As much as we may try to avoid it, fights with our partner(s) and loved ones are sometimes inevitable. We can’t always agree, we can’t always see experiences and events the same way, and we can’t always know how to manage our attachment styles, triggers, and trauma backgrounds with care and consideration.

Hello, fight, flight, fawn, or freeze.

When we end up in communication breakdowns, there can be ongoing difficulty and tension in our relationships. While these periods can be difficult to navigate and incredibly anxiety-producing, there are absolutely ways to move through conflict, come out of a rough patch, and reconnect with our partner, or multiple partners. Knowing how to communicate through conflict, effectively mend upset and hurt, internalize new understandings and boundaries, and find our way back to each other can make sustainable, healthy, and expansive relationships.

Coming Out of a Rough Patch

First and foremost, when coming out of a rough patch, it is essential to make sure that all aspects of the disagreement have been processed and addressed.

Although couple’s therapy is always a wonderful place to explore relationship strife, @queersextherapy offers many useful reflection questions on how to navigate both challenging conversations and all-around difficult moments in relationships. Being honest not only with our partners but also ourselves can bring necessary clarity to the conflict, resulting in more intentional and candid conversations.

Moving forward from a difficult period in a relationship often demands knowing how to effectively apologize to each other. There can be many reasons for relationship difficulty, and, although not every conflict may need an apology, an incredibly important part of knowing how to love each other comes with knowing how to own our stuff and create pathways to move forward with each other.

Rania El Mugammar, an advocate of social justice and abolition, writes about apologies from the perspective of anti-oppression, a lens that is essential in understanding how to love each other in ways that foster our collective liberation.

Rania discusses the importance of tactfully owning mistakes and asking for consent before apologizing; holding space; centering the expression of hurt emotions; demonstrating changed behavior; and, finally, divesting from forgiveness as the ultimate goal. At its core, apologizing is an act of love, and although not all conflict needs an apology, acknowledging and owning mistakes in our relationship dynamics is essential to rebuilding equilibrium and fortifying love.  

Reconnection and Reset

Despite the turbulence of conflict, finding your way back to your partner can be a beautiful process. This process is best experienced through mindful practices that work for you and your partner. The below ideas offer avenues for reconnection that center pleasure, excitement, and joy. If these ideas suit your relationship needs, try adopting them with your partner next time you’re getting out of a rough patch:

• Get Physical! Times of disconnection can often leave us feeling physically and intimately separate from our loved ones, so finding ways to reconnect physically is often a wonderful way to experience joy with each other again. While this may mean intimacy and sex, physical contact through play, pleasure, and care are just as vital to our relationship sustainability. Options such as trading massages, dancing around your living room, going for a hike, taking a yoga class, or painting each other's nails, can all be fun and joyful ways to be in your bodies with each other. I know a couple who enjoys taking non-sexual showers with each other after arguments, as a way of somatically experiencing something together and reconnecting to their bodies and senses in an intimate setting. What is it that you and your partner enjoy doing with your bodies, and how can you make that a shared activity?
• Get Creative! Creativity is also a wonderful way to reconnect with your partner because it engages the generative, imaginative parts of our minds. There is no better time to spark imagination than during a relationship that needs transformation. Perhaps you and your partner are already creatively inclined and reconnection looks like a craft night together. Or maybe you and your partner have never touched a craft and want to explore local art classes together. In my work with couples, I often center creativity as a place to rebuild and grow together, so next time you and your partner want to reset, hit up a local museum, take yourselves on a date to a craft store, or maybe if you’re looking for a sexier idea, hit up a romance bookstore and pick out novels to read to each other. Seek opportunities that engage fantasy, creation, and imagination, and explore what renewed possibilities that brings to your relationships.
• Get Talking! After particularly hard conversations, it may feel hard to know how to begin talking again. If this is true for your relationship, consider any number of the popular relationship card decks that get conversations flowing, and remember there is always more to learn about our partner. Coming out of a difficult period may sometimes feel like a reset, so take this as an opportunity to explore what it is like to date your partner again. What questions have you never asked? What more do you want to know? You and your partner have navigated through something difficult, and come out the other side stronger, so embrace the reality that as you change and grow, there is always more to learn about each other.

Photo Credit: The L Word