Couple Conflict: First Steps — Get Clear on What You Want

When a relationship stalls and year-end panic sets in — "another year gone and still no family" — Dr. Saulitis advises starting not with confronting your partner, but with an honest question to yourself: what do you actually want. This brochure is about the very first steps to take before any big conversation.

Start with "why do you need a partner"

The doctor always asks this first. Entering a relationship like "go I-don't-know-where, bring I-don't-know-what" leads to chronic conflict. You need to know concretely: do you want a family, where will you live, who provides for it, what is your timeline. Without clarity a person spins "around the kitchen" for years, loses sleep, even develops physical symptoms — yet nothing changes.

Name your goal honestly

One wants a family and children; the other says, "why are you pressuring me, I don't want that." This isn't a bad person — it's a different goal. If you want travel, restaurants, lightness without commitment, that's one strategy. If you want family and stability, it's a completely different one. Conflict often grows precisely when two people pull in opposite directions while pretending to want the same thing.

Clear out the "half-murky" ties

Once you've decided you want a family, the doctor advises radically letting go of "half-murky" ties — met in a doorway, flirting at work, a holiday fling. Don't waste yourself on such cases anymore: all those rewinds of what already was "must be thrown out, stay clean," and set a clear deadline — say two years — after which you make other decisions. Then your energy itself becomes entirely different.

Attraction and compatibility aren't a luxury

The doctor speaks frankly about physical attraction: if it isn't there, living together will be hard no matter how well you negotiate. This isn't crude — it's acknowledging reality: a couple's stability rests partly on desire.

When you're together — "like breathing"

And then the main principle of life together: don't get in each other's way. The doctor compares it to breathing: give each other freedom, complement each other's world. But for this to work, you first have to get to know yourself, understand your needs, draw on your own experience and that of others — and only then try living together, like at a buffet: try it, look, fits — doesn't fit.

Practice

1. Write down the answer to one question: why do I want a partner and what relationship am I building (family / lightness without commitment / other).
2. Compare your goal with your partner's — do they truly match, without "pressure"?
3. If your goal is family: honestly list your "half-murky" ties and decide to let them go.
4. Set yourself a clear deadline (e.g., two years), after which you reassess.
5. Check "by breathing": is it easy to be near them, do you get in each other's way?