You enter an argument and your partner brings up an upset that happened months even years ago that has nothing to do with what youre actually arguing about.

You end up going round in circles and you think to yourself “How can we move forward when youre stuck in the past”

4 reasons partners in conflict constantly bring up the past:

Reason 1  

Used as a weapon – bringing up the past is a way to redirect blame, “I’m not the problem, you are, remember this”. It’s defensive and a way to avoid responsibility. Also known as cross complaining – which is, tit-for-tat, meeting your partners complaint with a complaint of your own or kitchen sinking – which is, bringing up all the dirty dishes from the past to the table, to confuse and overwhelm. For a relationship to work, this weapon needs to be put away. 

Reason 2 

Unresolved conflict – couples for a variety of reasons do not resolve their conflicts. And what happens with those unresolved conflicts? They become a rock in your shoe, you know it’s there, but its out of sight. It stays in your shoe and pokes and prods you. Manifesting itself into other conflicts. So you don’t want to just sweep things under the rug, there’s only so much you can fit under there. The best time to resolve a conflict is now. 

Reason 3 

Emotional accounting – this is where an emotional accountant appears in the relationship that takes up the responsibility for keeping track of the balance of transactions in the relationship. The underlying message is “I did this for you, what do I get?”. Healthy relationships have an implicit contract where partners exchange and reciprocate with one another thereby strengthening their connection. Struggling relationships make this contract explicit, they let their partner know “hey I’m not happy here”. Bringing up their past upset is their attempt to communicate they’re discontent with the connection in the relationship. 

Reason 4 

Feeling vs logic – there is a difference in the way people relate to each other and to the world. Some people are more feeling oriented, others, more logical. This difference creates a disconnect in our communication, especially with our intimate partners. It influences how we bring up problems in conflict.  

For a logical person – they tend to be more cognitive, tend to intellectualise, rationalise and jump to fix the problem. For a feeling person – they are more emotive in their language and seek empathy rather than solutions. For a feeling person, these pens are all the same, they fall into the same bucket, they’re all pens:

But for a logical person, they are all different because they are different coloured pens - they are in no way related to one another. This is where the disconnect and frustration becomes apparent, the feeling person is talking about all those moments where they felt the same way, whilst the logical person sees each of those moments as completely separate. 

The solution, meet in the middle.  

The logical person needs to own the feeling – which means to empathise and not jump to fix. When you jump to fix you’re often trying to fix the problem at a surface level without truly understanding what the problem is. Most of the time, feeling based people don’t need their problems fixed, they just need to not feel alone with the problem. 

The feeling person needs to own the logic – which means to focus on one problem at a time, understand that the logical person doesn’t perceive the world same way you do, things need to be presented very logically. 

Those are the 4 reasons partners in conflict bring up the past.