at all may be ideal, simply having disagreements is not always indicative of anything being “wrong”.
Emotional safety is another foundation upon which all healthy relationships are built. Emotional safety is having the freedom to share your feelings about an experience with someone else (such as feeling disappointed, vulnerable, uncertain, or in conflict) without fear of ridicule, punishment, or withdrawing emotionally from you. The ability to have open discussions and address issues makes challenging situations easier to resolve when both parties feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and opinions.
Most of us do not see many relationship issues as they actually are. A conflict about one’s household chores, ignoring each other’s messages, money, or plans might be asking an underlying emotional question: “Can I trust that you will be there for me?” “Will your concerns be taken into account?”, or “Am I being heard by you?” When we become aware of the emotional content hidden in our arguments, our way of dealing with those arguments is greatly altered.
As important as effective communication is for your relationship, self-identification of your emotions will be equally as important. Prior to asking your partner to acknowledge what you are experiencing emotionally, you have to develop an understanding of your own emotional experiences. When I know my own emotions; when I say “I feel rejected,” then I have communicated far better than if I were to express rejection through anger, criticism, or being silent.
Past events will influence how an individual reacts today. For example, if you have had to deal with inconsistent behaviour, rejection, being betrayed, or having emotionally challenging relationships in your history, this could make you particularly attuned to certain behaviours. The emotional reaction to a specific event that occurs in the present day could be significant due to its resemblance to a similar event in your past.
Understanding that being connected does not mean that every relationship issue is because of some prior experience. Being connected means you are aware enough to say, “Is my reaction only in response to what’s going on now, or is this a past issue?” this distinction creates room for your feelings (the emotional trigger) and your reaction (response).
A second vital relationship skill is the ability to self-regulate before you try to solve a problem. Overwhelmed by emotions, individuals cannot effectively listen to what each other has to say, express themselves, or correctly perceive one another’s messages. Often continuing on with an argument at such a time can be detrimental to resolving problems. There are times when it would actually be healthier for couples to put a temporary hold on the conflict until they have both cooled down enough to converse effectively.
The key difference in these two options lies in taking time versus pulling back. When you say “I want to work on this, but I need 20 minutes to get my head together,” you’re providing some level of comfort that your interest in working on the issue remains intact. But walking out without a word sends a message of abandonment and creates uncertainty for the individual with whom you are attempting to communicate. Taking a healthy pause is different from evading the conversation.
Curiosity can also be a very powerful relationship builder. Couples frequently create conflict when they believe they already know why their partners are acting in certain ways. “You didn’t respond to my message as if you were saying i wasn’t important” has a tendency to shut down the conversation. “when that happened, i felt like you were ignoring me. what was happening with you?” helps to open up the opportunity for both of you to clarify your understanding of one another.
Healthy relationships are also strengthened outside moments of conflict. Small but consistent acts of giving your time and attention to others will often be valued and create trust much more so than one large gesture. Examples include: not being distracted by a phone while listening to someone. Remembering an important detail about someone. Expressing gratitude for something that was done for you. asking someone who has had a bad day how they are doing now. follow-through on commitments.
In this way, I consider many of our common daily interactions to be emotionally based “evidence”. over time, each partner will build their own personal collection of evidence in terms of how it appears the relationship has been feeling (dependable, responsive, caring) towards them. As with most things, trust is generally developed over an extended period of time rather than built from just one single event. The reason for this is that we develop trust by having multiple events occur repeatedly, which ultimately sends us the message that: “you are noticed. You are heard. You matter here.
Emotional closeness is also about retaining your own identity. Healthy relationships allow you to be close to one another and still have space to maintain your own friendships, hobbies, boundaries, and personal goals. Ideally, a healthy relationship allows both individuals to develop as people together in the relationship, instead of shrinking to fit into it.
Repairing is likely to be one of the most important skills in a relationship. All couples will have miscommunications with each other at some point. One person becomes defensive, does not communicate well, or unintentionally hurts another. The key is whether both partners are able to come back to that time, recognise what happened, acknowledge their part of it (if they were at fault), and start over.
A good fix is not necessarily based on “perfect” language. That may be something as simple as saying, “I get why this hurt you,” or “I got angry and didn’t listen.” What matters here is that you are communicating your responsibility for what happened. The other person will likely see this as an acknowledgment of their pain rather than just one more time to argue over who is correct.
The objective in a healthy partnership is not to have everything run smoothly all the time or to always find peace. The purpose of a healthy relationship is to be able to maintain an emotional connection with your partner through changes that you will go through; disagreements; times when you need to show vulnerability; and repairing your relationship after it has been damaged. As individuals learn to better comprehend their own behaviours as well as those of their partners, conflicts tend to transition from who wins/loses and instead focus on preserving the bond that you are creating together.
Kat Grassetti, LCSW is the clinical director at Monima Wellness Center and EMDR practitioner.
