The four conflict styles, in plain language
Your conflict style is what your nervous system does when a disagreement gets warm: some of us move toward the fight, some away from it, some around it, and some of us store it. None of the styles is bad. Every one of them is a reasonable strategy that worked somewhere in your history, and every one of them has a shadow side that shows up on repeat.
Pursuers need resolution now: the unfinished argument physically itches, so they follow, restart, and knock on the silence. Withdrawers need space to think: heat scrambles them, so they shut down or leave, planning to come back when words work again. Fixers need the tension gone: they reach for solutions and smoothing so fast that the feelings underneath never get their turn. Volcanoes need the peace kept: they swallow and swallow until one eruption spends a year of stored grievances in four minutes.
Why the same fight keeps happening
Most repeating arguments are not about the topic, they are two styles colliding. The classic loop is pursuer-withdrawer: one person needs contact to calm down, the other needs distance, so each person's medicine is the other's poison, and the fight about the dishes becomes the fight about the chasing and the leaving. Fixer-volcano is quieter but just as circular: the fixer smooths every surface, the volcano stores what was smoothed over, and both are stunned at the eruption.
Naming your style, and your partner's, converts "what is wrong with you" into "there is the loop again", and loops that get named get exits: the announced pause, the guaranteed return time, the feelings-first sentence, the weekly small-grievance habit.