Paula Quinsee’s Tools for Couples Facing Everyday Conflict

The Short Version: Every relationship comes with conflict, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Paula Quinsee, a celebrated author and relationship expert, pushes couples to rethink how they handle disagreements. Rather than treating conflict as a villain to beat, she suggests seeing it as a crucial force for growth and understanding. With deep wisdom and many years of experience behind her, she shows how conflict can bring vulnerable emotions to the surface and actually make relationships stronger.

One moment the two of you are sharing a pleasant dinner; a minute later you’re fighting about the dirty dishes in the sink. It begins innocently enough (“I washed the dishes last night, now it’s your turn”), but there’s tension under the jabs flying back and forth. Before long, the disagreement has turned into full-blown conflict.

 “You never appreciate how hard I work!” 

“You always force me to do the dirty work around the house!” 

“You never understand how much effort I put into dinner!” 

If that rings a bell, it may help to know you’re in good company. Still, you can avoid slammed doors and silent dinners once you learn to spot conflict and handle disagreements with respect and care.

We talked with Paula Quinsee, a relationship expert and author, about how sneaky conflict can be. Her guidance can help couples keep an everyday conflict from growing into something destructive, maybe even something that ends the relationship.

Paula gives couples tools for spotting conflict in the moment, so they can pause, breathe deeply, and calmly think about what the disagreement is really about.

In healthy relationships, partners face disagreements directly.

Paula stressed that conflict doesn’t have to come between partners whose relationship is otherwise happy and healthy.

“Happy couples are not afraid to have difficult conversations. They’re not afraid to sit in that uncomfortable space and work through it together,” Paula told us. “They don’t turn away from each other, they actually turn towards each other.” 

So how can conflict bring you and your partner closer? According to Paula, the secret is noticing conflict while it’s still simmering, then dealing with it directly rather than dodging it.

Conflict Is Growth Wearing a Disguise

Whatever is behind the conflict in your relationship, it can feel daunting to name the elephant in the room. What if raising it with your partner makes things worse? What if finally tackling it creates a rift in your relationship that can’t be repaired?

Paula says these “what ifs” just prolong the problem and make it harder to fix. “Couples that avoid conflict, they sweep it under the carpet, [and] nothing gets resolved,” she said. “And so those issues will keep coming up time and time again. And eventually, it will get to a point where it will fester.”

In the middle of a conflict with your partner, it can be tempting to just drop it for the sake of peace. Paula instead urges couples to stay strong and keep the big picture in view.

“Conflict is growth trying to happen,” Paula said. “We avoid it … because it feels awkward and uncomfortable. That’s because we’re being challenged. We’re being pushed out of our comfort zone.” 

Arguments can be hard, but they can also lead to a deeper connection.

Couples who grow together will inevitably feel some growing pains. Keep in mind that those pains don’t necessarily mean something’s wrong; they may just signal a change, and you don’t always need to fear change.

When conflict comes up, Paula tells couples to keep their focus on growth. “When we feel emotionally unsafe, naturally, our protective walls and our defenses come up. And that’s where conflict starts creeping into the relationship,” she said.

Rather than letting your defenses take over, try to treat the conflict as a chance to understand your partner better.

Paula said couples should ask themselves some key questions: “‘What can I learn about the other person? What can I learn about the situation? And how do we use these insights to help us as a couple or as a relationship to shift and move forward and not get stuck?’”

How You Say It Matters More Than What You Say

One reason conflict is so hard to tackle is that it’s unpredictable. How will your partner respond? Could discussing a problem widen the gap between you? With so much uncertain, Paula points to one timeless tool that nearly always helps: communication. “The sooner that couples start talking about these issues, the less chance they have of escalating,” she said.

“It’s really not so much about what we say, it’s how we say it.” According to Paula, the happiest couples sit down and face problems directly, with patience, clarity, and compassion.

“[These couples] are empathetic, and they are willing to listen, and they are willing to step into the other person’s space or world to get a deeper understanding of what’s going on there,” Paula described. 

Take a hard look at your relationship and ask whether you and your partner share these qualities. If either of you lacks empathy, that might be why your conflicts never seem to get resolved.

As you likely know from experience, communicating isn’t always as simple as a five-minute chat over breakfast.

If one or both partners don’t feel safe sharing their emotions, communication can’t thrive.

“Don’t have it on the fly or as you’re walking out the door or as you’re going to bed and falling asleep at night,” Paula advised. “It’s about making your partner aware that there is something going on for you and that you’d like to talk to them about it, and that you’d like to give it the attention that it deserves.” 

That, Paula explained, is the reason Imago Relationship Therapy exists. It’s meant to improve couples’ communication, and practitioners of Imago therapy “Use what we call the dialogue process, which helps to contain and create a safe space,” Paula said.

Paula offered the example of a wet towel. “‘When you left the wet towel on the floor, it really made me frustrated, because it felt like you were expecting me to pick up after you. And so that really made me feel unappreciated,’” she said by way of analogy.

She recommends describing how you’d like your partner to handle things next time. “‘Next time, what I’d really like is if you could just pick the wet towel up off the floor when you finish having a shower.’ So it’s owning it and using ‘I’ language, ‘this is how I feel, ‘this is what I’m experiencing’, and not, you know, getting stuck in the blame game.”

Talking in absolutes is another major no-no, Paula noted. “‘You always do this, you never do that’ … just causes people to get their defenses up, and [feel like] they’re being attacked. And that’s not going to be constructive.”

Constructive communication often begins with a safe space. “The space between two people is the relational space, and it’s how they show up for each other every day that co-creates the safety, quality, and health of the relationship,” Paula explained.

Rebuilding Trust Means Finding Middle Ground

Finding middle ground with your partner is one way to build a safe space. Paula says that getting down to the details of an issue and landing on something you both agree on can lead you out of conflict.

“Raise one topic and one issue at a time and deal with it,” she said. “You get to a level where you feel like, ‘Okay, we’ve reached a middle ground, it’s resolved and we can move forward on this.’” If reaching middle ground so you can rebuild trust is your aim, Paula suggested a few ways to shore up your foundation.

Reconnecting with your partner is an excellent way to find solid middle ground. “The best way to reconnect with each other is to be intentional about making time and spending time together,” Paula said.

Handled in a secure way, conflict can actually strengthen a relationship.

Time is precious, so giving yours to your partner is an obvious sign of goodwill. “The best way that we learn, or let our defenses down, is through fun and play,” Paula added.

Recalling what first drew you to your partner can help you see things more clearly. Make time to go out, do something you both love, and build new happy memories as a couple. What’s the fight really about? After you’ve both blown off some steam, discuss the issue calmly, clearly, and compassionately.

When emotions run high, a conflict can seem impossible to get past. Paula urges couples to keep their focus on how they feel about each other. “Just because we had an argument doesn’t mean the relationship is over or I don’t love you,” she stressed.

Your partner needs to “know that you’re there … relationships do have their ups and downs, there’s no such thing as the perfect relationship. It’s ‘how perfect can you be for each other?’” she said.

Nobody can be perfect, but everybody can grow. Couples can get past the everyday conflicts they all face, as long as both people will ease off the pace, speak their minds, and meet in the middle. “If you don’t ask for what you want, your partner doesn’t know how to be there for you,” Paula reminded us.