There’s a scene in season two of Sex and the City I think about a lot. Carrie is fresh out of another relationship with Big and telling Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda all about it. “[I want] someone who deserves me. Not some insecure guy who can’t deal with a woman who’s got her act together,” Carrie laments. “Now I’m gonna end up deliriously happy and Big is going to die old and alone, and I pity him. Really, I pity him.”
The three friends gape at their near-manic friend across the metal bistro table, all wearing glazed, impatient expressions. It’s Miranda who speaks first. “Okay, who’s going to tell her?”
“Honey, you’re obsessed with talking about Big and frankly, we can’t take it anymore,” blurts Samantha.
After a bit more whining—“Isn’t part of the whole breaking up process that you get free rein to whine to your friends?!” says Carrie—they urge her to see a “shrink”. They can’t take it anymore. “It’s like the blind leading the blind” according to Samantha; “it’s out of our league” says Charlotte. Carrie needs help, and her friends have had enough.
It’s a scenario with which many would be familiar. We’ve all sat across from a friend as they dissect the minutiae of their relationship with a very wrong-for-them person, or sound off over another version of the same fight they’ve been having since they got together two years ago.
Most of us parrot the same advice back to our friends: dump them, you don’t deserve to be treated this way, it’s not supposed to be this hard. We defend our friend, try to find reason in the arguments, and, when necessary, call them out on their own poor behaviour.
"Part of what creates a good relationship is that we’re actually somewhat different from our partner"
I’ve had countless of these conversations over the years and I’m always happy to offer an ear. But, like our New Yorker friends, sometimes I’m entirely out of my depth. I’m a terrible couples counsellor and an inherently biased shoulder for my friend to cry on. It was after another of these conversations recently that I wondered (sorry)—have we all lost touch with what healthy and unhealthy conflict looks like in a relationship? Is it really not supposed to be that hard, or are relationships destined to require work, no matter how successful they are. To find the answers, I spoke to the experts.
It turns out, conflict in any relationship is inevitable. “Part of what creates a good relationship is that we’re actually somewhat different from our partner,” explains Dr Rowan Burckhardt, psychologist and founder of the Sydney Couples Counselling Centre. “We want someone who balances us out in some ways,” he says, adding that sometimes it does end up being these differences that lead to the conflict we’re often trying to avoid.
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Dr Burckhardt explains that one of the big reasons conflict arises in relationships is clashing needs or a misunderstanding of what the other person’s needs are within the relationship. For example, one person’s need for space may clash with their partner’s need for quality time together. He stresses that finding a way to express your needs in a healthy way is crucial to unpicking the conflict. In an ideal situation, the person requiring space could explain that not having their needs met can feel like a loss of freedom, or might feel suffocating. Equally, the person wanting to spend more time together could express how lonely they feel when away from their partner for long periods and that they think of their partner as their best friend.
Of course, fostering this level of emotional openness and honesty requires you feeling safe and secure enough in your relationship to do so. “You should always feel safe to express your emotional, physical, mental and sexual needs in a relationship,” stresses Aleksandra Trkulja, a certified mental health counsellor and sex therapist. If you ever feel like there will be negative consequences for doing so, you may need to reconsider the relationship. “Having needs is inherently human,” says Aleksandra, “and you should never be punished for having them.”
He explains that healthy conflict requires speaking with respect even when upset and hurt, stating positive needs, only discussing one issue at a time, taking responsibility for your own distress and regulation, actively listening to your partner, and showing them appreciation.
On the flip side, unhealthy conflict looks like using disrespectful language, putdowns, criticism and contempt; raising issues without the goal of resolving conflict; bringing up multiple issues at once or raising historical issues; being aggressive and volatile, or defensive; and invalidating, dismissing, belittling, or disregarding your partner’s experience.
This process of expressing your needs respectfully and meeting your partner in the middle is part of the unavoidable “work” in nurturing relationships.
"when you find a person that feels like a teammate, rather than opposition, the effort and work doesn’t feel as difficult"
“All relationships take effort to maintain, so they’re not always easy,” explains Aleksandra. “However, I also think that when you find a person that feels like a teammate, rather than opposition, the effort and work doesn’t feel as difficult.”
This goes back to the idea that perhaps a relationship shouldn’t be hard exactly, but it will require some work. This is something Carrie herself questions—whether it’s even possible to have a relationship without pain. “[After all,] to some, pain implies growth. But how do we know when the growing pains stop, and the pain-pains take over,” she ponders while tapping away on her MacBook.
It’s a valid question. We’re all familiar with the idea of the “honeymoon phase”, when a relationship seems perfect and argument-free.
“From a neurochemical perspective, your brain is being flooded by love hormones, [and] combined with the fact that often the issues have yet to either emerge or be impactful enough, there is often a honeymoon period,” says Aleksandra.
In the months or years that follow the honeymoon phase, it’s common to wish you could revisit this euphoric love bubble (sorry, but it’s unlikely), or question what’s changed, or wonder how you never spotted the red flags that were there all along.
With regards to the latter, we’ll give you a free pass. “[During the honeymoon phase,] the issues in your relationship haven’t repeated themselves enough times to really cause problems,” says Dr Burckhardt.
For example, your partner leaving you for their friends when you had plans might not be a big deal the first time it happens. But when they do it for the tenth (or hundredth) time, it starts to cause real issues. You had no way to see those red flags early on, because the behaviour felt like an aberration, rather than a recurring conflict in your relationship.
It’s like with Carrie and Big. In the days following their meet-cute on a Manhattan sidewalk, he may have seemed like a loveable but aloof playboy and while we, the viewers, clocked pretty early that he was actually a huge scumbag, the issues in their relationship ran much deeper. If we really look at one of the main issues in their relationship, it’s Big’s inability to factor Carrie into his life at all. He doesn’t care about her needs, and doesn’t consider how his flakiness impacts her. Most of the time, he isn’t even willing to hear her out for long enough to work through their issues. He belittles, leaves and, if she’s really lucky, calls her “Kid” while doing it.
This is a recurring source of conflict in their relationship. To varying degrees, every relationship probably has a fight or two that infuriatingly arises time and again.
“It has to be said that there’s probably no couple that 100 percent perfectly resolves every issue they’re going to face,” Dr Burckhardt confirms. But like Carrie questions: “When it comes to relationships, how do we know when enough is enough?”
Relationships are never clear cut, but from where Dr Burckhardt stands, two things are the death knell for any relationship: an unwillingness to try and resolve issues, or at least one person falling out of love.
"how much is the other person willing to work on it?"
“I’ve never been able to successfully help a couple when one person has fallen out of love. It’s the death of the relationship,” he says. “The other thing I’d look at is, how much is the other person willing to work on it.” If they aren’t, then you have a pretty clear idea on whether it will get better (hint: it won’t).
If we assume that everyone in the relationship still loves one another, and they’re willing to work on it, hope is not lost. And actually, according to Dr Burckhardt, most things can be worked upon, so long as these two things remain true
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This article originally appeared in Issue 02 of Cosmopolitan Australia. Get your copy and subscribe to future issues here.
