Treat conflict as maintenance, not maintenance failure

Repair well and quickly — because how you end conflict matters more than how you conduct it.

Why it works

Stafford’s framework treats conflict management as a separate domain from maintenance behaviors, but the two interact: poor repair after conflict erodes the positive sentiment built by maintenance behaviors, while good repair after conflict reinforces the sense that the relationship can handle adversity. The repair itself functions as a maintenance signal: "we can disagree and come back."

How to do it

1. After every significant conflict, initiate a deliberate repair conversation before returning to normal.
2. Name your own role in the difficulty, not only the other person’s.
3. Reaffirm commitment during the repair: "This was hard. I’m still in."
4. Close the conflict explicitly rather than letting it dissolve into exhausted silence.

Evidence

Gottman’s longitudinal research found repair attempt success rate to be a stronger predictor of long-term relationship stability than conflict frequency or topic. (observational)

Repair research is observational; the integration of repair into a maintenance framework is a principled synthesis of Stafford’s and Gottman’s models rather than a jointly tested proposition.

Sources

• Gottman (1994), What Predicts Divorce, Erlbaum

Common mistake

Treating the end of acute conflict as resolution — letting the fight die out without a genuine repair that closes the episode and restores the relationship baseline.