You’ve seen the pattern before. A couple comes to you, seeking help with tension that they just can’t understand or resolve. As you’re working to build openness and trust with them, you begin to notice that one or both partners react strongly when there’s the slightest hint of difference or disagreement.
What happens next may vary widely. Perhaps one partner withdraws from the conversation, almost seeming to disappear from the room, while the other rattles on. Or both fall silent, shooting glances at you as if to ask, “Where do we go from here?”
This is a well-worn path, and every couples therapist must develop a set of sound strategies for helping partners who withdraw or disengage when intensity or conflict arise.
Despite their avoidance, these couples do realize they’re in trouble. Most intuitively sense that running away from conflict is getting them nowhere.
Your role is to help them stay engaged before it’s too late. Because what they may not realize is that conflict avoidance is a strong predictor of danger ahead.
What research tells us about couples who fear fighting
A study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology measured psychological distance in couples and related patterns of communication. A. Christensen and J.L. Shenk saw that couples in therapy, including those who had already decided to split, had far higher rates of conflict avoidance than those who said their relationships were happy and stable. Unhappy partners were markedly more distanced and withdrawn, communicating in ways that reflected the increasing distance between them.
Paradoxically, this keeps them from going anywhere near topics that lead to conflict. Over time, issues simply build on one another, eventually tearing the relationship apart from the inside out.
In other words, conflict avoidance is dangerous for relationships.
Principles for shaping your therapeutic strategy
Fortunately, divorce is not inevitable. It is possible to help conflict-avoidant couples adopt a new way of relating to one another – one characterized by resilience, honesty, and respect.
Years of successful practice, along with our work in supporting fellow couples therapists, have taught us that there are four helpful principles for you to remember as you are getting started with conflict-avoidant couples.
- Acknowledge that you will be asking the couple to move out of their comfort zone. When you see one or both partners withdraw – even when the conversation seems relatively calm and matter-of-fact – realize that they have their own sense of what constitutes conflict, which may differ greatly from your own. Alert them to your intention to move them into addressing their differences.
- Search for the underpinnings of their fears. Why does avoidance seem so necessary? Do one or both partners belong to a culture that emphasizes harmony at all costs? Were these tendencies reinforced by the adults who raised them? Have they experienced traumatic conflict? Did they come from a family with domestic violence? Are there health, career, or current family issues at play? Do one or both partners suffer from relatively low levels of differentiation? Seeking out clues early will help you find the best ways to foster a sense of safety and trust.
- Expect partners to be vague, passive, and resistant. These are signature behaviors of people who tend to flee from any intense exchange. You will be working around these tendencies during your sessions and encountering avoidance when giving these couples an assignment to complete at home. You will want to acknowledge their fears, yet hold them accountable for the work.
- Consider your own capacity to handle conflict. If you’ve struggled with this issue in the past, you will want to be mindful of how your own fears are entering into the work. Your success in overcoming your own fears will give you greater compassion for both partners and empower you to engage with them thoughtfully and strategically.
In our next blog post: focused techniques for helping conflict-avoidant couples
These principles are just the beginning when it comes to working with partners who shy away from intense conversations. Next time, I will share specific strategies that have worked for me, including samples of conversation from real couples therapy sessions. You will see how to affirm a couple’s progress, re-engage one or both partners when they turn away from one another, and much more.
Please comment below on whether you prefer working with fighting couples or conflict avoidant couples. It would be especially interesting to hear the reasons for your preference.
Mark your calendar for Change Over Time: One Couple's Journey From Avoidance and Pain to Finding Love and Hope Again.
Here’s the LIVE Webinar Schedule for the Free Series:
1. Stuck in Vagueness and Passivity: Turning Intense Reactivity into Emotional Risk and Individual Accountability.
April 28, 9-10:30am Pacific
2. Returning to Love and Hope: Supporting Emerging Connection and Intimacy.
May 2, 11am-12:30pm Pacific
3. The Anatomy of Progress: Multiple Breakthroughs for the Client and Therapist (+Q&A)
May 4, 2-3pm Pacific
You’ll see the work. You’ll feel the transformation. And you’ll leave knowing how to lead your most disengaged couples toward connection.
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ThankYou Ellyn.
Thanks for sharing! I find it easier when working with conflict-avoidant couples. The real intense fighting couples can be draining at times. It takes so much energy containing their anger.
Hi Ellyn, I really love this article. It is concise and so helpful to have clear strategies. I have been working with a conflict-avoidant couple who have made real gains in therapy. They say they are getting along better and are very warm and cuddly with each other in the session. They came into therapy because of an emotional affair the husband was having. While we had done some work on this, I knew there was much more. I waited patiently as we discussed other difficulties, with kids, aging parents, etc to see if they would circle back around.
In the last session, I found myself feeling ‘bored’ by what was happening and that was my clue that we were not focused in the most helpful way in our session. I decided I would bring it up and ask what is left to look at around the affair. After that, you could have cut the tension in the room with a knife. He got immediately defensive – really scared he would be judged, and she cried, stating there were still things that ‘haunt’ her about it. All this to say, that you have taught that we have to take a proactive stance with these couples, as often they just won’t go there on their own.
Thanks for your ongoing direction, Ellyn. I’m such a better therapist for it.
I feel I am more used to and can work more effectively with fighting couples
It can be more difficult to work with conflict avoidance couples and help them to raise the issues they have a pattern of not addressing
I work in organisations so if I consider that context the people I’d like to advance my skills with is those who deflect, they make a statement which is designed to shut down the conversation but they do so in a fighting manner so they are conflict avoidant and using conflict to avoid.
Thanks for sharing
Most times,is difficult to differentiate the two- fighting & conflict avoidant couples. ln most cases, related principles are used in handling the two situations.
I much prefer working with fighting couples.
An avoidant husband was able to explain that he “runs” from conflict because he does not trust that his emotional brain will act out and damage the relationship and leave him feeling deep shame. What a catastrophic thought, eh? And, his insight combined with bravery to reveal it evoked compassion in both his wife and me. This has been a journey in treatment to get to a point where he feels safe enough to share his worrisome thoughts. It was a break through moment for us all.
Great question. I think I can sit with both styles but need to know each is motivated for change and confident there can be. Avoidant or fighting we can move through