Your Love Story Has Conflict

(7 minute Read)

No one foresees conflict in Love.

We promise love, loyalty, patience, and to always be honest, which feels manageable at the altar and much less manageable six years later when someone has once again “forgotten” to mention a large purchase, and you're keeping score now.

Whatever your conflict is, it will keep showing up. Conflict just shows up no matter how hard you try to keep it away. It arrives in the car, where one person is driving, and the other is staring out the window, holding their breath because the driver is rushed and it feels unsafe. OR It arrives in the kitchen at night, when the day is over, but the resentment is not. OR It arrives in text messages that start out normal and end with a period that feels aggressive or possibly dismissive.

Every love story has conflict. It is the plot twist necessary to grow. Conflict puts us out of our comfort zone and forces us to see a person, a situation, and life differently. It forces us to show up differently from the past or face the consequences.

Many people think conflict means something is wrong with the relationship. That conflict is a warning sign that this is the wrong person, or they are wrong in their perspective. Surely, if this were the right relationship, we would not be having the same argument we had last year, and the year before that, and briefly in the parking lot of a nice restaurant where we both pretended we were fine yesterday.

John Gottman’s research suggests that this is exactly the way it is. That nearly 70% of conflicts are perpetual, the arguments are repeated over and over again. And it doesn’t feel like love when unresolved conflict is more present. Yet, conflict is not the opposite of love. Indifference is. Conflict means you are still fighting for love and still invested in the relationship, and hoping the story turns out well.

In Esther Perel’s vast body of work, she often notes that most relationship conflict lives in three familiar places, whether we name them or not.

The first is power.

Power struggles rarely look dramatic. Instead, they look rather practical. They look like calendars and budgets, whose work schedules take precedence, whose exhaustion counts more, and who quietly keep adjusting while the other assumes things will just work out.

Power struggles aren’t always about domination. They’re about wanting your life to count inside the relationship. In a partnership, we want to be consulted, rather than informed. It’s important to feel wanted and valued.

Supporting characters are people outside the couple who can significantly affect it. Children, parents, and friends are all supporting characters that help you navigate your love story, but only you and your partner can make decisions and make each other feel wanted. When we fail to recognize and work toward power alignments, we doom ourselves to a power struggle.

When you are in a power struggle, you often hear people say things like “It’s fine,” and they mean “I am collecting data.”  This is where resentment starts to build. We pretend like it’s ok and misrepresent our integrity.

Then there is betrayal.

We think betrayal is always explosive. Betrayal is portrayed as affairs, giant lies, and big revelations. Truthfully, sometimes that is what betrayal looks like. However, more often, betrayal is quieter. It looks like the agreement that we wouldn’t buy new bedding, and we did, and that agreement dissolved without a conversation. The promise that was technically broken but emotionally ignored. The slow realization that you have been carrying all the emotional labor alone, while assuming it was shared or that it would be shared.

Betrayal hurts because love requires imagination in your connection. You imagine a future, a rhythm, a sense of “we” that makes you happy all the time. Betrayal interrupts that story/fantasy mid-sentence. Suddenly, you’re not only hurt, you’re disoriented because you never saw this coming.

And once trust wobbles, even small things feel heavier.  Everything takes longer to recover: a late text, a missed detail, a tone that feels sharp.  And trust takes a long time to regain. It’s why we need to express our feelings with integrity. Pretending everything is “fine” again extends the healing time.

The third conflict is desire and distance.

It’s the subtle moment when someone thinks, I love you, and I don’t feel the pull the way I used to. That thought brings shame to many people, because we’ve been taught that love and desire are the same thing, and they’re not.

Desire is alive. It needs space, novelty, and energy. Love can stay while desire shifts.

This looks like many things, but here are a couple of examples. A conflict often arises when one partner feels rejected, and the other feels pressured. When closeness turns heavy, or distance feels dangerous or anxious. When sex becomes reassurance, it’s difficult to find or maintain a true connection.

This romantic tension doesn’t vanish quickly. It does, however, change form in new contexts, such as after a change in routine, a new stressor like a baby, or over time as the once new becomes old. The relationship is not broken. It simply means two inner worlds are trying to stay connected without losing their spark, and the context changed, and we need to catch up.

Desire simply evolves into something different if you allow it. If you keep wanting the old context, you're going to be unhappy. Obviously, we can’t go backward; we can only go forward.  

This is where repair enters, awkward and necessary.

Repair after a conflict is not a dramatic apology or a perfectly timed speech. It is also not groveling or winning. It is the deeply unsexy willingness to say, “I see my part in this situation,” without immediately explaining or defending your action or words.

Repair sounds like:

 “I don’t love how I showed up.”

 “When that happened, it shook my trust.”

 “I need to feel like my voice matters here.”

 “I want us, and I also need room to be myself.”

Repair is often a little clumsy. It involves pauses, second attempts, and sentences that start over. If it feels graceful, someone is probably avoiding something. Pretending isn’t real and won’t smooth over a conflict. Being authentic and real is non-negotiable here.  Live your integrity in this moment.

Your commitment to romance is in your attempts to repair. Again, forget the grand gestures and return to the table again and again. Think of it as holding hands even when you're angry.  By choosing curiosity instead of defensiveness, you bring the truth. That level of maturity and integrity will repair your relationship, and it never hurts to add a little humor, either.

To conclude, every love story has its share of conflict. If it didn’t, it would be boring and never be really worth it. Mature relationships don’t dramatize conflict or deny it. They learn how to argue without burning the house down with insults and anger. Instead, they learn how to repair without humiliation. They learn how to hold power, trust, and freedom without breaking the bond.

Learning, as a couple, how conflict is repaired is a unique recipe. What works with one couple may not work with another. Love is a custom job that you keep growing. It’s always changing, and that’s the fun in the story that makes it worth continuing.

2026 All rights reserved HMKcoaching. This article was written by a human. Your favorite AI has never loved anyone, but I have.