Why Conflict Can Strengthen Your Relationship

Every healthy relationship moves through a cycle:
Harmony → Disharmony → Repair

We often think the goal of a healthy relationship is to stay in harmony, but that's actually not realistic—or ideal. Disharmony is inevitable, and it’s not a sign something’s gone wrong.

In fact, it's actually where intimacy begins.

In the movie Stutz (Netflix), Phil Stutz talks about how there are three things no one can escape: pain, uncertainty, and constant work. Healthy relationships don’t lack conflict; the key is repair. The more we practice repair, the more natural it becomes. And the less we see each other’s behavior as a threat, the more we can build trust.

Repair isn’t just a skill. It’s a process that requires you to be in the right state. You can’t repair from a triggered or defensive place. In that state, the part of you in charge is focused on self-protection — and doesn't care if the relationship is a casualty of that protection.

Repair requires moving beyond defense. It’s about stepping into the part of us that knows “I am enough and I matter”(Terry Real) — the part that has healthy self-esteem and strong boundaries. It’s the part that can hold space for your partner’s subjective reality — even if it’s different from your own (e.g., “I didn’t say that!”) — without feeling threatened or needing to assert your own view.

As Terry Real says, the relational answer to “Who’s right?” is simply: “Who cares?”

In moments of repair, it's not about accuracy—it’s about connection. The dishwasher argument, the temperature in the house, or whatever the disagreement is, doesn’t matter in the moment of repair. What matters is how we move forward, how we restore understanding and connection between us.

There’s an old saying: we marry our unfinished business. Oftentimes, we choose partners whose imperfections collide with our own to repeat an element of a familiar, distressing dynamic. But those moments offer us the chance to practice something new, to create a different ending.

The real relational skill isn’t about avoiding conflict — it’s how we repair and return to each other after a rupture.

So, what if conflict isn’t a detour from connection, but the road to it?