“I Think It’s a Communication Issue.” — What Couples Really Mean When They Say That
Most couples who reach out for counselling say some version of the same thing when I ask what’s brought them in.
It’s hard to put into words. I guess… communication.
Communication difficulties come up in around 90% of the initial conversations I have with couples. And it makes sense — when something isn’t working in a relationship, it usually surfaces as a conversation that went wrong, an argument that escalated, something that was said or not said or said in the wrong way at the wrong moment.
But communication is a broad word. And what couples are usually describing when they use it is something deeper than just the words they’re choosing.
What’s underneath “communication problems”
When I sit with a couple and start asking questions, what emerges is rarely just about how they talk to each other. It’s about what happens inside each of them when things get tense.
How does each person experience conflict? Not just what they think about it — but what their body does. Does one person go quiet? Does the other push harder? Does someone shut down completely, or does the conversation escalate before either person has quite registered how they got there?
Where did each person learn about conflict? What happened in their family growing up when things got tense? Was conflict something that got resolved, avoided, or explosive? Those early experiences leave a strong imprint — they shape what feels threatening, what feels normal, and what the nervous system does when it detects the beginning of an argument.
How well can each person regulate their own emotions in those moments? Not in a clinical, should-be-able-to sense — but practically. When things get heated, is there any capacity to pause, to feel into what’s actually happening, to stay connected to the other person while also staying connected to yourself?
These aren’t simple questions. And the answers are different for every couple. But they’re where the real work tends to live — underneath the specific argument about the dishes, or the money, or who said what on Tuesday.
Conflict isn’t the problem
This is probably the most important reframe I offer couples early on.
Conflict is not a sign that something is wrong with the relationship. It’s a natural, necessary part of being in close relationship with another person — two people with different histories, different nervous systems, different needs, trying to build a life together. Of course there’s going to be friction.
The goal isn’t to get rid of conflict. It’s to learn to have it in a way that doesn’t damage the relationship — and ideally, in a way that actually deepens connection. Because conflict, navigated well, is one of the places where real intimacy gets built. The rupture and the repair. The difficult thing said and survived. The experience of getting through something hard together and finding that the relationship held.
That’s not a small thing.
What actually helps
The good news is that there are genuinely useful tools for this. Not magic fixes — but concrete, learnable skills that help couples engage with conflict differently.
Over the next few posts I’m going to walk through some of the approaches that the couples I work with have found most useful:
Stop and Replay — a technique for interrupting the automatic sequence of an escalating conversation and trying again from a different place. Simple in concept, surprisingly powerful in practice.
Regulating your nervous system — understanding what’s actually happening physiologically when things get heated, and how to work with that rather than against it. Because you genuinely cannot have a useful conversation from inside a fight/flight/freeze response — no matter how much you want to.
Emotional bids — John Gottman’s concept for the small, often invisible moments of connection-seeking that happen constantly in relationships, and how the way those bids are responded to shapes the health of a relationship over time.
These aren’t complicated ideas. But knowing about them and actually being able to use them under pressure are very different things — which is where the work of couples counselling comes in.
If any of this sounds familiar
Most couples wait longer than they need to before getting support. By the time they come in, the patterns are usually well-established and the goodwill has been worn down by years of the same arguments going the same way.
It doesn’t have to be that far gone before it’s worth doing something about it.
If communication in your relationship keeps going sideways — if the same conflicts keep happening, if things escalate before either of you quite knows how they got there, if you love each other but can’t quite figure out how to get on the same page — that’s worth paying attention to sooner rather than later.
Relationship counselling is available in Squamish and online across BC — for couples and for individuals working on their own patterns in relationships. If you’re not quite ready for counselling, the 11 Conversations Every Couple Needs to Have course is a self-paced option that covers some of the foundational conversations most couples avoid until they have to have them.
