7 ways to stop having the same couple's fight, according to a psychologist and psychiatrist married for 56 years

• Dr. Beverly Palmer, 78, and Dr. Richard C. Palmer, 79, have been married for 56 years.
• Both work in the psychology field and shared tips on dealing with conflict in relationships.

Every couple fights, but not necessarily well. While arguments present opportunities for growth and closeness, they can also devolve into constant bickering.

Dr. Beverly Palmer and Dr. Richard C. Palmer have been married for 56 years. and have learned a lot about navigating relationship conflict not just from their long marriage, but from their professions. Beverly is a licensed clinical psychologist and Richard is a psychiatrist who provides therapy in addition to medication management.

They first met in — you probably guessed it — a psychology class at the University of Michigan.

“I was a junior and Bev was a sophomore, and we began dating that year,” Richard, 79, told Business Insider After graduating, Richard went to medical school at Ohio State while Beverly worked on her Ph.D. from the same institution, and eventually ended up in southern California, where they’ve stayed ever since.

The Palmers partly credit their marital success to both being in fields that promote listening and flexible thinking. “Since we met in a psychology course and we read each other's textbooks a lot along the way, we had very similar backgrounds,” Beverly, 78, who wrote a book on relationship communication, told BI.

Richard said he’s also learned from his own clients. “I see some of the pitfalls that they have and I think I've learned to try to avoid them in my own marriage,” he said.

For example, Beverly said married couples where one or both people retire can really struggle with getting along when their careers are no longer in the picture. “I think that it's so important that when people retire that they move on to something, not just stop their work, which in so many ways is really their identity,” she said.

It’s why, despite having so much in common, the Palmers deeply prioritize their independence within the relationship.

From how they communicate to what they do when they’re apart, they shared their best tips for avoiding the cyclical fights that can chisel away at even the happiest marriages.

1. Find your own space

One of the signs of a healthy relationship is having identities outside of it.

“It's wonderful to share interests together,” Beverly said. “But I think what's equally important is each of the partners having their own interests, so they can bring a lot of new things into the relationship.” Doing so can add liveliness to the relationship that can reduce conflict in general, she said.

One way to have healthy separation is to have your own spaces at home, the Palmers said.

“Each of us has a separate office in the house,” Beverly said. It allows them to be together and apart at the same time, maintaining both interdependence and independence.

2. Invest in other relationships

As the US faces a loneliness epidemic, couples who don’t have friendships outside their relationship can struggle with codependency — which can negatively impact how you communicate or even feel in the relationship.

“Outside friendships are so important,” Beverly said, noting that both her and Richard have friends they see together as well as friends they spend time with separately.

“I have a bunch of male friends, which I think is very fortunate because that doesn't always happen as guys get older,” Richard said. “We get together at least once a month and just talk.”

While it can seem unrelated to conflict management, Beverly said that maintaining different identities — including who you’re friends with — reminds you both of your individual personalities. “It's accepting yourself in your totality with both your strengths and weaknesses, and it's accepting the other person in their totality with their unique strengths and weaknesses,” she said.

If you have that mindset, you won’t go into fights trying to “win” or change the other person.

3. Change how you listen

Richard said the way he listens to clients is something he and Beverly also apply to their own marriage.

“It's really listening with an empathetic ear,” Beverly said of their psychology training. “I think having that ability early on in our relationship has really made a big difference.”

She said one of the key ways to become a more active listener is to reflect back what the other person said in your own words. “Letting the other person know what you've heard, that you've really heard it and understood it is really the first step in resolving conflicts and disagreements,” she said.

4. Pride yourself on flexibility

When it comes to navigating conflict, Beverly said her and Richard’s other strengths are their flexible mindsets.

“We very quickly can not only see the other person's point of view, our partner's point of view, but we also can incorporate it and see how it might fit into a common goal rather than just digging our heels in,” she said.

That skill often naturally leads to reaching a middle ground, because both participants are already considering the other person’s needs and perspective. “Obviously, we don't always agree on everything,” she said, “but I think because we do listen to each other, we can understand that person's point of view and we can almost invariably reach a compromise.”

5. Mimic your therapist

Richard said that both he and Beverly were brought up in homes where empathy and caring for other people were considered important values.

But if you were raised by emotionally immature parents and didn’t have a good model of healthy relationships, going to therapy can do two things: help you unpack your past and also indirectly learn what respectful communication looks like.

Beverly said that a good therapist will be modeling empathy as they talk to you. Beyond their client opening up more, “they begin to learn not by being taught, but more just by example and how that makes them feel,” she said. They can feel themselves become more vulnerable when they feel heard and safe, and start to mimic that in their own relationships.

6. Dig deeper into stalemates

Beverly said one of the most common things people fight about, and split up over, are money, sex, and child-rearing — topics that can be hard to see a compromise in.

If you can’t see the middle ground because the conflict is too steeped in history and emotion, she recommended going in multiple rounds of hearing and repeating what the other person said. After that, she said the couple should ask themselves what their common goal is and if they’ve explored every alternative there is to reaching it.

For example, if the surface-level issue is over how to raise their child, the core could be both parents wanting their kid to be self-sufficient as an adult. They can then look at both proposed solutions and see if either fits that goal — or look for completely new ways to reach that goal, she said.

Because this is easier said than done, Richard emphasized that couple’s therapy can especially help with these sorts of problems. “Having a couple listen to each other, being able to really hear each other in a therapeutic setting with a third party – that seems to be an opportunity to do that in a way that they can't accomplish at home,” he said.

7. Take a walk together

In general, Beverly said she always recommends taking a breath before responding in the heat of the moment so as to avoid knee-jerk reactions.

Along that same vein, she also suggested taking regular walks with your partner, as the physical movement can aid in conflict prevention.

“Things slip out when you're talking with each other and walking, and those things that slip out can often help the conflict even before you get into a heated disagreement,” she said. Rather than stewing, you might bring up an issue you didn’t realize was bothering you — and resolve it on the walk itself.

Even if you’re already in the thick of a fight, she said walking and taking some deeper breaths can make it easier to calmly share your thoughts.

“Most people can do it, even people our age, and it gets you out in nature,” she said. “The change in the environment itself, the physical activity together — you get rid of some of the tension that you were holding when you're angry.”