Crises in relationships: shared, personal, expected and unexpected

Over time, every couple goes through changes: the partners get older, their professional and social status changes, and so do the countries they live in.

Children come along, too, or, on the contrary, grow up and move out. All of this is naturally accompanied by a crisis, in which the couple renegotiates boundaries, responsibilities and rules.

A crisis is not an enemy but a helper in our life and in the life of a couple

Psychology has the concept of "normative crises", where a crisis is a normal and even predictable process.

For example, the crisis of the first year of a relationship, when you move out of the infatuation phase into a stronger relationship: many illusions fall away along with it, and there is little pleasant about that.

The birth of a child, or a child's separation from their parents, are also predictable crises: they change an established system of interaction and lead to a restructuring of the relationship.

Non-normative crises happen because of situations that cannot be predicted. For example, they can be triggered by infidelity or a partner's illness, neither of which is part of a couple's usual course of development.

A normative crisis aims to change the system of communication that has already formed within the couple.

A non-normative one requires not only these changes but also a reassessment of the value of the relationship as a whole.

"We never fight"

There is no such thing as a couple that hasn't been through at least one crisis.

If you hear friends say "we never fight", don't sink into guilt and shame over your own conflicts. Unfortunately, many couples believe that the absence of conflict equals close connection and dialogue. But these are the same couples people talk about like this: "everything was so good between them, and then they suddenly broke up / got divorced". That doesn't happen suddenly.

Avoiding difficult topics and conflicts can lead to emotional distance and losing connection for good. So don't forget: a crisis is our helper in preserving closeness.

How to cope with a crisis?

To get through a crisis, you need to talk to each other and handle conflict skillfully: not only say what you don't like, but also hear the other person.

It's important to learn not to shut down, and above all, to share what you're worried about when things get hard.

If, after your feedback, your partner is at a loss and doesn't understand what reaction you need from them, tell them what feels like support to you in a given situation, why their words or actions hurt you so much, and what you would like to get in return.

You don't need to be your partner's constant teacher, but it's worth talking this through, because support, attention and expressions of love look different for different people. And in a relationship, you learn this from each other.

A few more tips:

Voice what irritates you as soon as you notice it: it's better to say a few short phrases in the moment than to bottle them up for a long time and pour them all out on your partner at once.

In moments of strong emotion, try to avoid manipulating with threats of breaking up: it doesn't help resolve the conflict, but it undermines trust in the couple.

Remember that conflict and crisis are problems you both solve together, not a competition over who is right and who is to blame.

You are on the same side.

A couple's crisis or a personal crisis?

In today's world, a couple's relationship crises can overlap with each partner's personal crises, as well as with external crises that affect each person individually and the relationship as a whole.

It's hard to separate one from the other, so in the most unstable times it's important to keep (or create) stable rituals within the couple, just for the two of you. For example, not only going on dates but also doing a relationship "audit" and checking in with each other.

To do this, you can set aside one day a month (or every two months) to go over the events that matter to the couple and talk through what each of you found valuable in the other's actions and words.

And if you notice that responsibility for dates or leisure time together rests on one partner, you can sometimes swap roles, so that each of you is not only the one who receives but also the one who organizes shared activities.

Couples therapy and reading books on building relationships can help prevent and resolve many moments of crisis. A good place to start is Sue Johnson's "Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love".