6 Divorce Causing Mistakes Women Make

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By Teresa Atkin,

After spending years working with couples and individuals who have been through a breakup ordivorce, it seems that there are problems that keep coming up over and over again. Wouldn’t it be good to know where to really concentrate our efforts so we can give our marriages the best chance at survival?

Here are six marriage mistakes that can easily lead to divorce:

1. You talk to friends about the rotten thing you think your husband did to you.Research suggests that friends are often more upset when they think their bestie is being mistreated than when they’re experiencing the same mistreatment themselves. Besides, most of us don’t really understand how our conditioning and wiring as women differs from our husbands’ conditioning and wiring as men. That’s why conversations about men with female friends often lead to husband-bashing that helps nobody. The solution is to limit talking about your marital problems to just two people: For example, a trusted friend along with a coach or therapist.

2. You think that talking about these problems with your husband is the answer.All too often, women think that talking to our husbands is the way to make them see how their behavior affects us. If the behavior doesn’t change when we first bring it up, we want to talk more, longer, or louder because we think maybe they didn’t get it the first time. One of the biggest pet peeves for men is that feeling of being nagged or badgered, especially if they don’t know what the problem really is. Also, the rules of polite, kind, nice conversation that women try to follow often come off as indirect, manipulative and mysterious to men. Women often conclude that their husbands don’t care because they haven’t changed after a particular conversation. The solution: learn communication skills designed specifically to talk with men and spend more time doing fun activities.

3. You believe that your happiness depends on your husband changing. Research has shown that happiness does increase when your husband changes for the better, but that change originates with you. Paradoxically, the women who focused on becoming the person they want to be, rather than on how to get their husband to change, were happier down the road. The solution: focus on being the best you.

4. You live parallel lives. Living parallel lives with your husband is the slippery slope to disconnecting completely. The bonds of marriage thrive on having interest in one another, working toward common goals and spending time with one another. Couples who are trying to reconnect after their children have left home often come to realize that they don’t know each other anymore. The solution: take the time to know what’s important to your husband and let him know what’s important to you.

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Are Your Feelings Hurt?

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For many people, especially women, much of their mental energy goes into stuffing their feelings so far down they don’t even know they have them. They spend their life pleasing others, seeking the approval of everyone but themselves.

“We are nobodies. We are in hiding. We don’t know who we are,” says psychologist Emilie Ross Raphael, Ph.D., of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She means “we” not in the collective sense but in the personal sense. She includes herself among those who have—or in her case, had—to learn how to be honest about her own feelings.

Typically, says Raphael, the problem involves always saying “yes” when often you mean “no.” And the resolution typically comes down to giving yourself permission to feel angry—and finding the courage to say what’s on your mind without fear of losing the love of others.

Until this happens, it’s not possible to have a healthy relationship. Hurt feelings are inevitable in relationships, bound to arise in a fast-paced world of imperfect communication between people.

The trick is speaking them. That requires expressing anger appropriately—one of the great challenges of being a grownup and managing ourselves. More often people hold their feelings in, then at some minor infraction explode out of proportion to the cause, often bewildering everyone around them.

It’s not an overnight process. You have to learn to set limits with others. And to move the sources of approval inward, from outward. “This is the story of my life,” says Raphael. “It comes from having hard-to-please parents who set high standards. When we grow up we carry the critical parents around in our head. We become the critical ones. We are, for example, forever discounting compliments. And we maintain a low self-image by selectively focusing on negative input from those around us.”

For starters, you have to begin to think of anger as a constructive emotion. It’s a signal that your feelings are hurt and you must move into conflict resolution.

Examine whether your current anger or resentment or hurt feelings are the tip of a much larger iceberg. How long have you had such feelings? If you get upset with your husband because he’s going out with his buddies for an evening, maybe it really isn’t about that instance but about how much of his himself he generally gives to you and your feeling that it isn’t enough.

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Are You Ready To Stop Being An Enabler?

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By Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT

Enabling is a term often used in the context of a relationship with an addict. It might be a drug addict or alcoholic, a gambler, or a compulsive overeater. Enablers, rather than addicts, suffer the effects of the addict’s behavior.

Enabling is “removing the natural consequences to the addict of his or her behavior.” Professionals warn against enabling because evidence has shown that an addict experiencing the damaging consequences of his addiction on his life has the most powerful incentive to change. Often this is when the addict “hits bottom” – a term commonly referred to in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Codependents often feel compelled to solve other people’s problems. If they’re involved with addicts, particularly drug addicts, they usually end up taking on the irresponsible addict’s responsibilities.

Their behavior starts as a well-intentioned desire to help, but in later stages of addiction, they act out of desperation. The family dynamics become skewed, so that the sober partner increasingly over-functions and the addict increasingly under-functions.

This builds resentment on both sides, along with the addict’s expectation that the over-functioning partner will continue to make things right when the addict doesn’t meet his or her responsibilities.

The Al-Anon program suggests that you don’t do for the alcoholic what he or she is capable of doing. Yet, codependents feel guilty not helping someone, even when the person caused the situation and is capable of finding a solution. It’s even harder for codependents to say no to requests for help. The pressure to enable can be intense, particularly coming from suffering or angry addicts, who generally use manipulation to get their needs met.

Examples of enabling include: giving money to an addict, gambler, or debtor; repairing common property the addict broke; lying to the addict’s employer to cover up absenteeism; fulfilling the addict’s commitments to others; screening phone calls and making excuses for the addict; or bailing him or her out of jail.

How to Stop the Enabling Behavior

Often addicts aren’t aware of their actions when intoxicated. They may have blackouts.

It’s important to leave the evidence intact, so they see how their drug use is affecting their lives. Consequently, you shouldn’t clean up vomit, wash soiled linens, or move a passed-out addict into bed. This might sound cruel, but remember that the addict caused the problem. Because the addict is under the influence of an addiction, accusations, nagging, and blame are not only futile, but unkind. All these inactions should be carried out in a matter-of-fact manner.

Stopping enabling isn’t easy. Nor is it for the faint of heart. Aside from likely pushback and possible retaliation, you may also fear the consequences of doing nothing. For instance, you may fear your husband will lose his job. Yet, losing a job is the greatest incentive to seeking sobriety. You may be afraid the addict may have an auto accident, or worse, die or commit suicide. Knowing a son is in jail is sometimes cold comfort to the mother who worries he may die on the streets. On the other hand, one recovered suicidal alcoholic said he wouldn’t be alive if his wife had rescued him one more time.

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8 Need To Know Lessons About Love

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By Team BLAM

We’ve said on many occasions that relationships require hard work. Sometimes, (i.e., a lot of times!) we seem to forget that as human beings and want everything to go our way. We don’t understand why we have to endure so much friction. Our question to you is: Why not? Anything worth having is worth working hard for….right? We have a picture with a very important and meaningful quote that hangs in our house. I think the quote sums up what we want you to know today quite nicely: “Faith makes things possible…not easy.” We have to treat our relationships with love, attention, strategy, and skill. Listen closely as we cover 8 simple need to know lessons that will definitely help in getting and keeping you on the path to sweet love and success if you apply them. 🙂

How To Manage Your Emotions When You Feel Yourself “Going There”

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By Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D

When someone gets their knickers in a twist and blows up, how do you handle it? If your current way of dealing with emotional fireworks isn’t working, here are ten tips to help you the next time one happens.

  1. Start by staying calm. Keep yourself from getting sucked into the emotional vortex. Asking yourself, “What is the best thing to do right now?” can help you gain some perspective and keep your own emotions in check.
  2. Try to understand what’s going on for the other person. When you understand, you are more equipped to respond in an empathetic manner. When people feel that someone really knows what they are going through, it helps them; they don’t feel so alone and scared.
  3. Let the other person vent. If someone has a whole bunch of hurt, pain, or anger he or she needs to release, it has to come out, and that can be a difficult thing to experience. Let the other person get out their negative feelings, but don’t become a punching bag.
  4. Look for something positive. There is another side to every upset, but finding it can be a challenge. Taking a few minutes to encourage the person to focus on what is and isn’t working can be very helpful and will discharge a bunch of discomfort.
  5. Be open to suggestions. When feelings get heated, it can be helpful if another person (family member or friend) gives his or her input. Sometimes a fresh set of ears can hear things others can’t.
  6. Create a plan. Having some options you have thought about in advance can be incredibly helpful when strong emotions are flying around the room. For example, you can choose to take a time-out or just remain silent. You can also choose to give the other person some direction.

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No More Miscommunication: 7 Keys To Creating Understanding

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By Dinyah Rein

What is the impact of miscommunication in your relationship? How often are you frustrated that “they” didn’t get what you meant? Do you find yourself doing what you thought “they” wanted, only to find out it wasn’t?

Whether “they” are your customer, your employer, your employee, your spouse, parent, child or friend, miscommunications are costly, and all too common. Is there an alternative?

Believe it or not, you can, single-handedly, put an end to miscommunications. That’s right – even if “they” never change, just by learning a few simple strategies and practicing them diligently, you can stop suffering from the lost time, wasted effort, and emotional drain of misunderstandings. Want to know how?

The Keys to Creating Understanding

As the Speaker – The Meaning of Your Communication is What They Heard, NOT What You Meant

When it comes to communicating without misunderstandings, the single most important thing you can do as the speaker is to give up any attachment to what you believe meant. It’s basically irrelevant. The meaning your listener receives is what they are left with. That is your communication – what they believe you meant. That’s what they’ll base their reaction or response on. That basically IS your communication.

Speaking is All About Listening

So, if the meaning of what you said is what they heard – now what? Become a great listener. That’s right – the key to being an effective speaker, one who gets their point across well, is to be a fabulous listener.

Listen to What They Heard

The first step is to ask your listener what they heard. When they respond, don’t check how good their listening was, and correct them. Listen for what you need to correct about how you said it. Try to understand what assumptions they may have that are influencing their listening, and see how to take this into account to be clearer. Apologize for not being clear, and say it differently. Encourage them to ask questions, and work together to create a common understanding.

Listen to the Subtle Cues

Listening goes beyond just hearing the words someone says. Tune in and listen to your intuition. Are you absolutely confident that they heard it the way you meant it? Or is there a small doubt, maybe in your stomach somewhere, a hesitation? A good rule is, “When in doubt, check it out.” Ask them.

You also want to watch their subtle cues. Are they behaving the way you would expect them to if they heard what you meant to say, or is something a bit off. Again, check it out. Ask, and listen for opportunities to clarify and sort through any possible misunderstandings. The sooner you do this, the less time there is for trouble to brew.

The bottom line – as the speaker, your primary job is to listen – to be in tune with the person to whom you are speaking and not consider the communication complete until you have confirmed that what they heard is what you meant.

When You’re Listening – Listen for What They Meant

In the role of the listener, the opportunity is to take responsibility to understand what they meant. Again, the easiest way to accomplish this is to ask clarifying questions, until you’re really certain.

Don’t Assume Anything

Make sure you avoid the common pitfall of reacting to what you think they meant. How many times has someone said something to you, and you immediately felt your blood rise, or a knot form in your stomach, or the impulse to blurt out a response? What if these reactions were more about what you thought they meant, than what they really meant? What if you paused, gave them the benefit of the doubt, and asked clarifying questions? How much of the potential upset, conflict or confusion could be avoided if you didn’t assume and react?

The other place where assuming gets you in trouble is when you think to yourself, “Oh yeah, I know what that is,” or “I know what they mean.” And you start thinking, and eventually acting, based on an assumption that wasn’t fully accurate. For example, maybe they were asking you to do something for them, and you, thinking you understood, went to do it, only to find out after you’d put in considerable effort that they weren’t asking for that, but rather something else.

Take Responsibility, Ask More Questions, and Watch the Clarity Unfold

Ultimately you have the power to create remarkably clear communications, every single time. Catch yourself in the act of assuming or reacting, whether you are the “listener” or the “speaker”. Slow down. Ask more questions. Give it a try. After all, what is there to lose, other than a lot of frustration.

Dinyah Rein has been coaching people to win at their personal and life goals for more than 25 years. To move forward with power toward your own goals, sign up now for her weekly newsletter at http://coachdinyah.com

 

 

10 Ways Your Anger Hides….Even From You.

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By Richard Zwolinski, LMHC, CASAC & C.R. Zwolinski

Anger’s ubiquitousness makes it almost banal. The disguises it wears, though, can be surprisingly colorful.

Others sense, sometimes easily, that anger lurks, but the mask-wearer often has a hard time understanding that what he or she is feeling is anger.

Here are the top ten ways anger expresses itself when it is pretending to be something else—or is otherwise in hiding:

1. Snobbishness, Snootiness Think professional critics, pundits, and all-around put-downers in the arts, politics, and other realms who have made a career out of anger.

2. Sarcasm See above, plus some comics/comedians.

3. Frustration Lucy vs. Charlie Brown and the football.

4. Resentment Can take a variety of forms, from dirty looks to all-out vengeance.

5. Self-pity Woe is me. Everyone takes advantage of me. Why would so and so do xyz to poor little me? Why does nothing ever go right?

6. Depression and Sadness No, not all depression has roots in anger. But some does. Sadness can be sparked into life by existential anger at one’s situation.

7. Impatience Hurry up! You’re taking too long. I’m going to have to cut in line. Honk my horn. Push you out of my way. I’m really, really busy. I’m busier and more important than…

8. Arrogance and Entitlement Arrogance and Entitlement can take snobby, snooty forms, they can be sarcastic, and they are often impatient, but they are something more.

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7-Step Foolproof Guide To Creating A TERRIBLE Relationship

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By Margaret Paul, Ph.d.

No one SAYS they want a terrible relationship, yet so many people go about creating them that we need to assume they must WANT them! So, here’s my 7 Step foolproof guide to creating a terrible relationship.

1. TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN FEELINGS

Make sure that you do not take responsibility for your own feelings and your own sense of safety and security. Make sure that you ignore your feelings enough so that you create an empty black hole inside that needs to be filled up by sex, things, or by someone else’s love or attention.

2. FIND SOMEONE TO DO IT FOR YOU

Look for someone to fill your emptiness, someone to make you feel loved, happy, safe and secure. A good way to determine if this is the right person is if he or she comes on REALLY strong, promising you the world, or at least great sex.

3. ONCE YOU FIND THE RIGHT PERSON, BE SURE TO BEHAVE IN ONE OF THE TWO FOLLOWING WAYS:

A. COMPLETELY GIVE YOURSELF UP

Completely put yourself aside, focusing all your attention on the other person’s feelings and needs. Your hope is that if you are wonderful enough and sacrifice yourself enough, the other person will give you the love you are seeking. Be sure to completely ignore your own feelings and needs, no matter what the other person does. Be the best caretaker you can be to try to have control over getting the other person’s love and approval.

B. DEMAND THE OTHER PERSON LIVE UP TO YOUR EXPECTATIONS

Start slow, gradually building to becoming more and more demanding of the other person. If he or she doesn’t meet your expectations, be sure to criticize, blame, chastise, berate, threaten, ignore, yell at, belittle, lecture, debate, and argue with your partner. Your job is to gain control over getting the other person to completely give him or herself up and focus only on filling your emptiness and needs with their love, approval, attention, sex, devotion, time, and adoration. Be the best taker you can be, making sure to keep your partner feeling guilty and responsible for your feelings of security and self-esteem.

4. BE THE VICTIM

As your relationship starts to decline, move more and more into thinking and behaving as a victim of the other person’s choices. This will lead to more fights or to distance, lack of passion, lack of fun, and a complete inability to communicate about anything, even minor situations. In any discussions, be sure to seek to be right, win your point, and make your partner wrong. After all, this is a competition for who is the good one and the right one. Or, just collapse and give in, a great way to be a victim.

5. WITHDRAW

Start to spend less and less time with your partner, spending it alone or with other people, or in front of the TV. Convince yourself that your misery is completely your partner’s fault, and that you picked the wrong person, again. NEVER EVER take any responsibility for your own feelings, needs, behavior, and choices. Never forget that you are the victim.

6. GET YOUR PARTNER INTO COUNSELING

Seek counseling to get your partner to change. Do NOT enter counseling to deal with your own controlling behavior of being a taker or caretaker. Rather, be sure to tell the therapist everything your partner does wrong, using the therapist’s office as just another arena to prove that you are right and your partner is wrong, or you are the good one and your partner is the bad one.

7. YOU DID IT!

Congratulations! You have succeeded in creating a terrible relationship! Now you can miserably and righteously leave your partner and do the whole thing again! You get to complain to all your friends about what a terrible person your ex-partner is and get sympathy for all you’ve been though. What a reward for all your hard work!

How to Find Joy in Staying Married to a Passive Aggressive Husband: Ten Ideas to Protect Your Emotional Well-Being and Maintain a Healthy Marriage

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By Veronica Jacques

Help Me Oh God! It had been four years into my marriage when I finally had to sit down and have a long conversation with myself. Being brutally honest and with no excuses I had to admit my marriage was a mess. I no longer felt love, affection, adoration, even friendship from or for my fairly new spouse. The dating was great, the first 6 months were good, but why has the train jumped the track. Fussing, fighting, silent treatments, disrespect, bitterness, and resentment to say the least. Name-calling,intentionally hurtful comments, and ignoring each others very presence. How can things get so bad so fast? After much soul searching and research and looking at the dynamics of my marriage, I came to realize my husband was a chronic text-book passive aggressive.

Definition of Passive Aggressive Behavior-a personality trait, is passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following through with expectations in interpersonal or occupational situations. It is a personality trait marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive, usually disavowed resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations. It can manifest itself as learned helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible.[1]

Signs & Symptoms

Ambiguity or speaking cryptically: a means of engendering a feeling of insecurity in others

 

Chronically being late and forgetting things: another way to exert control or to punish.

 

Fear of competition; Fear of dependency; Fear of intimacy as a means to act out anger: The passive aggressive often cannot trust. Because of this, they guard themselves against becoming intimately attached to someone.

 

Making chaotic situations; Making excuses for non-performance in work teams; Obstructionism

 

Procrastination; Sulking’ and victimization response: instead of recognizing one’s own weaknesses, tendency to blame others for own failures.

 

A passive-aggressive person may not have all of these behaviors, and may have other non-passive-aggressive traits.

 

Who treats a spouse this way? Apparently, tens of thousands of married couples are dealing with this chameleon. Passive Aggression silently sabotages the marriage by blending in and imbedding itself in the very fibers of the day-to-day marriage habits and activities. You’ll start to adjust your personality to cope with the PA’s strange behavior. At first, it will be subtle. Yielding here and there, making excuses for the moodiness, and then conforming for the sake of survival. This is understandable because it’s not easy to spot passive aggressive behavior, but once you know what you’re really dealing with and what the PA personality is capable of; you will begin to handle things appropriately.

 

A typical conversation with my passive aggressive husband.

Wife- “Why did I marry you!?”

Husband- “You the one agreed to get married!”

 

You can imagine this would bring on an explosive barrage of insults on my part and him leaving the room, or even the house on his part. We were getting no where. Everything I tried wasn’t working. Why not? I’m a reasonable inteligent woman. There had to be something I could do, but what?

 

What could I do? Get out! That’s what! I didn’t sign on for this foolishness and to stay married to this idiot was wrecking my sanity. I am soooo angry at my husband for being a PA and not handling life better so I could have a great marriage. And secondly, at myself for not seeing the beginning of the relationship for what it was, not a fairytale, but the beginning of a journey that will blend and merge two people into one. He didn’t want to be a Passive Aggressive just as much as I didn’t want him to be. But he didn’t have a clue what I was screaming about nor any idea he has a personality disorder. Passive aggressive? What’s that; a rock band?

 

In spite of all my anger, I took my marriage vows seriously. I didn’t want to divorce, but what choice did I have? I made those vows to my husband, a crowd of witnesses, but more importantly, to God. But God didn’t want me to put up with this, right? That’s not what he was calling me to do. That’s not what I promised, was it? Let’s take a look…

 

Do you take this man to be your husband – to live together after God’s ordinance – in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, in sadness and in joy, to cherish and continually bestow upon him your heart’s deepest devotion, forsaking all others, keep yourself only unto him as long as you both shall live? ”

 

Okay God, how am I supposed to stay in this situation? You’re not really going to hold me to this covenant. I need a “Get out of Jail Free” card. Well, God didn’t give me a pass, but what He did give was more valuable then I could have imagined; a joyful and contented life. These are the steps God revealed to me overtime to keep me emotionally stable and to help me begin to build a healthy marriage. Not a perfect marriage, but a meaningful relationship within the parameters of marriage.

 

Top Ten Ideas that have moved my marriage in a more positive direction.

 

Keep my covenant with God and remember my vows. God honors those who honor Him.

 

Look at the positives in your husband. Yes, there are some. ie, sense of humor, helpful, sees the big picture, industrious. You have to push past the negatives in the PA personality and remember those good qualities.

 

Don’t hide the fact that you can identify the PA’s tactics. Address them openly and honestly so the PA can began to take note of those behaviors. This has to be done in a respectful and timely manner. Not coming on too strong or in anger. You don’t want it to appear as a character assassination.

 

Remain calm. Becoming angry is the excuse they need to continue to withdraw. Anger increases fear in a PA and will shut down the flow of communication or explode the conversation out of control.

 

Don’t blame yourself. Remember, the PA personality trait is learned over time. In my husband’s case, he developed these social skills long before he met me.

 

Focus on yourself. Get some hobbies and goals. Making the PA your entire world is a set-up for disappointment. When they pull away on purpose just to prove a point, you have a base and structure to “support” you.

 

Don’t complete or take on the tasks that are the PA’s responsibility. From as simple as cleaning up or to as important as paying the electric bill. His favorite statement, “I forgot” or the non-verbal, “I’m pouting right now” is not a reason for me to pull double duty. When the electricity was shut off, the entire house was dark, not just the room I was in. I made my point.

 

Develop your personal relationships. God, family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, church, etc. Building a balanced circle of peers will allow you to maintain stability in your life as you grow and develop. This will send two messages: 1. To your spouse. His blatant overtures in punishment from lack of intimacy are lost on you. And 2. To yourself. You will not melt into the floor on the days when the PA personality is in overdrive. You have a life that includes him, but is not totally dependent on him. Whether you work outside the home or a stay at home Mom, you have daily opportunities to build relationships that will nuture and give your life balance. No one person can meet all your needs.

 

Be understanding and remind yourself that your passive aggressive husband learned this behavior as a protection from fear brought on by emotional stresses; abandonment, failure, competition, loneliness, disappointment, etc. Keeping this in mind helps you to see him as a human with flaws and not a two-headed monster that is out to destroy your happiness.

 

Recognize you hold the power in the relationship. The PA personality does not have the social skills to build and maintain a healthy relationship. You do. Be gracious and loving. Be consistent in how you communicate your thoughts and feelings and over time your husband can learn those skills from you. Mirroring the very behaviors needed to have a healthy marriage.

 

The time it takes for healing process to run its course will be determined by how deep the PA personality traits are entrenched in your spouse. My spouse’s biggest fear is the thing he craved the most. Intimacy. And what is marriage, if not intimacy in its purest form. So practicing these ten key steps have helped us in rebuilding our marriage. Improving communication, which is key in maintain intimacy in any relationship. The change is not overnight and very well may take the entire marriage. But you have to be in for the long haul to promote and experience a lasting change.

 

Why I stayed? The answer is simple. I wanted a good solid marriage for myself, my husband, and my children. I believe in marriage and the positives that can bless lives for generations to come. But the work it takes to achieve my dreams is self-sacrificing, challenging, and continuous. I work daily to stay focused on the end product; a healthy and loving marriage where my family will grow and flourish.

 

Veronica is an experienced business professional with over 20 years in contract administration and procurement. Married, full-time mother, and working from home. She writes from what she knows the way people need to hear it; in true Veronica style.

A Thin Line Between Love And Hate: How To Fight Fairly As A Couple

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By Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D

For some people, this is a truly radical idea: There is no need to fight with your partner. Ever. Accusations, recriminations, character assassination, threats, name-calling, and cursing, whether delivered at top volume or with a quiet sarcastic sneer, damage a relationship, often irrevocably. Nobody needs to be a monster or to be treated monstrously. Nobody who yells will ever be heard. In the heat of a moment, it is always a choice whether to go for a run or run your partner down.

On the other hand, no two people in the world, no matter how made for each other they feel, will ever agree about everything at all times. (It would be quite boring if they did.) Couples do need to be able to negotiate differences. They do need to have room for constructive criticism. They do need a way to assert opinions and to disagree. And they do need to have a way to express intense feelings (that the other person may not understand or support) without feeling that they will be judged as lacking for doing so.

A healthy relationship requires knowing the skills necessary for “friendly fighting” — dealing with conflict respectfully and working together to find a workable solution. Friendly fighting means working out differences that matter. It means engaging passionately about things we feel passionate about, without resorting to hurting one another. It helps us let off steam without getting burned. Friendly fighting lets us “fight” and still stay friends.

Couples in mature, healthy relationships seem intuitively to understand the notion of friendly fighting. Some people have been fortunate enough to grow up in families where their parents modeled how to disagree without being disagreeable. Others were so horrified by the way their folks treated each other that they refuse to repeat the behavior in their own relationships. Most couples, though, learn the art of friendly fighting by working it out together and supporting each other in staying in close relationship even when differences mystify, frustrate, and upset them. Most come up with stated or unstated rules for engagement that are surprisingly similar.

Below are some tips to ensure that conflicts will strengthen your marriage instead of harm it.

Ten rules for friendly fighting: or how to ensure that conflicts will strengthen your marriage instead of harm it.

  1. Embrace conflict. There is no need to fear it. Conflict is normal, even healthy. Differences between you mean that there are things you can learn from each other. Often conflict shows us where we can or need to grow.
  2. Go after the issue, not each other. Friendly fighting sticks with the issue. Neither party resorts to name calling or character assassination. It’s enough to deal with the problem without adding the new problem of hurting each other’s feelings.
  3. Listen respectfully. When people feel strongly about something, it’s only fair to hear them out. Respectful listening means acknowledging their feelings, either verbally or through focused attention. It means never telling someone that he or she “shouldn’t” feel that way. It means saving your point of view until after you’ve let the other person know you understand that they feel intensely about the subject, even if you don’t quite get it.
  4. Talk softly. The louder someone yells, the less likely they are to be heard. Even if your partner yells, there’s no need to yell back. Taking the volume down makes it possible for people to start focusing on the issues instead of reacting to the noise.
  5. Get curious, not defensive. Defending yourself, whether by vehemently protesting your innocence or rightness or by turning the tables and attacking, escalates the fight. Instead of upping the ante, ask for more information, details, and examples. There is usually some basis for the other person’s complaint. When you meet a complaint with curiosity, you make room for understanding.

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