Most couples who come to see me want to learn how to stop fighting. It makes sense. The fights are the loud part. They are the thing you replay in your head at 2am. They are what you notice on the drive home, the silence stretching out in the car, the way you both look straight ahead. So people arrive hoping I will hand them a set of communication techniques that make the conflict go away. I understand the hope. But here is what the research actually shows, and what I see in my rooms week...

You still run the household together. You still know exactly how the other one takes their coffee. But somewhere along the way, the conversations shrunk down to logistics: who's picking up the kids, whether the bins went out, what's for dinner. The couch sitting is still happening, just not much else. If that sounds familiar, you're not broken and you're definitely not alone. In my sessions with couples, this is one of the most common things I hear, and it usually isn't said as a complaint...

You know the one. It starts over something small. Whose turn it was to unload the dishwasher, who said what at dinner with the in-laws, why the bins didn't go out again. Ten minutes later you are both knee deep in it, dragging up things from three weeks ago, and somewhere along the way the actual dishwasher stopped mattering. Now it is about winning. I see this pattern constantly in my couples work here in southern Adelaide, and I want to gently let you in on something. If you "win" that...