What Are We Really Fighting About?: How to Transform Conflicts into Conversations

Relationship specialist Lisa Brateman, LCSW offers couples strategies that will help them fight better so they can transform conflicts into conversations, in a book that Booklist says, "will likely help many couples.”
What Are We Really Fighting About? How to Transform Conflicts into Conversations gives couples permission to fight. Because, after all, everyone does. They fight about loaded issues like financial infidelity and different ways of spending money, sexual infidelity, working too much, traveling too much, fighting too much, not being involved in childcare, interfering in-laws, levels of intimacy, routine sex or boring sex, body image, guilt, secrets, vulnerability, hopes, and fears. And the elephant in the room: Why won’t he/she /they change?
We’re so conditioned to think that all fights and arguments are bad, but that isn’t true. This book shows couples that fighting can be productive if they learn to fight in a way that isn’t hurtful and shift away from entrenched patterns that aren’t working. It’s okay to feel angry with a partner and have a heated argument if couples fight with respect, acceptance, and love―and then reconcile differences and disagreements.
What Are We Really Fighting About? shows couples exactly how to change sides―to understand their partners’ pain, to acknowledge and appreciate their perspective, and ultimately to create an environment where vulnerability is welcome. Many examples of couples who have successfully mastered the art of productive arguments will enable readers to use these techniques in their own relationships. As a result, readers will learn how to fight better by articulating what they need and what is possible, and then find ways to make conflict productive and healthy. Developing the skills to turn conflicts into conversations will open the space for understanding.

Lisa Brateman, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, relationship specialist, public speaker, and media commentator who has offered individual, couples, group therapy, and coaching in New York City for over twenty years.
In addition to her private practice, Lisa is the psychotherapy consultant at the office of New York Sinus and Sleep Medicine. As a member of their Dream Team, which offers a multidisciplinary approach to sleep disorders, she works with clients to reduce anxiety and other psychological barriers to sleep. She has also volunteered at Identity House, providing weekly support groups and individual crisis counseling, and has offered therapy groups on women’s issues at the NYC Community Center.
For the developmentally disabled community at the New York State Commission on Quality Care, she has participated in hearings and reviewed declarations for informed consent for major medical treatment. At The ARC of Rockland in Congers, New York, she was the Coordinator of Treatment Services for 145 developmentally disabled clients in day treatment/day habilitation programs as well as trainer/supervisor for clinicians in client care; she also designed behavior plans to help clients develop appropriate coping, socialization, and communication skills.
She has been an adjunct professor in social work and sociology at Saint Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, New York, teaching a course entitled “Social Work in Today's World." Lisa is a member of the Private Practitioners Group, and The Medical Reserve Corps in New York City, as well as a contributing member of SheSource at the Women’s Media Center, a progressive, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to raise the visibility, viability, and decision-making power of women and girls in media. She is also a regular presence on BBC radio as a guest expert on relationships and sleep issues.
The mother of two sons, she lives with her partner in Manhattan.