Little disagreements or loud fights – they’re all a part of long-term relationships. And once you’ve been in enough fights, you learn a thing or two about what is acceptable to say and what is completely out of line. Many of them are easy to point out – you can just reverse the situation and imagine what it would feel like if he said the same hurtful things to you. Seems perfectly reasonable in theory, but it’s easy for all of that to go out of the window in the heat of the moment. Let us help you with some of the worst things that you could possibly say during a fight with your partner.

‘You’re pathetic’

When you reach the point of almost throwing insults at each other, you know that it’s time to pause, take a deep breath, and come up with another way to tackle the situation. It doesn’t matter if you think the other person deserves it or not – it’s a painful thing to hear and guaranteed to make the other person withdraw and shut down. Or worse, double down with worse things that might seriously wound you. The problem with insults is also that they’re a slippery slope. How do you decide that ‘this’ is okay, but ‘that’ is too much? Keep the respect, always.

‘We should break up’

Making major decisions when you’re vulnerable and feeling too many things at the same time is never a good idea. Even if you’ve been wondering where the relationship is going, in the middle of a fight is not the time to call it quits. It seals the fate of your relationship in a minute – your partner will never feel comfortable with you if they think that you’ll run away at the first sign of trouble.

‘You always do this’

Every fight is different, even if just by a little. If you say this, you’re essentially bringing up all of those older fights that you both had eventually resolved. This just goes on to make the fight about so many other things that were in the past – but, are not anymore. If your aim is to resolve a fight and come to a solution both can live with, this is not going to help in the slightest.

‘You won’t understand’

This is just a way of dismissing your partner and making them feel like they are not good enough – as they clearly can’t understand how you’re feeling. We get it: sometimes when you’re hurting yourself, it’s difficult to be rational and think things through before saying them. Saying “you won’t understand” too often during fights will only make your partner give up without even trying. And that’s counter-intuitive, to say the least. Ending a fight on this note means you can’t be bothered enough to try and make the other person understand… That you’re giving up, not only on them, but on the relationship too, by constantly saying this to them.