If you’ve ever struggled with communication, recurring arguments, betrayal, or feeling misunderstood, this episode offers a powerful roadmap toward deeper connection and lasting love.
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How to Create a Conflict-Proof Relationship: Show Notes
Most people think a great relationship has very little conflict.
But what if that’s not true?
What if the healthiest relationships aren’t conflict-free at all?
What if conflict is actually one of the most powerful opportunities for growth, intimacy, and deeper understanding?
This week on the podcast, I sat down with relationship and men’s leadership coach and author of Building a Conflict-Proof Relationship, Geoff Laughton.
Geoff has been married for 44 years. He and his wife have navigated challenges that would have ended many marriages, and they’ve emerged stronger, wiser, and more connected.
One of the things I appreciate most about Geoff is that he doesn’t teach people how to avoid conflict. He teaches them how to use it well.
In our conversation we explore:
- Why love alone isn’t enough to make a relationship work
- How healthy couples approach conflict differently
- Why your partner isn’t understood until they feel understood
- The importance of taking responsibility for your emotional reactions
- What true forgiveness actually requires
- How to repair trust after betrayal or broken agreements
- What is more important than trying to get back to the way things used to be
One insight that really stayed with me was Geoff’s reminder that when we’re emotionally triggered, our first responsibility isn’t fixing our partner.
It’s learning to regulate ourselves. From there, we can communicate with ownership, compassion, and a desire to understand rather than blame.
After 20 years of coaching people in love and relationships, I’ve seen how transformative this shift can be. Conflict doesn’t have to tear a relationship apart. When handled consciously, it is one of the things that brings people closer together.
When you’re done with this one, check out this episode with one of my teachers, Susan Campbell, on how to be less irritated with your partner. This one comes in handy as you’re working on how to navigate conflict well.
Links:
Connect with Geoff
Connect with Shana James
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Bio:
Geoff Laughton is a relationship coach, speaker, facilitator, and two-time international bestselling author. Over the past 30 years, his unique approach has worked wonders with hundreds of private clients and couples from all walks of life and in a wide array of relationships.
Geoff is also certified in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). He has led more than 300 workshops; has facilitated numerous life-changing retreats for men, women and couples; and has spoken at numerous live and online events.
Having shared 43 years with his beloved Sarah, Geoff is intimately familiar with the ups and downs of a long-term relationship. Together, they have built the kind of loving, connected partnership many people hope to create, one that has grown stronger through commitment, growth, and the seasons of life. There are very few relationship challenges that Geoff can’t help you navigate and shift.
Transcript:
Shana James (00:00)
Hello and welcome to this episode of Practicing Love. I’m your host, Shana James, and I am thrilled to be here today with a man who’s been in a 44-year marriage that is still going strong, deepening, and beautifully connected.
It’s so rare. We were just talking about how this kind of relationship feels almost like a unicorn. Many people can stay together for a long time, but to truly grow individually and together, and to have love continue to deepen over the decades, is a sacred and uncommon thing.
Geoff Laughton is a relationship coach and men’s coach who has been doing this work for decades.
Geoff, welcome, and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us.
Geoff Laughton (00:49)
Thank you. I’m glad to be here. I appreciate the invitation.
Shana James (00:53)
Part of what I want to talk about today is your book, Conflict-Proof Relationship. I’d also love to hear stories about your relationship and how you’ve kept it alive.
Whenever I meet someone who’s been in a long-term relationship that is still thriving, deepening, and full of love, my first question is:
“What’s your secret?”
How do you do it?
So I’d love to hear some of your secrets.
Can you tell us a little about how you became a relationship coach and men’s coach?
Geoff Laughton (01:29)
Sure.
Like a lot of coaches, I had a corporate life once upon a time. I was in that world for about 15 years. During that time, I met my wife, and eventually I got pretty burned out in that career.
I wasn’t mentally healthy. I wasn’t physically healthy. I wasn’t emotionally healthy.
You know that saying that spirit whispers, then taps you on the shoulder, and eventually hits you with a two-by-four?
Shana James (02:05)
And eventually bludgeons you over the head.
Geoff Laughton (02:15)
Exactly.
I got the two-by-four in my mid-thirties.
One of the ways I coped with what corporate life was doing to me was by eating. I got up to nearly 300 pounds, and eventually my body broke down. I was bedridden for a month.
That got me thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to change a few things.
So over the course of a year, I lost more than 100 pounds.
And then it never occurred to me to change anything else.
Shana James (02:49)
Wow.
So you focused only on the physical side of things.
Geoff Laughton (02:52)
Exactly.
I got myself looking fabulous without paying attention to any of the mental and emotional stress I was carrying.
That included becoming a parent around the same time.
Eventually I started having anxiety attacks, and that finally got me into therapy.
This was the early 1990s, which was a great era for personal growth work. There were all kinds of opportunities available.
I did everything I could get my hands on.
And that process reawakened a lifelong love I had for listening to people.
Shana James (03:38)
Mm.
Geoff Laughton (03:40)
I’ve always been blessed with a pretty strong intuition.
Even as a kid, I’d listen to adults talking and find myself asking questions that, in hindsight, were really coaching questions.
I often joke that I probably started coaching when I was seven years old.
I’d actually gotten a degree in psychology and originally wanted to become a therapist.
Shana James (03:56)
No kidding.
That’s amazing.
Geoff Laughton (04:03)
But I took a year off to make some money first.
That detour lasted 44 years.
So I started out as a life coach, and then one day I had a client who asked me to work with her parents.
Shana James (04:18)
Mm-hmm.
Geoff Laughton (04:20)
They came and spent four days with me to work on their 34-year marriage.
And it completely turned things around.
I thought, “Wow, this is really fun.”
I already knew my own relationship was anything but ordinary, and referrals started coming from other couples.
The rest is history.
Shana James (04:52)
Can you tell us a little bit about what happened during those four days?
If we get to the heart of it, what was it that created such a profound shift for them?
Geoff Laughton (05:09)
One significant factor was that the husband had been unfaithful several times.
That was part of the baggage they brought into the intensive.
The first thing I felt guided to do was help them discover whether they had a shared vision of a marriage that could either be repaired or completely reinvented.
Thankfully, they did.
Once we established that, we had to do the heavy lifting of understanding what had created all the breakdowns.
In my experience — and I’m sure you’ve seen this too — infidelities rarely happen in a vacuum.
So a huge part of the work was helping each of them look at their own responsibility for everything that wasn’t working.
Shana James (06:05)
Yes.
Absolutely.
I love that.
Geoff Laughton (06:31)
And also helping them recognize their responsibility for everything that was working.
We did some powerful forgiveness work, especially around her forgiving him.
One thing I’ve learned is that true forgiveness — whether it’s a man or woman who’s been betrayed — doesn’t happen until the person who cheated fully understands the impact of their actions.
It’s not enough to simply say:
“I did a bad thing. I’m sorry.”
That doesn’t work.
Shana James (07:06)
No.
Absolutely not.
Geoff Laughton (07:23)
It took almost an entire day to help this man, who was in his mid-sixties, really grasp the devastation his choices had caused.
Not just for his wife, but for his children and his entire family.
Once he truly got that — and once she felt that he got it — something shifted.
A whole new possibility opened up.
From there, we created new agreements, addressed communication problems they didn’t even know they had, and designed new ways of being together.
Ultimately, it was about getting them back into their hearts and reconnecting them with what brought them together in the first place.
And finally, it was helping them understand that no matter how long you’ve been together, you never really get to rest on your laurels.
Shana James (07:53)
Yes.
Geoff Laughton (08:17)
There’s no relationship nirvana where you arrive and then coast until one of you dies.
Shana James (08:29)
No.
And then you just coast, right?
No more work. No more understanding each other.
Geoff Laughton (08:37)
Exactly.
You just wait for one of you to drop and say, “Well, that was great.”
It doesn’t work that way.
Shana James (08:42)
No.
That reminds me of something you wrote in Conflict-Proof Relationship about communication and misunderstanding.
You said that someone isn’t truly understood until they tell you they feel understood.
I think that’s one of the biggest communication lessons many people never learn.
Geoff Laughton (09:09)
Absolutely.
In my experience, that’s especially true for a lot of men.
Their partner shares what’s hurting, what’s upsetting, or what’s not working, and they think that nodding, saying “I hear you,” or offering a quick apology is enough.
But often they skip over empathy.
They never really cross the bridge into understanding the impact their behavior had on the other person.
One of my mentors taught me:
“You haven’t heard your woman until she tells you she’s been heard.”
That was a total game changer for me.
Shana James (09:55)
It really is.
Shana James (10:04)
I see so many people in relationships thinking they’re talking about the same thing.
With many of my couples clients, one person says something, the other person responds, and on the surface it seems like they’re having the same conversation. They’re even using the same words.
But when we slow down and really look at what’s creating the rift, we discover they’re not actually talking about the same thing at all.
Sometimes it’s a difference in language. Sometimes one person is speaking from an emotional place while the other is focused on the intellectual content. One person is here, the other is over there.
It seems like it should be simple to get on the same page, but it really isn’t.
Geoff Laughton (10:48)
No.
And I think one reason it can be so difficult is something else I talk about in the book.
One of my favorite acronyms has two sides to it:
MSU — Making Shit Up
and
MUS — Made Up Shit.
To this day, I still get humbled by how much I can unconsciously make things up.
Not just about what my wife might be thinking, wanting, or feeling, but about almost anything.
The ego is making things up all day long.
Shana James (11:38)
You’re saying this is just a human trait?
Something we all do?
Geoff Laughton (11:47)
Exactly.
And if you don’t recognize that you’re making things up, then you start operating as if the made-up story is the truth.
So that’s one thing people have to learn.
The other thing that still surprises me is how many people unconsciously assume their partner thinks the same way they do.
It’s not malicious.
It’s usually not intentional.
But people think:
“Well, you know me. You should be able to read my mind.”
Or:
“We love each other, so we must think alike.”
And then, of course, you add the differences between men and women into the mix.
Shana James (12:31)
Right.
“We think the same way.”
Geoff Laughton (12:41)
Exactly.
I often tell couples that part of my role is being a translator.
Shana James (12:46)
That’s what I do too.
It really is necessary, especially for those of us in heterosexual relationships who haven’t had the chance to see behind the curtain of how people of different genders think, how emotions work, how different nervous systems operate.
It’s incredibly powerful.
Geoff Laughton (13:08)
Absolutely.
And another crucial piece of successful relationships is having at least a basic understanding of how the brain works and how the mind works.
You also need some understanding of the difference between the ego identity and the Self — with a capital S — your essence, who you were before life trained you out of it.
If you don’t know how to distinguish between those things, it’s very easy to get lost in endless weeds and rabbit holes.
I think that’s why, when things really escalate, couples often find themselves wondering afterward:
“What the hell just happened?”
Shana James (14:09)
Exactly.
“What are we even fighting about?”
And that leads right into your idea of a conflict-proof relationship.
Before we go deeper into that, what do you mean when you say conflict-proof relationship?
Geoff Laughton (14:22)
In my first few years of working with couples, I noticed something common.
Many people came in believing that conflict meant the relationship was bad, broken, or wrong.
They viewed conflict itself as inherently negative.
You and I were talking before we started recording about our parents.
Both of our parents stayed in long-term relationships that weren’t happy.
For me, my parents’ marriage was extremely high conflict. It was awful.
So I grew up believing that if I wanted a good relationship, then we shouldn’t fight.
I needed to work hard to make sure my wife never got upset with me, and vice versa.
But it doesn’t work that way.
Shana James (15:18)
Right.
You can’t just do the opposite.
Geoff Laughton (15:33)
Exactly.
So I’d hear people say:
“I just want a conflict-free relationship.”
What I eventually realized is that a relationship with no conflict is ultimately doomed.
You may stay together your entire life, but it’s not going to be deeply fulfilling.
It’s not going to be healthy.
Shana James (15:54)
Mm.
Geoff Laughton (16:01)
That’s what led me to the idea of a conflict-proof relationship.
How do we help people have healthy conflict?
Conscious conflict?
How do we help them see conflict as an opportunity for growth rather than a death sentence?
Because conflict itself isn’t the problem.
The problem is not knowing how to do conflict well.
If you don’t know how to do it well, you’re in trouble.
Shana James (16:24)
I like that.
Geoff Laughton (16:30)
And being a parent reinforced this for me.
When our kids were growing up, I never lost sight of the fact that parents have a responsibility to give their children the best possible chance of becoming healthy, functional adults.
The real world contains conflict.
So how do we model healthy conflict?
How do we teach our children how to navigate disagreements in a healthy way?
That’s a big part of what led me to frame it this way.
Shana James (17:06)
I love that.
It reminds me of something else you wrote.
You said that one of the keys to becoming a conflict ninja — or conflict sensei — is to become fiercely and relentlessly committed to self-awareness and presence.
Because when you’re blaming your partner and believing it’s all their fault, you’re missing the mirror they’re holding up for you.
You’re missing what’s happening inside of you.
Can you talk more about that?
I think that’s one of the biggest places couples get stuck.
Geoff Laughton (17:59)
It reminds me of something one of my teachers said decades ago:
“It never occurred to you that when you point one finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing right back at you, you doofus.”
At the time, that was actually pretty eye-opening.
And in all the personal work I did in the early ’90s, one of the hardest — and most liberating — lessons was realizing:
I am 100% responsible for my choices, my actions, and my behavior.
One hundred percent.
I don’t care if my wife is standing in front of me, yelling, spitting, and calling me names.
I’m still responsible for whether I react or respond.
Shana James (19:14)
Yes.
Geoff Laughton (19:16)
That’s something many couples struggle to grasp.
Because it’s so much easier to make it all the other person’s fault.
Shana James (19:34)
Exactly.
Or to say:
“Can’t you see this is their fault? If they would just do this — or stop doing that — I wouldn’t feel this way.”
Geoff Laughton (19:46)
Right.
That realization changed every important relationship in my life — not just my marriage, but my friendships, my clients, everything.
If I’m upset, triggered, or experiencing conflict, the first thing I need to do — and this is what I coach all couples to do — is deal with my emotional dysregulation first.
Sometimes that means calling a timeout.
Because if I’m emotionally flooded and losing it, I’m not going to be heard.
All I’m going to do is trigger my partner into their own primal, childhood-informed, trauma-informed reactions.
So I learned from some great teachers that I first need to figure out:
What’s mine?
Once I understand what’s mine, then I can communicate it.
And from that grounded place, I can also communicate what’s not working in the way my partner is showing up.
Not from a place of:
“You, you, you.”
But rather:
“This is my experience.”
“This is what it’s bringing up for me.”
“These are the feelings I’m having.”
“And here’s what my mind is making up about why you’re doing that.”
When you can communicate like that and take that level of ownership, it creates room for you to reconnect as allies and teammates.
Whereas playing the victim card or the blame game only keeps you adversarial.
You lose the heart connection.
And then things spiral into more and more unnecessary ugliness.
Shana James (21:59)
Yes.
And it’s so painful.
When I’m working with couples who are struggling with conflict, I often tell them:
You never really know who your partner is, in their deepest essence, until you’re both willing to take responsibility and communicate consciously and maturely.
That doesn’t mean everything will magically work out or that you’ll stay together forever.
But if you don’t communicate that way, you’ll never know what was actually possible.
Because when we’re yelling, attacking, blaming, and shaming, people show up very differently than when we’re communicating lovingly, consciously, and as a team.
Geoff Laughton (22:48)
Exactly.
And I don’t think the importance of the word mature can be overstated.
When we get triggered, we go young.
For years, I taught workshops helping people work with what we used to call the inner child.
These days, many people know it through Internal Family Systems, or IFS, which I’m a huge fan of.
If you don’t understand what’s unresolved from your past, it will show up.
When we’re triggered, we’re much more likely to go into victim mode or self-protection mode.
And when that happens, we’re no longer operating from our adult self.
That’s why any great relationship coach or therapist helps each partner recognize, own, and learn how to work with those younger parts.
Because every single one of us has them.
Without exception.
And when those young parts are running the argument, all hell breaks loose.
Shana James (24:14)
Yep.
It’s pretty brutal.
What I see so often is that people don’t even have the concept that they’re operating from a younger part.
It’s just:
“This is who I am.”
And then I can hear someone’s mother speaking through them:
“He’s never going to change.”
Or I hear the other partner saying:
“Why does she always treat me this way?”
And the two of them just keep going around and around in circles, neither one really looking at their own contribution to the dynamic.
Geoff Laughton (24:49)
Exactly.
And that connects to another thing you asked earlier about the secrets that have helped my marriage work.
I don’t think couples need to have identical values.
But they do need enough shared values to create glue.
One of the greatest blessings Sarah and I have had — and Sarah is my wife — is that growth has always been one of our core values.
We did a tremendous amount of personal growth work together back in the 1990s.
And ever since then, we’ve maintained a commitment to growth as both a life value and a relationship value.
Years ago, I realized there are three primary types of relationships people tend to orient toward.
One is a careful relationship.
That’s conflict avoidance.
Walking on eggshells.
Trying not to rock the boat.
Another is a carefree relationship.
“We love each other.”
“We have fun.”
“We have sex.”
“Let’s keep things light.”
And then there’s a caring relationship.
In a caring relationship, one of the foundational principles is that the relationship itself is a vehicle for growth.
Spiritual growth.
Emotional growth.
Mental growth.
All of it.
That was one of the reasons I wrote Conflict-Proof Relationship.
Because many people panic and end relationships unnecessarily simply because they don’t know how to work with conflict.
Shana James (26:37)
I love that.
Yes.
Geoff Laughton (27:03)
A lot of it comes back to what I mentioned earlier.
People see conflict as a bad thing.
But it isn’t.
It’s a catalyst for growth — if you’re willing to look at it that way.
Shana James (27:13)
Exactly.
Because if you don’t see it that way, conflict becomes proof that something is wrong.
Something is wrong with me.
Something is wrong with my partner.
Something is wrong with the relationship.
I love what happened when I shifted my own orientation and started seeing relationship as a path of growth — whether that’s spiritual growth, emotional growth, relational growth, or all of the above.
Everything changed.
Instead of asking:
“Why is this happening?”
from a place of fear or deficiency, I started asking:
“What am I learning?”
“How am I growing?”
“How am I learning to love better?”
“How am I learning to receive more deeply?”
That shift completely changes what’s possible.
It doesn’t eliminate the pain, but it allows the pain to become productive.
Geoff Laughton (27:51)
Exactly.
And another thing that’s coming to me that I want to make sure we include is something else that has helped my marriage tremendously.
Our marriage has been far from perfect.
We’ve been through many difficult experiences.
But when I look back and ask myself how we’ve made it work over decades, one answer stands out.
You have to let go of trying to get back to how things were when you first fell in love.
And that’s hard because that stage is wonderful.
I heard someone say recently:
“We all enter relationships drunk.”
Shana James (28:49)
Totally.
Geoff Laughton (28:50)
We’re drunk on hormones and biochemistry.
We’re in that limerence phase.
And many of the couples I work with have been together for ten years, twenty years, sometimes much longer.
Often they’ll say:
“We just want to get back to how it used to be.”
And my response is:
No, you don’t.
Because that’s an invitation to live inside a memory.
And memories are ghosts.
They’re not real.
Shana James (29:18)
Yes.
Geoff Laughton (29:16)
Sarah and I are eleven years apart. She’s eleven years older than I am.
So our relationship has spanned my twenties through my late sixties, and her mid-thirties through her late seventies.
And what has helped us is staying current.
Staying curious.
Because it’s easy after ten years — or twenty years — to think:
“I know my partner.”
Shana James (29:45)
“I know my partner.”
“They can’t surprise me anymore.”
Geoff Laughton (30:08)
Exactly.
But I love being surprised.
There are still new things to discover about Sarah.
And there are new things for her to discover about me.
Because we’re both continuing to evolve as we move through different stages of life.
Shana James (30:25)
Which I think is such an important point.
If you’re not growing and discovering new parts of yourself, relationships can become stagnant.
It’s easy to think:
“I already know everything about you.”
But what I hear you saying is that we never fully know another person. There’s always more to learn.
And especially in a growth-oriented relationship, where both people are continuing to become deeper, wiser, more alive human beings, there will always be new things to discover.
Geoff Laughton (30:54)
Exactly.
And if you lose that curiosity — not just about your partner, but about yourself — then things start to contract.
The ego loves hanging on to what it already knows, even when what it knows isn’t serving us.
It loves certainty.
It loves familiarity.
“I can do this in my sleep.”
Great.
But personally, I’m still discovering new things about myself on a nearly daily basis, and I hope I never lose that as long as I’m alive.
For couples, if you can maintain that love of learning, that love of discovery, and the willingness — because sometimes it takes real courage — to face the parts of yourself you’d rather not look at, then you’ve got a great shot at creating a rich, long-lasting relationship.
Shana James (31:57)
Amazing.
Thank you so much.
And thank you for everything you’ve done to keep your relationship alive and then bring what you’ve learned back to your clients and to all of us.
Before we wrap up, is there anything else that feels important to share?
Anything you’d feel was missing if you didn’t say it?
Geoff Laughton (32:10)
Thank you.
I love that question.
I think one thing I’d say — especially for anyone who grew up the way I did, with what I semi-jokingly call Hallmark Channel indoctrination —
Shana James (32:43)
(Laughing)
Geoff Laughton (32:44)
Or maybe Jerry Maguire indoctrination, if we’re dating ourselves.
One of the first things I tell every couple I work with is:
Love is not enough to make a relationship work.
Love matters.
It’s essential.
Using a poker analogy, love is the ante.
Without it, you don’t even get into the game.
But love alone isn’t enough.
Sometimes people hear that and it sounds like a buzzkill.
But if you understand it, it’s actually liberating.
Love is part of the foundation.
And even if that love has become bruised, worn down, or buried beneath years of conflict, it’s often possible to reconnect with it.
But then you also have to learn the other skills and capacities that make relationships work.
Compatibility is one example.
Communication is another.
There are many elements that contribute to a thriving relationship.
So don’t buy into the Hallmark Channel version of love.
It doesn’t represent real relationships.
Shana James (34:01)
No.
I remember how freeing it was when I finally realized that I could love someone, be attracted to someone, have incredible chemistry with someone, and even go very deep with someone — and none of those things automatically meant we were meant to be life partners.
After my divorce, I started to see love, lust, and partnership as three separate tracks.
And honestly, if someone had explained that to me earlier, I might not have married my ex-husband.
Of course, then I wouldn’t have my child and everything that’s come from that experience, so I don’t have regrets.
But I do wish I had understood that relationships can take many forms.
You can open your heart and love someone deeply without assuming that relationship has to fit into one specific box.
Geoff Laughton (35:02)
Absolutely.
And over the years, one thing that’s helped me appreciate my marriage even more is realizing that not every couple is meant to stay together forever.
Again, it’s not a very Hollywood perspective.
But I’ve seen many relationships that simply have a natural life cycle.
And if you reach that point — especially when children are involved — I believe we owe it to our kids to be honest.
If a romantic relationship has reached its expiration date, how do we create a new relationship?
Maybe you’re no longer married.
Maybe you’re no longer romantic partners.
But you can still become great co-parents.
That’s absolutely possible.
Shana James (35:58)
Yes.
When my ex-husband and I separated, it took some time, but we still consider ourselves family.
My current partner and my ex-husband have dinner together so they can clear anything that needs clearing between them.
I’m getting to know my ex’s new relationship.
And it’s been powerful to see that these tools can support whatever form a relationship takes.
Geoff Laughton (36:12)
Exactly.
I completely agree.
Shana James (36:23)
Well, thank you so much for this powerful conversation.
Where can people find more of your work?
Geoff Laughton (36:28)
My pleasure.
And thank you again for the opportunity.
You can find me at:
YourRelationshipArchitect.com
And for any men who are curious about the work I do supporting men — which I’ve been doing for more than 25 years — you can visit: TheUndauntedMan.com
Shana James (37:02)
Wonderful.
Thank you again, and I look forward to continuing the conversation.
Geoff Laughton (37:06)
Thank you, Shana.
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