From the author: The article was published on the website One day, in some article, I came across a statement that stuck with me. I will quote it here as I remember: “One person interferes with another by the very fact of his existence.” Its meaning for me is that conflicts, quarrels, misunderstandings are a normal part of life. For example, you are in love, you are dating your partner, or perhaps you recently got married. You want to create an ideal relationship, never be separated, always understand each other and never quarrel. This is a wonderful wish! And absolutely impossible! Young mothers have the same ideas: “My child is so beautiful, he is so sweet, I will never scold or punish him. I will never do to him the way my parents did to me.” And what? The child is a year or a year and a half old, and the young mother realizes with horror that he is irritating her more and more often, getting on her nerves, and not listening. The dream of an ideal relationship with a child collapses in the same way as the ideal relationship with a husband. Don’t be alarmed, don’t assume that if you quarrel, if your partner causes you not only love and admiration, but also irritation and sometimes anger, then your family life has failed. Conflicts are part of relationships. Perhaps not pleasant, but important. It's all about the attitude towards conflicts and the ability to resolve them. There are families who proudly say: “In 15 years of marriage, we have never had a fight.” I personally treat such statements with great suspicion; I think that in such a family people are most likely indifferent to each other. Those who can say: “We know how to hear each other and resolve our conflicts” can be proud. A conflict is not necessarily a family quarrel or a scandal involving breaking dishes. Conflict is a discrepancy in opinions or interests of partners on some issue or aspect of their life together. Conflicts can be divided into momentary and long-term, constructive and destructive (destructive relationships), obvious and hidden. Momentary conflicts can be called disputes that arise over minor issues that can be quickly resolved and that do not disrupt family relationships. More often they arise on everyday issues and can be resolved with the help of a compromise or concession from one of the partners. The fact that the conflict has really been resolved, or resolved, is indicated by the fact that after it there is no unpleasant “aftertaste” left for either partner, and the situation is quickly forgotten. But, attention!, if you have a lot of such small conflicts, you or your partner do not miss any little thing to start a quarrel, express dissatisfaction, we are most likely talking about a long-term and probably hidden conflict that is disguised. And everyday little things are a reason to express accumulated irritation. Long-term conflict. From the name it is clear that it lasts a long time and for some reason is not resolved. Most likely, it occurs with a certain frequency in the same situation. And either you avoid solving it, avoid a serious conversation about what does not suit you, or it is insoluble in principle. An example of such a conflict is that a wife does not communicate with her husband’s parents and tries to forbid him to communicate with them. The husband cannot stop communicating with his parents and wants his wife to communicate with them too, because “that’s the way it is,” and besides, he is used to visiting his parents every weekend. The conflict cannot be resolved because the demands of the wife and husband contradict each other. These kinds of conflicts can be mitigated by compromise, that is, a certain solution is chosen that, for the most part, suits both partners, although not completely. For example, a husband goes to visit his parents without his wife on weekdays, and spends weekends with her. The agreement must be complied with. Constructive and destructive conflicts differ in how you express your demands and the way you choose to resolve the situation. Scandals, shouting, mutual insults, beatingsdishes and assault are destructive ways of resolving conflicts. Either you don’t know how to talk to your partner, you don’t know how to hear him (or he you), or the intensity of emotions is too high. Such “explosions” occur when one of the partners endures a situation for a long time that does not suit him, while the other may have no idea about anything. Then the negativity accumulates and an “explosion” occurs. The danger of this method is that such “explosions” do not resolve the situation, but can destroy the relationship at the root. Often after such outbursts there is relief, and “peace” is restored in the family for a while. But this is a misleading impression. In fact, nothing has changed, you have not developed any common solution. In addition, dependence can gradually arise from such outbursts, and then breaking dishes, and sometimes even the partner himself, becomes the norm in your family. Explicit and hidden conflicts. From the name it is clear that an obvious conflict is one that the partners are aware of. Hidden is the one about which one of the partners is not aware, and the other carefully hides his dissatisfaction and tolerates a situation that does not suit him. I also consider hidden conflict to be destructive. If it does not manifest itself in the form of an “explosion”, becoming obvious, then it destroys the relationship. In families with long-term hidden conflicts, deception and betrayal appear; such a conflict leads either to divorce or to complete indifference in the family, when the husband and wife seem to live together, but, in fact, become strangers to each other. Why is it often so difficult to talk with a partner about what doesn’t suit us? Why do people often choose different ways to avoid conflict situations - patience, illness, betrayal, lies, resentment? Or do they turn conflicts into constant quarrels, scandals, and mutual accusations? The reason is “psychological illiteracy” - we simply do not know how to talk to each other, how to express requests and demands, how to hear others. The second reason is the fear of rejection, the fear of opening up to others. After all, speaking honestly and openly, sincerely about your feelings means becoming vulnerable in front of your partner, revealing something hidden, recognizing unpleasant sides in yourself that each of us would like to hide from ourselves, let alone from the other. But you really want to look in the best light in front of your loved one! What if what he finds out about us will affect his feelings for us? In addition, every conflict has not only obvious reasons, understandable to at least one of the partners, but also hidden ones. For example, a wife constantly quarrels with her husband because he throws his socks all over the apartment. It seems that both are adults. What does it take for one of them to stop throwing socks around, and for the other to stop reacting so strongly to it? Why doesn't this happen? Because there are unconscious reasons for this behavior that have nothing to do with socks. The husband throws his socks away, believing that in his own home he has the right to do what he was not allowed to do in his parents’ family, he “marks the territory,” as if saying: “I am the boss here and no one will say a word to me.” The wife cannot calmly accept this, thinking that her husband is thus expressing indifference to her, to her work in cleaning the house, as her father did, who said: “Your duty is to clean. I feed and clothe you. Therefore, you must maintain order.” in the house." The wife continues to believe that it is her responsibility to clean, she cleans up the scattered socks and gets angry with her husband. Both forget that this is a different family, a different relationship with different rules. Perhaps the husband does not expect his wife to clean up after him, or he could find other ways to prove who is “the boss of the house.” Sometimes a family psychology specialist can help resolve conflicts. It will teach you to talk to each other and hear your partner, and will help reveal the unconscious causes of conflicts. But you can try it yourself. To do this, try playing communication games. You will need free time and mutual desire. (The description of communication games is given from the book by Jeanette!