HEALTH TIPS, GUIDES AND RELATIONSHIP ADVICE

How to fight productively and fairly in marriage

Marriage fight

Your first big knock-down, drag-‘em-out, winner-takes-all marital combat will stand out among the telltale signs the honeymoon is over and the marriage has begun.  As the tears dry and you do your “Where-did-I-go-wrong?” thinking, take time to consider how you fought before you begin reconsidering why you fought.

If Nature took its usual course, you probably fought to win, using every weapon at your disposal, committing all kinds of emotional blackmail, and dredging-up every grievance you could remember.  You may have recalled issues dating back to the Eisenhower administration.  If you are an ace tactician, you probably heaped on the blame, extorted the guilt, and generally left your opponent in a steaming pile of quivering jelly. Only two problems arose from your victory: First, you treated your partner as your enemy, so the battlefield remains strewn with emotional debris.  Second, although you scored the decisive victory, it feels empty and hollow; you gained nothing from winning.  You know you need to repair the damage.  More importantly, you need to derive something good, somehow, from all the bitterness and recrimination.  You probably will discover the big war went thermo-nuclear over something relatively trivial, sustained more by repressed feelings than by genuine disagreement over issues.

Most common causes of marital warfare

In day to day life, married couples fight most often about money, with sex running a close second, and distribution of household labor not far behind in third.  Among the three leading sources of conflict, sex is the most difficult to resolve.  If both partners work, the best way to manage the money and minimize disputes is to split it up “yours, mine, and ours.”  The “ours” represents the regular household expenses; “yours” and “mine” you may spend or invest as you choose.  Similarly, distribution of household labor ought to be a no-brainer.  If you see it’s dirty or messy, you clean it up.  One partner cooks and the other does dishes; alternate as needed. The place will look good at the end of each day. 

Just the question of sex remains.  Translation: one partner wants something the other partner feels reluctant to give.  Frequency and fantasy lead the list, and the most common complaint goes, “When we were dating, we could not get enough of one another; now, it takes an Act of Congress to get us together.”  Sometimes, the complaint comes with a codicil: “He doesn’t love me any more.” 

Usually, though, problems with sex have little or nothing to do with sex itself; both partners happily would chase after connubial bliss and explore all fantasies if the other issues did not hang in the air.  Ugly issues about weight, body image, attention, communication, and picking up dirty underwear may surface here.  “May” is a polite word for “inevitably.”  Better to confront the issues openly and honestly than allow them to escalate into marriage-threatening issues about trust and truthfulness.  To make progress on bedroom issues, return to Psychology 101: Psychologists says men need regular sex to feed their egos. affirm their masculinity, and empower them to go out daily into battle.  Women similarly need regular sex for the feeling of emotional closeness that binds them to their partners.  Of course, they, too, want to feel needed, wanted, and affirmed for their fundamental femininity. 

Fight for  your marriage.

If you fought to win, you missed the point from the very first salvo.  Although partners easily can forget the point in the heat of battle, the point persists.  You are fighting for the sake of improving the marriage.  You have resorted to fighting for the sake of getting one another’s attention; now that you have each other’s undivided attention, maybe you could chill out and deal with the issues? 

Stop, breathe, forgive, reassure one another of your love, and then get down to business: What will it take to solve the problem and strengthen the marriage?  How will you get from here to the solution?  Who needs to do what, give what, understand what?  Most importantly, where are the reciprocity and partnership in the solutions to the issues?