"Why Do We Keep Having the Same Fight Over and Over?" : A Couples Therapist Answers Your Most Burning Questions

"Oh, here we go again!"

"You never listen to me."

"This feels like we fight about this every single month."

Have any of those sentences come out of your mouth during a fight before? I bet they have, because if you're in a partnership, you're guaranteed some level of conflict as part of the emotional contract of two messy humans navigating life together.

I get this question a lot, as a couples therapist in Oklahoma: "Why do we keep having the same fight over and over again?" And the answer is complex and simple. HA. You thought it would be a basic answer, right? Nope, not in my therapy office.

What Does the Research Say About Why Couples Keep Having the Same Fight?

What does the research say about fighting in relationships? Well, that it's common, and that handlind conflicts with intentionality and care make all the difference. It's more about how you fight, than what you fight about, per se.

In fact, The Gottman Institute, the premiere research body on marriage and relationships, has found that 69% of conflict in relationships involve what we call 'perpetual problems,' issues that are about fundamental differences in personality types, or fundamental differences in your lifestyle needs/wants. These problems tend to plague couples for the duration of a partnership. And what is considered a perpetual problem for one relationship would be a completely solvable issue for another.

To give a concrete example: a couple who has mismatched needs around alone time versus togetherness is dealing with a perpetual problem. It's a fundamental difference in how they're wired. A couple who keeps fighting about whose turn it is to call the plumber? That's solvable. The distinction matters, because the approach is different.

When I share this research with couples, their eyes often get really big and they say they feel "discouraged." To which I reply, "Why the discouragement? If it's a topic that comes up often, you are most likely dealing with one of your perpetual problems and that means that you can focus on finding a solution for the moment at hand (a temporary truce, if you will) and it means finding the emotional maturity within yourself to do the longer term work of deciding if this is something you can accept in your partnership for the rest of your life."

Why Needing to Be Right Keeps Couples Stuck in the Same Argument

Another major reason couples have the same fight over and over again is that each person is prioritizing the need to be right. This is the first of the Five Losing Strategies in relationships, identified by therapist Terry Real. Wanting to be right in an argument keeps people stuck in the cycle of disagreement, because most fights aren't cut-and-dry issues with a clear right and wrong. The fight is a clash between two equally valid (notice I didn't say 'true' or 'right') viewpoints. When we're both fighting to win, we're missing out on the ability to stay connected. You can be right or you can be connected. You cannot have both at the same time.

When you work on the part of you that wants to be right, suddenly what used to be a high 'heat' topic is now at a lower temperature when you discuss it, especially when you're prioritizing your intimacy over your agenda. The questions I ask couples to consider before they are about to enter into a fight or disagreement is, "What is it that I want to get out of this?" and "Is what I'm about to do going to get me more of what I want?"

Once this skill is ingrained, you start being what we call in RLT 'relationally mindful,' recognizing how everything you do and say in the relationship contributes, either positively or negatively, to your relationship's ecosystem. If you want an ecosystem clogged with smog and pollution, then, by all means, keep insisting that your viewpoint is right and your partner's is wrong. But... if you want a relational ecosystem with clean, crisp and clear air, then you're going to have to let go of the need to be right.

The Missing Piece: Relational Contracts

The final reason I notice that people get stuck in the same arguments is because they aren't creating contracts or agreements ahead of time. Contracting in a close relationship is a necessary skill. Here's what it may sound like: "Hey honey, I know we are going to see your parents this weekend. I'd like to keep our time there to under 4 hours. Is that okay with you if we leave at the four hour mark, so I can have some time to recharge this weekend as well?" And if your partner agrees, then you have a contract in place.

Contracts protect you in two ways: 1) it makes it difficult for your partner to take a victim position, because they agreed to the contract, and 2) and it makes expectations and commitments clear. Contracts are about behavior, not feelings or thoughts, and they work the best when they have specific behaviors targeted and are close-ended. We don't have eternal contracts.

So Why Do You Keep Having the Same Fight?

So there you have it. You keep having the same fight because some of your conflicts are perpetual problems — fundamental differences that aren't meant to be "solved," so much as navigated with grace. You keep having the same fight because one or both of you is prioritizing being right over staying connected. And you keep having the same fight because nobody sat down ahead of time and made a clear agreement.

The good news? All three of these are workable. Not overnight, and not without some discomfort — but workable. If you're tired of the same argument on repeat, the change doesn't start with your partner. It starts with you deciding that your relationship matters more than winning an argument. And if you need some help getting there, well — that's exactly what I'm here for.

If you'd like to explore what couples therapy with me might look like and you're located in Oklahoma or Vermont, please feel free to email me at info@giftofgritcounseling.com or schedule a free 20 minute virtual consultation here.

Take Exquisite Care of Yourselves,

Megan

10 Fantastic Ways to Get Less of What You Want in Your Relationships

Let's be honest, most of us have done at least one of these. And if you haven't, you probably know someone who has (maybe you're even living with them). Spoiler alert: I've done all 10 of them at one point or another in my 10-year marriage, and I'm a licensed therapist who sees couples for a living. So don't lie to me and tell me you've never pulled one of these in your own relationship. I know you. You know you. (Quick! Name that movie!)

I work with people every day who are deeply frustrated in their relationships. They often believe their partner is the problem, yet they unknowingly run plays straight from the How to Sabotage Your Relationship playbook. So in the spirit of a little loving humor, here are 10 fantastic ways to guarantee you get *less* of what you actually want, and because I'm a giver, what to do instead to get more of what you want in your relationships.

1. Insist on Being Right, ESPECIALLY When It Doesn't Matter

If you win the argument but lose the relationship... that's still a win, right?

You: "Well, you said you were going to do XYZ and you didn't."

Partner: "I didn't say that. I don't remember ever saying that." (Okay, and here we go, off to the races!)

Being right and being close are often competing goals. When you prioritize winning over connecting, you send your partner the message that your ego matters more than the relationship. People don't tend to feel warm and fuzzy toward someone who just defeated them. Choose connection over correctness, and your relationship will thank you.

2. Try to Control Your Partner's Actions, Thoughts, or Feelings

Bonus points if you insist you're just trying to "help."

Here's the hard truth: you cannot control another person. You can influence, you can request, you can set boundaries, but control is an illusion that costs you intimacy. The more you try to manage your partner, the more they feel like a project rather than a person. And nobody wants to be someone's project.

It's also often a sign of codependency, according to the great Pia Mellody. She calls it 'negative control': "whenever I give myself permission to determine for another person what he or she should look like (including dress or body size), or think, feel, and do or not do." (p. 46, Facing Codependence). It can also work in reverse. You may think you know what the other person's reality is and influence your own behavior, thoughts, and feelings to reflect their reality. Control is a sign that your internal boundaries are porous, at best.

3. Say Whatever You're Feeling in the Heat of the Moment

Because every thought deserves an audience. No filter, no repair plan! Saying whatever you're thinking, especially when you're angry, is mean. Just plain mean. While what you're saying to your spouse may be true, you need to ask yourself: "Will saying this out loud get me closer to what I want?" or "What will what I'm about to say feel like to hear?" If the answers are, respectively, no and bad, then you shouldn't say it. Period.

Emotional flooding is real. When we're activated, we are not our wisest selves. The things said in the heat of the moment have a long shelf life. Long after the fight is over, those words linger. Pause. Breathe. Come back when you can speak from your values, not your wrecked nervous system. You'll get more traction if you learn to speak with wisdom and not with harshness.

4. Punish Them (But From the Moral High Ground)

Why heal when you can get even? The logic goes: if I hurt them the way they hurt me, they'll finally understand. But this just creates a cycle of mutual wounding. Nobody learns empathy from being injured. Retaliation dressed up as justice is still retaliation.

I also label this one as passive aggression. If you aren't saying out loud why you are or are not doing something in your relationship as a way to 'get your partner's attention' or to 'help them understand what it feels like,' you're being passive-aggressive. Full stop.

5. Shut Down. Walk Away. Ghost From Inside the Relationship.

Nothing says "I care" like radio silence when they need you most.

Stonewalling is one of the most corrosive patterns in relationships. When we emotionally disappear (i.e., go silent, become robotic, or physically leave without repair), we leave our partner with no way to connect, no way to fix it, and a growing sense of abandonment. Taking space to regulate is healthy. Disappearing as punishment is not.

6. Always Assume the Worst

Late to dinner? Probably hates you now. Trash not taken out? They obviously don't love you enough to remember.

When we operate from a scarcity mindset, constantly interpreting neutral or ambiguous behavior as evidence of rejection or disrespect, we create conflict out of nothing. Most of the time, people are just busy, forgetful, or tired. Assume positive intent as often as you reasonably can. It changes everything.

7. Expect Mind Reading

Let miscommunication lead the way! Perfect your passive-aggressive craft. Say "I'm fine" when you clearly aren't. Slam cabinets. Give the silent treatment. Make them guess what they did wrong.

If your partner has to decode your behavior like a puzzle to know what you need, the bar for connection has been set impossibly high. Clarity is kindness. Saying what you actually feel and need — even when it's vulnerable — is far more effective than hoping they figure it out on their own.

8. Keep Score Like It's the Olympic Finals

"He got a night out with friends in '21 — I get three in '25." "She only mowed the lawn once this year, so I'm going to stop doing my share and see if she notices."

Scorekeeping turns a partnership into a competition. And in a competition, someone always loses. If the goal is fairness, have that conversation directly. If the goal is to win, ask yourself what exactly you're winning, and consider what you might be losing in the process.

9. Apologize Only If They Apologize First

And even then, make sure you apologize for their feelings, not your actions. "I'm sorry you feel that way" is not an apology. It's a deflection wearing an apology costume.

Taking genuine accountability, owning what you did, without a "but," and without waiting for them to go first, is one of the most powerful things you can do in a relationship. It requires humility. It also requires grit.

10. Lead with Anger

Start the conversation with a complaint, or better yet, a full-on accusation. "You NEVER listen." "Are you even TRYING?" Yell first, reflect later. Escalation never got anyone closer to feeling heard.

When we lead with anger, we immediately trigger our partner's defenses. The content of what we're saying, even if it's valid, gets buried under the delivery. Nobody hears the message when they're busy protecting themselves. Start soft. Lead with your vulnerability, not your frustration.

So What Actually Works to Get More of What You Want in Relationships?

If you want more love, safety, and joy in your relationships, therapist and author Terry Real offers a pretty clear roadmap:

• Speak with love and clarity — say what you mean without weaponizing it

• Value connection over being right — let go of the scoreboard

• Repair ruptures quickly — don't let things fester

• Own your part — every conflict has two people in it

• Move toward your partner, not away — choose closeness, even when it's hard

  
  

Relationships take real work. They take the willingness to look at your own patterns, soften your defenses, and show up even when it's uncomfortable. That's grit in its finest form, and connection is the path to recovery. Trauma is disconnection. Recovery is reconnection. Let's help you reconnect, together.

If any of this resonated with you and you're ready to do the work, Gift of Grit Counseling is here for it. Follow along *@giftofgritcounseling for more

The Importance of Self-Care in Relationships

Taking care of yourself is essential. When you prioritize your well-being, you bring your best self to the relationship. Self-care isn't selfish; it's necessary. It allows you to show up fully for your partner.

Building Trust Through Vulnerability

Trust is the foundation of any relationship. Being vulnerable can be scary, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. When you share your fears and insecurities, you invite your partner to do the same. This mutual openness fosters a deeper connection.

The Role of Communication

Effective communication is key. It’s not just about talking; it’s about listening, too. Make space for your partner to express themselves. When both partners feel heard, the relationship flourishes.

Embracing Change Together

Change is a part of life. Embracing it together can strengthen your bond. Support each other through transitions, whether they’re big or small. This shared journey can deepen your connection.

Conclusion: The Path to a Healthier Relationship

Relationships can be challenging, but they can also be incredibly fulfilling. By recognizing and changing sabotaging behaviors, you can create a healthier dynamic. Remember, it’s about progress, not perfection. Let’s take this journey together.

Take exquisite care of yourself,

Megan

Finding Freedom from Fear: Understanding I-CBT for Persistent Anxiety

So you've done therapy before. Maybe you even tried Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). You learned about cognitive distortions, completed thought records, and challenged irrational thoughts. It helped — maybe a little, maybe a lot — but the loop kept looping. The what-ifs kept coming. You figured either you weren't doing it right, or this was just how your brain was wired, or therapy just wasn't going to be the thing that fixed this.

"I'm just an anxious person. This is just who I am," you think as you sit in the chaos of your mind and body, caught in the loop of existential dread, horrible images that won't go away, and fear that won't let up.

Here's what I want you to consider instead: maybe the tool wasn't the right fit for the specific problem. Not because CBT is ineffective — it isn't — but because obsessive, intrusive thinking operates differently than the kind of anxiety CBT was originally built to address. Different problems need different tools.

That's where Inferential CBT comes in.

Understanding CBT: What It Is and What It Was Built For

Standard CBT is genuinely effective for many issues. Depression, situational anxiety, and black-and-white thinking are just a few examples. The core premise is straightforward: identify the distorted thought, examine the evidence for and against it, and replace it with something more balanced and realistic. It works because it interrupts the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

The problem isn't CBT. The problem lies in applying it to a type of thinking it wasn't specifically designed for.

When your anxiety is primarily obsessive — when it manifests as what-if loops that migrate from topic to topic, never quite resolving — challenging the content of the thought doesn't address the root of what's happening. You argue down one what-if, and your brain generates another. You challenge "what if I said something offensive," and by the time you've convinced yourself you didn't, a new doubt has already taken its place.

Standard CBT also assumes that if you can find the flaw in the logic, the thought loses its power. But here's the thing obsessive thinkers know all too well: these thoughts often aren't obviously illogical. They're built on real history, real possibilities, and genuine events that have happened to real people. That's what makes them so convincing and so hard to argue against. You can't win an internal debate with a mind that keeps finding new evidence.

Why Managing Worry Is Getting Harder — Not Easier

There's something worth naming before we go further, because I think it's making this particular flavor of anxiety significantly worse for many people right now.

We are living through a moment in history that is specifically, almost engineered, to destabilize three things that obsessive anxiety already attacks: your trust in your senses, your relationship with what's real versus what's imagined, and your confidence in your own common sense.

Deepfakes mean what you see may not be real. AI-generated audio means what you hear may not be real. The internet serves you an endless buffet of plausible worst-case scenarios, and now AI will sit with you and help you develop them in exhaustive detail. For a brain that already has a hair-trigger for "but what if that's not true," the current information environment is genuinely hostile in a way that nothing in the history of CBT's development accounted for.

And here's the one that concerns me most clinically: AI has become the world's most sophisticated reassurance-seeking machine. You can describe your worry to an AI at 2 AM, and it will engage thoughtfully, ask clarifying questions, and generate a thorough response. It feels helpful. It provides brief relief. But for someone caught in an obsessional loop, it does exactly what Googling symptoms does: reduces anxiety in the short term and feeds the cycle in the long term.

I'm not saying don't use AI. I'm saying if you notice you're using it to manage anxiety — checking, verifying, seeking reassurance about things your common sense already knows — that's worth paying attention to. Because the skills I-CBT builds are specifically the ones this moment in history is eroding: trust in your senses, confidence in your own reasoning, and the ability to distinguish what's real from what's an elaborately constructed what-if.

Learning to do that now, in a world actively working against it, might be the most useful thing you can do for your mental health in 2026.

What I-CBT Understands That Regular CBT Doesn't

Inferential CBT — developed by researchers Kieron O'Connor and Frederick Aardema out of the OCD Study Center in Montreal — starts from a fundamentally different premise.

Rather than focusing on the content of the anxious thought, I-CBT focuses on the reasoning process — what the founders call "inferential confusion" — that gives rise to the doubt in the first place. In other words: we're not asking "is this thought rational?" We're asking "how did your mind decide this thought was worth entertaining at all?"

The key distinction is this: ERP helps people cope with the effects of obsessional doubt. I-CBT helps people stop creating that doubt in the first place.

That's a distinct difference.

Here's what inferential confusion actually looks like in practice. Your brain takes an imagined possibility — what if I left the stove on, what if I offended someone, what if something is wrong with me — and treats it as if it has the same weight as something grounded in reality. It mistakes an imagined possibility for a real probability. Your senses and your common sense are telling you one thing. Your obsessional reasoning is telling you something else entirely. And the obsessional reasoning wins — not because it's right, but because it's louder and more elaborate.

I-CBT identifies what it calls the OCD Trifecta — three reasoning processes that drive this crossover from reality into imagination: distrust of the senses and self, boundless imagination, and misapplied logic and relevance. Together, they generate a convincing but entirely hypothetical story that gives rise to obsessional doubt.

Sound familiar? It should — especially if you've been living online in 2026. The world is now doing to everyone what OCD has always done to you specifically. The difference is that most people can shake it off. For obsessional thinkers, it compounds.

Let me translate that out of clinical language: your brain has learned to distrust what your eyes and your gut are telling you, go wild with "but what if" scenarios, and then apply just enough logic to make those scenarios feel plausible. That's the machinery behind the loop. And once you can see the machinery, you can start to dismantle it.

What I-CBT Actually Does in a Session

I want to be honest with you: I-CBT isn't magic, and it isn't a quick fix. But it does feel different from other approaches — and for people who've been around the therapy block, that difference tends to be noticeable fairly quickly.

Instead of sitting with your anxiety and trying to tolerate it (ERP), or arguing with your anxious thought and trying to replace it (CBT), we do something different. We look at the story your mind is telling — the narrative it constructed to convince you the doubt was worth taking seriously. We examine where that story drifts from reality into imagination. We trace the reasoning chain that got you there.

I-CBT is not a therapy of sheer effort or endurance — it's a therapy of realization and insight. The goal isn't to expose you to the thing you're afraid of. It's to expose the doubt itself — to hold it up to the light of reality and watch it lose its grip.

Part of that work involves uncovering what I-CBT calls the "obsessional narrative" — the elaborate story your anxiety constructs around your doubt to make it feel real and convincing — and learning to create an alternative narrative grounded in what your senses and common sense are actually telling you. The senses and common sense you've been learning to distrust. The ones we're going to help you trust again.

One thing my clients consistently find relieving: you don't have to set up elaborate exposure exercises. Because I-CBT focuses on reasoning rather than anxiety exposure, many people find it more comfortable and more aligned with their way of thinking. This matters especially if your compulsions are primarily internal — if there's no physical checking behavior to interrupt, just thought loops running inside your own head. Exposure to your own thought patterns is genuinely difficult to engineer. Examining the reasoning process that generates those patterns is something we can actually work with in a session.

Who I-CBT Is a Strong Fit For

I want to be specific here, because I think specificity is what actually helps you figure out if this is worth trying.

I-CBT tends to be a strong fit if you:

• Have obsessive what-if thinking that migrates from topic to topic — health one week, relationship the next, career the week after.

• Would describe yourself as a high achiever, overthinker, or someone whose anxiety is specific and sharp rather than a generalized background hum.

• Have tried CBT and found it helpful but not quite enough — like it addressed the surface but not the source.

• Notice that seeking reassurance — Googling, asking people, replaying conversations, or yes, asking AI, etc. — helps briefly and then makes things worse.

• Have a lot of internal mental reviewing but few obvious external compulsions.

• Are late-diagnosed ADHD or neurodivergent and find your brain generates doubt rapidly and persistently.

• Find yourself increasingly unsettled by the current information environment in a way that feels disproportionate to those around you.

  
  

I-CBT may not be the primary fit if your anxiety is mostly situational: tied to a specific life stressor that has a clear resolution. Standard approaches often work well for that. The distinction that matters is whether your worry migrates and loops regardless of circumstance. If the topic keeps changing but the theme — uncertainty, self-doubt, fear of having done something wrong — stays the same, that's the pattern I-CBT is built for.

What the Research Says

I'll keep this brief because I know you didn't come here for a literature review. I-CBT is supported by over two decades of clinical and research evidence. Randomized controlled trials have shown that I-CBT is as effective as exposure-based therapy, with large treatment effects and high acceptability among participants. Dr. Aardema at the University of Montreal has led large-scale registered trials directly comparing I-CBT with ERP, and the results are consistently strong.

It's worth knowing that I-CBT is still less widely known than CBT or ERP — which is exactly why relatively few therapists are trained in it. If you've been in therapy before and no one mentioned it, that's not a reflection of your case. It's a reflection of how recently this approach has been making its way into mainstream clinical training.

A Note on How I Use It

I don't apply I-CBT as a rigid protocol. It's a lens I bring to our work together, alongside EMDR when trauma is part of the picture, nervous system work throughout, and practical tools you can use between sessions. Therapy with me is integrative, meaning I'm always adapting to what you actually need rather than following a script.

What I can tell you is that for the clients I work with who have this specific flavor of anxiety — the looping, migrating, certainty-seeking kind — I-CBT is often the piece that finally moves the needle in a way that other approaches haven't.

If You've Tried Things Before and You're Still Stuck

Reading about a different approach and actually experiencing it are two very different things. I know that. And I know it takes something to try again when previous attempts haven't fully landed. I also recognize that it takes immense trust to put yourself out there again to a therapist, especially if you've never met me before or you've been burned by the mental health treatment machine previously.

But if the loop is still looping — if you've done the work and the what-ifs keep coming anyway — it might not be that you're doing anything wrong. It might be that you need a different tool entirely.

That's what I do. Schedule a consultation here if you'd like to talk about whether this approach might be the right fit for you.

Take Exquisite Care of Yourselves,

Megan