Is Your Childhood Trauma Making You Bad at Marital Conflict?

Do you feel like you’re bad at marital conflict? You try to avoid conflict, but it always ends up an explosive argument, no matter how hard you try?

If you experienced trauma in childhood, you may find that you struggle with conflict in your romantic relationships. Maybe your parents had an unhealthy or toxic relationship. Or, even worse, maybe you witnessed domestic violence. Research has suggested that domestic violence or even intense marital conflict can have a significant and long-term impact on the mental health of the children.

These childhood experiences can make you hesitant to bring up needs or concerns with your partner. You may worry that any conflict you do have is indicative of an unhealthy or toxic relationship. So you push down those needs, don’t set boundaries with your partner, and wait until you are bursting with anger before bringing something up. When you finally do bring it up, it explodes and turns into the type of toxic argument you’ve been avoiding.

For the trauma survivor, this pattern can be triggering in multiple ways. Even if things do not escalate the way they did in your childhood home, this pattern is still reminiscent of the cycles you may have observed between your parents. Secondly (and in my experience, the more triggering experience), you may start to fear that you are like your parents. That you are cursed to carry on their toxic legacy, no matter how hard you try. This experience can feel extremely lonely, shameful, and terrifying.

But you have other options. There is always hope for change.

There are so many tools and techniques to improve conflict and communication in a relationship. There are multiple evidence-based couples therapy methods, such as Gottman Couples Therapy Method or Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy, both of which place a heavy emphasis on communication. You can learn new ways to communicate with your partner (and I’ll be posting a few ideas to get you started in my next blog).

But before you can learn these new skills, you have to challenge your perceptions of conflict. Conflict isn’t unhealthy. Conflict will occur no matter what you do, and healthy conflict can be a sign of a flourishing relationship. It’s an opportunity to communicate your wants and needs with your partner, as well as make space for your partners wants and needs.

You may be thinking, “but wouldn’t it be better to just not have needs?”

Everyone has needs. It’s a normal and natural part of humanity. You are not bad for having needs in your relationship. In addition, the goal of conflict is not to eliminate tension in the home. The goal of conflict is to create a family culture of emotional safety and intimacy. Healthy conflict actually leads to greater intimacy, greater emotional safety, and a greater sense of being “on the same team.”

To get these benefits, you have to get good at conflict. No one is naturally good at conflict, and it can take time to build the necessary skills. And you may find that couples therapy is a helpful tool to work on developing those skills. But when you can reframe conflict as being a healthy, normal, and even beneficial part of a relationship, it can be easier to get invested into learning these conflict resolution skills.

Building a healthy family culture after experiencing trauma is hard. But you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out to get started on your trauma healing journey today.