Dreams Within Conflict Exercise for Gridlocked Perpetual Problems

Stephanie Cook, LCSW, and director of couples counseling ATL, shares the best tool for your worst relationship fights. The Gottman Institute, through decades of research on thousands of couples, discovered that many of the seemingly pointless and frustrating issues couples fight about are anything but insignificant. They spring from your deepest and most meaningful dreams, hopes, and desires for your own life, as well as the life that you share together.
If you and your partner feel that one another’s views on these perpetual problems are irrational, unreasonable, unnecessarily inflexible, or completely incomprehensible, you are likely to feel disrespected, betrayed. hurt, isolated, or generally detached from each other. Then fights are likely to escalate or you may avoid the topic altogether and grow distant, According to the Gottman Institue, getting trapped in these gridlocked, go-nowhere arguments often makes both of you easily start to experience these conflict discussions as 1) believing your desires as being diametrically opposed / mutually exclusive, 2) both of you become further entrenched in your opposing positions, 3) both of you become fearful of accepting influence from your partner or “backing down” or “giving in”, 4) Vilification of your partner (see them as horrible, less than you), and then 5) begin the sad process of emotional disengagement from each other “drifting apart”.
All couples have areas in which they face these areas of perpetual conflict. Understanding what lies beneath it helps you to end what has likely felt like an endlessly mystifying and increasingly painful and negative series of conversations. I’m out video series at Couples Counseling ATL, we go into far more depth on this topic, sharing a number of examples that you can use in your own relationship conflicts to identify both your own and your partner’s dreams and avoid the confusion and misery that gridlocked conversations bring into your life.
Once you have identified the dreams that underlie the areas of conflict for each of you, your previously gridlocked conversation about the subject of disagreement can change radically. We hope that this example illustrates the idea of becoming a “Dream Detective,” a skill that is incredibly powerful for resolving gridlock with your partner! Subscribe to learn more or set up your free consultation with any of our therapists.