Couples therapy has a major problem. And it starts with us.
We’re teaching our clients to be small. We’re doing it in the name of “healthy communication.” We’re doing it with our de-escalation techniques, our softening exercises, our endless reframes. And we’re doing it because we are uncomfortable with conflict.
Here’s what it looks like in practice: A couple comes in. Voices rise. Tension fills the room. And what do we do? We intervene. We bring the temperature down. We teach them to “use I-statements” and “take a break when flooded.” We frame it as skills-building, as teaching them how to communicate more effectively.
But what are we really doing?
We’re teaching them that conflict is dangerous. That intensity means something has gone wrong. That the goal of relationship is to eliminate tension rather than develop the capacity to metabolize it.
This is not therapy. This is collusion with avoidance.
The Developmental Problem in Couples Therapy
Robert Kegan’s groundbreaking work on adult development shows us that growth happens when we can hold increasingly complex meaning-making. In his framework, individuals move through stages of consciousness—from the “socializing mind” that needs others to validate its reality, to the “self-authoring mind” that can maintain itself in the presence of difference, to the “self-transforming mind” that can hold multiple systems of meaning simultaneously.
The couple who can’t tolerate their partner’s difference—who needs their partner to see things their way in order to feel okay—is stuck in what Kegan calls a “socializing mind.” They are embedded in their relationships in a way that makes the other’s perspective feel like a threat to their very sense of self.
The developmental work of relationship isn’t teaching couples how to avoid this conflict. It’s helping them build the capacity to hold difference without collapse. To move toward a “self-authoring mind”—one that can maintain itself in the presence of the other’s otherness.
But we can’t take our clients there if we won’t go there ourselves.
When we rush to de-escalate every time voices rise, when we treat intensity as inherently problematic, we reveal our own developmental limitations. We show our clients that we, too, cannot tolerate the heat. And in doing so, we model exactly the avoidance we should be helping them move beyond.
The Existential Truth in Couples Therapy
Kirk Schneider’s existential-integrative work reminds us of something crucial: Life is inherently polarized. Freedom and limitation. Connection and separateness. Certainty and mystery. Life and death. These tensions don’t resolve. They deepen. They’re not problems to fix; they’re givens to explore with curiosity and even awe.
Your partner is fundamentally other. Separate. Unknowable in their fullness. They will never see the world exactly as you do. They will always remain, in some essential way, mysterious to you.
This isn’t a communication breakdown—this is the human condition.
And it’s not something to eliminate. It’s something to encounter.
The existential tradition, from Rollo May to Paul Tillich to Schneider himself, teaches us that anxiety is not pathology. Anxiety is the signal that we’re at the edge of growth, at the boundary of the known and the unknown. When we work to eliminate our clients’ anxiety, we eliminate their aliveness. We eliminate the very tension that makes development possible.
What Most Couple Conflict Is Really About
In my observation, most couple conflict isn’t about problems that need solving—it’s about difference that needs tolerating.
Yes, some conflicts require collaboration and compromise. Couples need to figure out how to manage finances, divide household labor, navigate relationships with in-laws, and make decisions about children. These are real problems with real solutions.
But the majority of couple distress? That comes from an inability to tolerate the other’s separateness. The expectation that our partner should adopt our worldview. The fantasy that the “right” partner wouldn’t make us feel this uncomfortable, wouldn’t see things so differently, wouldn’t want such different things.
When we rush to de-escalate, when we focus on “managing” emotions rather than building capacity to be with them, we reinforce this fantasy. We teach couples that if they just communicate better, use the right techniques, soften their startup, the discomfort will go away.
It won’t. And it shouldn’t.
The Research on Capacity vs. Avoidance in Couples Therapy
The research on distress tolerance is unequivocal: Avoidance of difficult emotions predicts worse long-term outcomes. Willingness to experience discomfort predicts growth.
David Schnarch’s work on differentiation in couples shows that the ability to maintain a clear sense of self while remaining emotionally connected to one’s partner is the hallmark of relational maturity. He argues provocatively that the problem with most couples isn’t that they don’t communicate—it’s that they communicate too well and don’t like what they hear. The work isn’t teaching them to say things differently. It’s helping them build the capacity to hear what their partner is actually saying without needing to change it.
Even John Gottman’s research—often cited to justify de-escalation techniques—shows that successful couples still have conflict. They argue. They disagree. They get heated. What distinguishes them isn’t the absence of conflict but their ability to maintain curiosity and respect through it. To stay connected even in the midst of difference.
Peter Levine’s work on somatic experiencing introduces the concept of “titration”—the process of gradually building capacity to tolerate increasing amounts of activation. His research shows that we grow our nervous system’s capacity by approaching the edge of our tolerance, not by avoiding it. We need manageable challenge, not comfort, to develop resilience.
Dan Siegel’s interpersonal neurobiology gives us the concept of the “window of tolerance”—but crucially, his work is about expanding that window, not just staying within it. The brain grows through engagement with manageable challenge. Integration happens when we can hold differentiated parts together, not when we keep them separate and calm.
What Changes When We Take This Seriously
So what does couples therapy look like when we prioritize capacity-building over conflict avoidance?
We stop rescuing our clients from their own discomfort.
When a couple is in conflict, our first impulse shouldn’t be to shut it down. Our first question should be: Can they tolerate this? And if not, how do we help them build that capacity?
We model comfort with intensity in the room.
If we tense up every time voices rise, if we rush to intervene at the first sign of strong emotion, we communicate that intensity is dangerous. Instead, we need to demonstrate that we can stay present, curious, and grounded even when the emotional temperature is high.
We help couples distinguish between conflicts that need solutions and tensions that need holding.
Some things can and should be solved. But many relationship tensions are ongoing polarities that will never fully resolve: closeness and autonomy, stability and growth, individual needs and couple needs. Our job is to help couples identify which is which, and to develop the capacity to live with the tensions that don’t resolve.
We cultivate curiosity about the partner’s otherness instead of treating it as a problem.
What if, instead of helping partners “understand” each other better (with the implicit goal of reducing difference), we helped them become fascinated by each other’s difference? What if we positioned the partner’s otherness not as an obstacle to overcome but as a mystery to explore?
We build their capacity to stay present with anxiety and uncertainty.
This is the heart of the work. Not teaching people to eliminate anxiety, but helping them expand their capacity to be with it. To recognize anxiety as information, as a signal that they’re at the edge of their current developmental capacity, as an invitation to growth.
The Question We Need to Ask Ourselves
The existentialists understood something profound: We cannot give our clients what we ourselves do not possess.
If we cannot tolerate conflict, we cannot help our clients develop that capacity. If we need our clients to be calm in order for us to feel competent, we will continually collude with their avoidance. If we ourselves are uncomfortable with the irreducible otherness of another human being, we will teach our clients that this discomfort means something is wrong.
Our job is not to make our clients comfortable in couples therapy. Our job is to help them grow large enough to hold the irreducible complexity of loving another human being.
That work starts with us. With our own capacity to sit with intensity, difference, and the unknown. With our willingness to stop hiding behind techniques when what’s needed is presence. With our own ongoing development as therapists and as human beings.
The question isn’t whether our clients can handle conflict.
The question is: Can we?
