Most of us enter relationships longing for closeness, ease, and the feeling of being understood. What many of us are not prepared for is the inevitability of conflict and disconnection, and the emotional skill it takes to come back together afterward. Baya Voce, a couples practitioner, believes this lack of preparation is at the heart of why so many relationships feel confusing or overwhelming.
In her work, Baya emphasizes that struggle in relationships is not a sign that something is broken. “Very few of us have healthy relationship models,” she explains, noting that most people were never taught what a long term, emotionally healthy connection actually looks like. Without those models, couples often assume that conflict means failure, rather than growth.
Where Our Ideas About Love Come From
Baya points out that many of our expectations about relationships are shaped by unrealistic cultural narratives. “There’s nowhere in the zeitgeist that is telling you what healthy relationships look like,” she says. Instead, many people internalize messages from movies, social media, and romantic fantasy. “We have been modeled from Disney, Hollywood rom coms, there’s this happily ever after moment.”
When real relationships do not match those images, people begin to doubt themselves or their partners. Baya often sees this confusion show up in the question, “I feel like this should be easier.” For her, that belief is not a truth, but a misunderstanding of how intimacy actually works.
Why Conflict Is Not the Enemy
One of Baya’s most grounding teachings is that conflict itself is not the problem. “I don’t actually care how much couples fight,” she says plainly. What matters far more is how couples fight, and how they repair afterward. “How much couples fight is not an indicator of health, how people fight matters.”
She explains that rupture is unavoidable in close relationships. “It’s not whether or not you’re going to rupture, you absolutely will.” The defining factor is not the rupture itself, but “how quickly and how well can you come back together.”
When couples understand this, conflict becomes less threatening. Instead of signaling danger, it becomes an opportunity to build trust through repair.
The Natural Rhythm of Connection
According to Baya, relationships move through a natural rhythm that many people resist. “The cycle of connection, disconnection, and repair is as natural as breathing,” she explains. Yet many couples interpret disconnection as something abnormal or wrong. “We don’t think that disconnection is actually natural.”
This misunderstanding leads people to abandon relationships prematurely, believing that distance or tension means incompatibility. Baya reframes this, reminding couples that disconnection is not a failure, but part of the process of learning how to relate more honestly.
The Stages Relationships Move Through
Baya describes three stages that most relationships encounter. The first is merging, a phase of closeness where individuality feels blurred. “It’s like we’re an amoeba,” she says. Over time, relationships move into differentiation, where differences become more visible. “This is where conflict really starts to hit.”
This stage, often referred to as the power struggle, is where many relationships end. “People die in the power struggle. People divorce in the power struggle,” Baya explains. Those who move through it arrive at interdependence, a phase where both partners are fully themselves. “You are you through and through. I am me through and through.”
This stage requires maturity, accountability, and emotional resilience.
Why Grief Is Part of Long Term Love
One of the most overlooked aspects of healthy relationships, Baya explains, is grief. “We literally need to do grief work,” she says. Long term love requires grieving the parts of our partner that will never change, the fantasies we once held, and the expectations we need to release.
She often uses simple examples to illustrate this. “You are never going to make the bed in the morning.” Rather than fighting reality, she encourages people to accept it and reclaim their own agency. “We give our partners so much control over our internal state.”
Disillusionment, in her view, is not the end of love. “I am going to let parts of our relationship die in order for a new kind of relationship to be reborn.”
What Repair Actually Requires
Repair, Baya explains, is not about winning an argument or saying the perfect thing. It is a practice grounded in presence, empathy, and attunement. “Presence is the ability to stay in the room,” she says, even when emotions are high.
Empathy means being willing to enter a partner’s experience. “I’m trying to put my little feet in your shoes.” Attunement means staying connected to both yourself and the other person at the same time. “I’m not leaving me, and I’m not leaving you.”
These skills take time. “You can’t do this out of the gate,” Baya reminds us. Repair is a muscle that strengthens through repetition and care.
Learning How to Stay
In a culture designed to minimize friction, Baya believes healthy relationships ask us to build tolerance for discomfort. “The virtual world is trying to be as frictionless as possible,” she explains. Real intimacy, however, requires the opposite. “The job for us in healthy, long term dynamics is to expand our capacity for tension.”
Learning how to stay does not mean abandoning boundaries or tolerating harm. It means choosing presence over avoidance, and growth over escape.
Closing Reflection
Baya Voce’s work reframes what it means to be in a healthy relationship. Rather than striving for perfection or constant harmony, she invites us to focus on repair, responsibility, and resilience.
Her message aligns deeply with The Healthspan Collective, wellbeing is not about avoiding discomfort, but about building the capacity to meet life, and each other, with awareness, compassion, and honesty.
