Couple conflict styles: what the research says about how you fight

By EQTiger Editorial. Review status: needs-expert-review. Qualified review is pending; the review date records an editorial check. This is general education for adults, not therapy or couples counseling, and EQTiger does not diagnose anyone, including your partner.

The idea: more than one way to fight well

A lot of relationship advice assumes one right way to argue: sit down calmly, take turns, reflect back, compromise. Research on conflict styles complicates that picture.

In a study that observed 73 couples at two points four years apart, John Gottman proposed five couple types (Gottman, 1993). Three looked stable over time and two did not:

The descriptions in the table are our plain-language summaries. The surprise was the volatile and avoiding couples. Volatile couples argue in ways that can look alarming from outside, and avoiding couples skip the careful discussion that therapists often teach, yet both appeared among the stable types. What separated the stable types from the unstable ones was hostility, not volume or how much a couple talked things through.

The study had real limits. It was a small sample, and the types were derived from the same data they describe, so it was a proposal rather than a tested classification (Gottman, 1993).

Did later research hold up?

Partly. Thomas Holman and Mark Jarvis used two sets of survey data in which people described their own conflict styles, and reproduced types similar to Gottman's (Holman and Jarvis, 2003). Validating couples scored highest on satisfaction, stability and positive communication, hostile couples scored lowest, and volatile and avoiding couples fell in between.

That is a slightly different picture from the original. Validating was best on average, volatile and avoiding were okay, and hostile was clearly worst. The data were self-reported and cross-sectional, so they show how styles and satisfaction go together at one point, not whether a style causes later happiness.

Styles measured as behaviors, not types

Another research tradition measures specific conflict behaviors rather than sorting couples into types. Lawrence Kurdek developed brief questionnaires, including one measuring four personal styles (positive problem solving, conflict engagement, withdrawal and compliance), and studied both partners in 75 gay, 51 lesbian, 108 married nonparent and 99 married parent couples over a year (Kurdek, 1994). The measures related to satisfaction, to changes in satisfaction and to breakups. The abstract frames this as preliminary psychometric evidence based on self-reports.

Looking at behaviors is often more useful than asking which type you are, because you can change a behavior on Thursday.

When your styles differ

The original research described couples whose partners shared a style. Many real couples do not: one wants to talk it out now and loudly, the other wants to think first and keep the peace. A mismatch tends to look like the demand-withdraw pattern, where the person who wants to engage pushes and the person who wants calm pulls back. That pattern is moderately linked to worse outcomes in a meta-analysis of 74 studies (Schrodt, Witt, and Shimkowski, 2014), and it appears in same-sex and different-sex couples alike (Baucom, McFarland, and Christensen, 2010).

The research does not say the avoider must learn to love confrontation, or the volatile partner must become serene. It suggests both need a version of conflict that still gets problems addressed. A year-long study of 61 couples found that direct requests for change, even blunt ones, predicted more actual change than gentle indirect hints, even though they felt worse in the moment (Overall and colleagues, 2009). Avoiding the topic entirely does not seem to get the same results.

And when one partner does behave badly in a fight, responding constructively instead of in kind is linked to greater satisfaction and commitment (Rusbult and colleagues, 1991). That finding comes from mostly correlational, preliminary data, but it fits the larger pattern: the problem is less the volume than the slide into attack.

A mismatch, worked through

Marcus grew up in a family where arguments were loud, quick and forgotten by dinner. Elena grew up in one where raised voices meant something was badly wrong. When the vacation budget comes up, Marcus gets animated and talks fast. Elena goes quiet, which Marcus reads as stonewalling, so he gets louder, which Elena reads as anger at her.

Neither style is the problem. What helps is naming it outside the fight: Marcus agrees that when Elena says "slow down", he will drop his voice and sit down. Elena agrees that "I need to think" will always come with a time ("tonight after the kids are asleep"), and she will bring one concrete proposal when they resume. Within a few weeks the budget talk takes twenty minutes instead of two days, not because either changed their personality, but because both changed one behavior. This is an illustration of the research, not a case from a study.

What the research cannot tell you

• Your type from a quiz. Types are a description of averages. Most couples mix styles depending on topic, stress and time of day.
• That avoiding is always fine. Avoiding couples in the research were content, but avoidance can also mean important problems never get solved. If one of you is quietly unhappy, avoidance is not working for you.
• That loud means unhealthy. Volume is not the same as hostility. Volatile couples were among the stable types in the original study.
• Anything about safety. If arguments involve intimidation, threats or fear, that is not a conflict style. It is a safety issue, and the resources on this page apply.

How to use this

1. Describe your own style honestly, then your partner's, using behaviors rather than labels. The conflict style quiz can help you start the conversation.
2. Name the mismatch without blaming: "I want to settle things right away, and you need time to think. Neither is wrong."
3. Agree on rules that respect both: a time limit for heated talks, a promise to return to anything postponed, no name-calling regardless of volume.
4. Keep the warmth up outside of fights, so a heated argument happens inside a relationship that otherwise feels good.
5. Watch for the hostile signs (contempt, cold sniping, retaliation) rather than for volume. Those are the ones linked to trouble.

For a practical walk-through with scripts and an exercise, see different conflict styles.

Key studies

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