Ups and downs are a normal part of any relationship and how you handle disagreements can tell you a lot about your relationship. Ask yourself these questions:
- Who starts the fights?
- What behaviors trigger the fighting?
- Does the fighting scare you?
- Are you intimidated by your partner?
- Do you feel you have no power to stop the fighting?
- Is yelling just a way you and your partner vent?
- Do you or your partner ever try to settle your differences in a respectful way?
- Is your partner’s mood unpredictable?
- Has your partner threatened you with violence, or used violence during a fight?
- Does your partner follow you from room to room if you try to escape the fighting?
- Does your partner monitor your comings and goings?
- Does your partner try to make you feel stupid or crazy?
Fighting with your partner can take different forms, such as mild disagreements, screaming matches or “silent treatment,” but healthy relationships do not have continuous or traumatizing fights and do not include threats or actual physical violence.
After you have examined your answers, if you see that you and your partner:
- always fight about the same thing, but
- you feel like an equal to your partner and
- you are not intimidated, harassed, threatened or harmed,
then you likely have unhealthy ways of resolving conflict in your relationship. Learning healthy ways to resolve conflict can improve your relationship. Check out our resources on sevencirclesjourney.org to learn more.
However, if your partner:
- is unpredictable and intimidating;
- follows you from room to room to continue a fight;
- monitors whom you talk to and where you go;
- tries to intimidate you;
- makes you feel that you are crazy or at fault for the fights;
- threatens or resorts to violence; or
- frightens you when you fight;
you may be experiencing domestic abuse. Visit our website to learn more about healthy, unhealthy and abusive relationships.
