The Myth of the Conflict-Free Relationship

We’ve been sold a lie about what healthy relationships look like. Somewhere along the way, we started believing that good relationships are smooth, easy, and conflict-free. That if you’re “right” for each other, things should just flow.

Maybe you’re fighting more than you used to. Perhaps at times, you feel completely disconnected from your partner, like you’re speaking different languages. You wonder if all this conflict means something is fundamentally broken between you. Your friends in seemingly happy relationships don’t seem to fight like this. So what does that mean about yours?

Here’s what I want you to know…conflict in your relationship doesn’t mean it’s unhealthy or breaking. In fact, conflict—what researcher Ed Tronick calls “discord”—is not only normal but necessary for growth. The question isn’t whether you have conflict. The question is what you do with it.

Rupture Is Where Growth Happens

Developmental psychologist Ed Tronick research fascination has been in discord. Tronick spent decades studying mothers and their babies during face-to-face interaction. What he discovered changed our understanding of intimate relationships.

Tronick found that even the most loving, attuned mothers and infants are only in sync about 30% of the time. The most devoted mother, paying complete attention to her baby, reading every cue, responding with care—mismatched with her baby 70% of the time.

The baby reaches out; Mum misses the cue. The baby looks away to regulate; Mum tries to re-engage too quickly. They’re out of sync, experiencing what Tronick calls a “rupture”—a moment of disconnection, of discord.

What matters isn’t the rupture itself. What matters is what comes next: the repair.

Understanding the Rupture and Repair Pattern

Think about your last argument with your partner. Maybe you felt criticized and shut down. Maybe they felt ignored and raised their voice. In that moment, you were experiencing a rupture—a break in your emotional connection, a moment where you couldn’t reach each other.

This is discord. This is the 70%.

Connection, rupture, repair, connection. This pattern can repeat many times over the course of an evening and over the course of a lifetime.

Maybe you are out to dinner and you’re feeling really connected and then your partner says something that doesn’t align – rupture - you feel more distant from them, you let them know the impact of their comment on you, your partner didn’t realise and moves to create closeness again – repair – back to feeling connected.

At other times, ruptures can last longer – particularly in relation to large life events like raising a young family where both can feel overwhelmed with the enormity of it all and move into survival or the death of a loved one can create feelings of separation.

In Tronick’s research, he watched as babies and mothers moved through these ruptures dozens of times in just a few minutes of interaction. Baby looks away (rupture). Mother waits, then gently tries again (attempted repair). Baby looks back (successful repair). They’re reconnected—until the next inevitable mismatch.

This dance of rupture and repair isn’t a sign of a failing relationship. It’s how intimacy and trust is built.

Each time you disconnect and then find your way back to each other, something important happens. You learn that disconnection isn’t permanent. You develop confidence that you can weather discord and come back together. You discover new things about yourself and your partner through the friction and intimacy deepens.

The discord itself—that uncomfortable, painful space where you’re out of sync—is actually the crucible where deeper understanding and intimacy are forged.

Why We Fear Discord

If discord is so normal and necessary, why does it feel so challenging?

Most of us carry a belief that conflict means failure. We think healthy relationships should be easy, smooth, harmonious. We believe that if we have to work this hard, if we fight this much, something must be wrong.

This belief is deeply rooted in our early experiences. If you grew up in a home where conflict was scary—where it escalated to violence, where it meant someone would leave, where it was followed by days of cold silence—your nervous system learned that discord equals danger.

Or perhaps you grew up in a home where conflict was avoided entirely, where everyone pretended everything was fine, where difficult feelings were swept under the rug. Your nervous system might have learned that any discord threatens the relationship’s survival.

Either way, you internalized a message: Discord is bad. Connection should be constant. If we’re fighting, we’re failing.

But Tronick’s work shows us something different. The goal isn’t constant connection. The goal is effective repair – and we can learn how to repair!

What Makes Repair Possible?

Not all discord leads to repair. This is where we begin to distinguish between healthy relationships and unhealthy ones—not by the presence or absence of conflict, but by what happens in its aftermath.

In healthy relationships, repair has certain characteristics:

Both people are willing to return - After a rupture, there’s a mutual movement back toward connection. It might not happen immediately—sometimes we need space to regulate—but there’s an eventual reaching out. One person extends an olive branch; the other receives it.

Responsibility is shared - Even if the split isn’t 50/50 in any given moment, both people can acknowledge their contribution to the disconnection over time. There’s no permanent victim, no permanent villain.

The relationship is more important than being right - You might still believe you were right about whatever you were fighting about, but reconnecting with your partner matters more than proving your point.

You learn from the discord - After repair, you understand each other a little better. You might discover that what seemed like your partner being dismissive was actually them feeling overwhelmed. You might realize that what felt like an attack was their clumsy attempt to ask for closeness.

You develop a shared language - Over time, you start to recognize your patterns. You can name them: “I think I’m doing that thing where I withdraw when I’m scared,” or “I notice I got critical just now—I’m actually feeling worried about us.”

Your capacity for repair grows - The more you successfully navigate rupture and repair, the more confident you become in the process. Discord becomes less terrifying because you trust you can find your way back.

This is what Tronick means when he talks about “interactive repair.” It’s not that one person fixes things for both of you. It’s that you collaboratively create the conditions for reconnection.

When Repair Becomes Impossible

Some relationships lose the capacity for repair (or maybe neither partner had the skills to repair) and this is when unhealthy patterns can emerge.

Unhealthy patterns around discord look like this:

Ruptures don’t get repaired - Disconnections pile up, one on top of another, with no resolution. You have the same fight repeatedly with no movement, no growth, no deeper understanding. The wounds stay open.

One person refuses to return - After discord, they punish with silence, withdrawal, or contempt. They make you work desperately to reconnect while they withhold their presence. Or they pretend everything is fine while remaining emotionally unavailable.

Responsibility is one-sided - One person is always the problem, always apologizing, always trying to do better. The other person never acknowledges their part in the disconnection. The message becomes: Our discord is your fault.

Discord is used as a weapon - Conflict isn’t an unfortunate mismatch to be worked through; it’s a tool for control. One person deliberately creates ruptures to keep the other off-balance, anxious, trying to earn their way back into good graces.

You feel worse about yourself over time - Instead of discord leading to greater mutual understanding, it erodes your sense of self. You become smaller, less confident, more confused about your own reality.

The relationship can’t tolerate honesty - You learn that bringing up difficult feelings or needs creates such severe discord that it’s not worth it. So you silence yourself. You manage your partner’s emotions instead of expressing your own truth.

Repair attempts are rejected or mocked - When you try to reconnect, to take responsibility, to move back toward your partner, they use it against you. Your vulnerability becomes ammunition.

In healthy relationships, discord is uncomfortable but ultimately productive. In unhealthy relationships, discord is destabilizing and destructive. The difference isn’t the conflict itself—it’s whether repair is possible.

Your Repair Capacity

If you’re trying to assess the health of your relationship, reflect on how you repair?

Not perfectly. Not without pain or difficulty. But fundamentally, when there’s a rupture between you, can you find your way back to each other?

Think about the last few times you had a significant disconnection. What happened afterward?

Did one or both of you eventually reach out? Did you talk about what went wrong, even if awkwardly? Did you feel closer after working through it, or at least more understanding of each other’s experience? Can you acknowledge the pattern and genuinely try something different next time?

Or did the disconnection just… stay? Did you move past it by pretending it didn’t happen? Did someone withhold connection until the other person appeased them enough? Did it leave a wound that makes you more careful, more guarded, less yourself?

What’s Your Part?

Effective repair requires self-knowledge, your prefrontal cortex and a relatively regulated nervous system.

You need to understand your own patterns: Do you pursue or withdraw? Does the conflict need to be repaired immediately or would you rather pretend it never happened? Do you escalate or shut down? What are you actually afraid of when discord happens? What do you need in order to feel safe enough to reconnect?

It requires communication that invites connection rather than defensiveness. Can you express your hurt without attacking your partner’s character? Can you name your needs clearly? Can you listen to your partner’s experience even when it’s different from yours?

It requires the willingness to be vulnerable again after being hurt. Repair means taking the risk of reaching out even when you’re scared of being rejected.

And sometimes, it requires the wisdom to recognise when repair isn’t possible at that time. Perhaps your partner needs a little more time for them to get their prefrontal cortex online and their nervous system regulated. During these times, it’s important for us to take space to self-soothe and be in relationship with ourselves.

Discord Leads to More Intimacy

Those moments when you’re completely out of sync with your partner, when you can’t reach each other, when you feel frustrated and hurt and disconnected—those moments are opportunities. Not comfortable ones. Not easy ones. But opportunities nonetheless.

Every time you move through discord and find your way back to each other, you’re building something. You’re proving to each other and to yourselves that your connection is resilient. You’re learning that you can be in conflict and still care about each other. You’re discovering new depths of understanding.

The question isn’t whether your relationship has discord. It will. The question is: What do you do with it? Can you hold the discomfort long enough to find your way back to connection? Can you learn from the rupture? Can you repair?

Your relationship doesn’t need to be conflict-free to be healthy. It needs to be repair-able.

That’s the difference that matters. And remember, repair is a skill we can learn so if you need some support, reach out.