Christa Marvenko-Athas

Managing Conflict as a Couple

One of the presentations I frequently see when a couple comes for therapy is two people at odds stating they want to communicate better. Both typically feel stressed, upset, angry, and perhaps frightened that they seem to find themselves in conflict more often than not. Under that agenda is often an apparent but unspoken goal, which is that each partner wants the other to see things how they are seeing them, and once their partner sees they are right, then somehow everything will be better.