Finding Hope in the Next Moment with Your Partner

Each moment holds potential for a shift...if you let it

May 27, 2025

I’ve been in this relationship long enough to notice our patterns, even predict it sometimes — I often feel like “here we go again!” I guess I don’t feel very hopeful about anything changing, aren’t we always going to have conflict in these areas?

Witnessing patterns in your relationship, while also feeling stuck in them, can create a lot of distress. That feeling of “here we go again” activates dread, anxiety, and disappointment.

No one wants to be in conflict with their partner. Despite the clumsy behaviors we do that tend to increase conflict, the underlying longing is for connection.

And yes, it’s possible that the theme you both dig your teeth into is likely going to be a theme for the rest of your relationship. Dr. John and Julie Gottman’s research show that over 2/3 of problems are Perpetual Problems1 that couples revisit over and over, circling around a singular theme of conflict and trying to convince their partner of how they’re right and the relationship would improve if their partner could see their perspective.

Perpetual Problems often highlight our underlying core values. Many of our core values are built in — passed down within families of origin and also nurtured and solidified based on experiences, often painful ones, that we’ve navigated in our lives. A contrasting value that attracted you to your partner can transform into the source of tension. A partner with a strong sense of integrity might now feel rigid to you. One who was creative and playful, might be landing as undirected or flaky.

Our core values might shift over time — some feeling more in the forefront and others in the background — but it’s unlikely that a core value that is fundamental to who you are will ever be rejected and replaced with it’s opposite. The same goes for your partner.

Holding out hope that your partner will one day share all of your core values is an illusion: a relationship is a venn diagram of shared and contrasting parts — not two concentric circles.

So…if that underlying values that cause these fights aren’t going to change…then where’s the hope? How do we find connection?

The Story We Tell Ourselves

If we’re going to fight about the same thing over and over, then what’s the point in even having the conversation. When I hear them bring up the topic, I just shut it down. I know what the fight is going to look like, so why even engage in the conversation?

If you are able to accept, even admire, the ways your partner’s values contrasts with yours, then the focus can be on the dance that you navigate when these contrasts arise. It’s not what you discuss, it’s how you hold space within the conversation.

The issue with perpetual problems is that partners panic when they see the topic coming and fall into a fixed mindset. They spend the whole conversation guessing what their partner will say next, and then reacting with “see, I knew it!” when it happens. It’s a negative feedback loop.

What matters more than the past woes in your relationship, is what you choose to do in the very next moment of your interaction.

Know yourself and your own patterns, and see what it’s like to imagine a different story playing out between you and your partner.

The Way Forward

Finding hope in the next moment of your interactions requires believing in the possibility for change.

Most people notice what is happening in the present moment, and they double down. Increasing their criticism, or dialing up their avoidance. They think the way out of the tension is doing more of what brought them there. It’s natural, in those moments we’re not thinking logically. Conflict activates the panic system in our brains and our biological need for social connection to survive. We are mammals first, humans second.

But if you’re able to witness the urge to double down on your strategy, and shift your focus to believing in the potential for 1 minute from now to have more connection and tenderness than what’s happening, it creates the conditions for connection.

Your belief in the potential for a shift, allows you to experiment with a different energy in the interaction.

Connecting to this belief isn’t easy. It requires you to stretch your mind to the peripheral vision of what it can’t see. Yael Schonbrun wrote an excellent post showing how Daniel Kahneman’s research on the mind illustrates the challenges we face in relationships:

[The Mind] is set to suppress doubt and to evoke ideas and information that are compatible with the currently dominant story. A mind that follows WYSIATI [what you see is all there is] will achieve high confidence much too easily by ignoring what it does not know.2

Instead of “What you see is all there is,” you need to stretch your mind to include “what I can’t see right now, is still possible.” You are choosing to believe in your relationship’s potential - and your partner’s potential.

Use metaphors to stretch into this belief. Instead of seeing a conflict as a straight path towards a predestined argument, visualize the conversation as stretching along a curving path. Each moment curves further along the path without you fully being able to see what’s ahead. But as you continue along, believe that the curve has potential to curve towards understanding and connection, and notice your curiosity about continuing the journey to find out what’s around the bend.