I have two rollercoasters in my family - happy, pissed off, over it in an hour. Two of us are slower to resolve and require acknowledgement. The best answer is likely somewhere in the middle.

I’m ADHD, and a fight will ruin my day. I mean it will literally prevent me from accomplishing ANYTHING besides mindless tasks.

A few hours afterwards I’m often found staring into space reflecting on who said what, what I should say/do if it comes up again, and how it will affect tomorrow or the day after that. For bigger issues, the reflection will gradually reduce over the next few days.

I don’t believe there’s a consistent difference between ND and NT. Everybody’s handling conflicts differently.

As a NT parent, one of the hardest things has been the “emotional whiplash” of an ADHD kid. One minute it’s a horrific display of emotional violence that scars me for life, and then five minutes later it’s like it never happened. I’m probably slower to change my feelings than most - there are things that happened years ago I’m still able to access fresh feelings about - but even when I actively recover from a fight I’m still upset by the time the next one occurs. It’s taken a toll on my mental health for sure.

I don’t know that you are actually asking the question that you want an answer to. So here’s an answer: it’s okay for each of you to take the amount of time that you are taking to recover. But it also sounds like you both may not be understanding each other’s feelings or feeling like your feelings are being understood. Couples therapy might be helpful. I also recommend “Non violent communication” by Marshall Rosenberg. It’s essentially an extension of the therapisty thing of using “I feel” language.

It really depends on the specifics of the fight and the person (neurotypical or not). Perhaps some couple counselling with a professional would be helpful to understand each other better?

It completely depends on the person and the fight. I’m pretty much good to go in a couple minutes unless there was some serious betrayal that led to the fight. My wife needs anywhere between 1 and 3 days. Thankfully we really only fight about once a year, and it’s always over some completely pointless bullshit.

There are two answers for me. Sometimes I stop and think my way out of it and am ok after a couple hours, I can let it go.

Sometimes I just get angrier and angrier as I think about it, and in that situation I must talk to the other party. That usually takes a day or two because it takes me that long to realize I’m not gonna calm down, am still mad. But every time this has happened, the other party has apologized because they, in the same intervening time, have realized they were being asshole-ish.

Nobody I know takes that long to tell me, if I am being asshole-ish. It can take me an hour or so to calm down and apologize.

All of this assumes good intentions on all sides. My ex, you couldn’t back down or apologize with him, he saw it as weakness and would mock, was terrible at fighting.

Forget about what’s normal for getting over a fight. You know what’s not normal? Getting into a screaming match with your partner every month.

I really can’t stress enough, that’s not ok. Not a healthy relationship, not a safe environment for your children, and not a good example for them to follow in the future.

You need couple’s counselling ASAP because this pattern has to stop.

Eh, for me it’s maybe twenty minutes at most, but I don’t do fights with people I care about. If things are reaching the point where voices are raised, it’s time to step back and figure out why things are going bad, then come back to the subject matter from a place of love.

As far as how long it should take for you and your partner, it depends on how each of you handled things. There’s no single answer to it. The nastier the other person gets, the harder it is to let go, even when the issue that started the fight gets resolved. It becomes about the behavior during the fight, and that’s a separate thing to get over.

You both would benefit from extra guidance by professional in anger management and negotiating relationships. If you’re fighting like that often enough to be asking this, neither of you has the skills needed to be healthy for each other.

Short answer: it depends on the person and situation.

Long answer: it depends on the person and situation.

Neutorypical here (possibly a touch of undiagnosed autism but not a lot)- I don’t get into them.

My wife and I take a very proactive approach to communication. We talk through decisions before either of us gets emotionally attached to an answer. We trust each other to have good decision making processes when that isn’t an option. We have thoroughly established that both of us are putting the interests of the household first. We know both of us are acting in good faith, we both apologize, and we accept each other’s apologies.

In previous, less healthy relationships, I realized what made a “fight” was that her or I wanted it to be. Maybe one of us wanted attention or affirmation or had some inner problems was taking out on the other. Perhaps we just didn’t feel like we were properly heard unless we were angry. Whatever the actual fight about was usually something that could’ve been resolved without emotional energy.

As for how long to recover after… When it happened it always depends on the specific fight. Sometimes hours, sometimes days, eventually the big one was that we broke up permanently. If the issue has been resolved and someone is harboring resentment because the other party disagreed with them, there’s more underlying emotional issues that need to be resolved.

Earlier this year an unhinged stranger cussed me out and threatened to assault me in front of my kid. Not sure if that counts as a fight, or a minor fight, but it took me like two days to get over it. I handled it as well as I could have it the moment, but I still just kept replaying it in my head, imagining what I could have done differently. I’m pretty sure that I’m neurotypical.

Depends on how the fight resolved. Sometimes you get snippy for a bit but ultimately either come to an agreement or the fight resolves and that’s it. You rankle for a bit after, get over it, and move on.

Sometimes the fight isn’t about what you’re fighting about. They’ve had a bad day and it manifests as some bitchy comments about how the dishes were done. You stop fighting about the dishes but you’re still upset because they’re taking their bad day out on you, or they’re still upset because they feel you don’t care about them. These can last much longer because the fight revealed bad blood, but didn’t do anything to address it.

I wouldn’t say there’s a norm, everyone varies. What would probably help a bunch is some sort of validation for how that fight sucked for the other person, no matter who’s right or wrong.

“Hey, I’m sorry we fought. I hate it and I know you do too. I don’t ever mean to make you feel bad. I love you and want us to be ok. Is there anything else you need me to understand?”