Marriage: Become a Better Fighter
There are certain things you can do to become better at loving your spouse and improve your marriage. One of them is to become a better fighter.
Let's be honest. We all have marital disputes. Sometimes they are small disagreements settled by civil communication and other times it's an ugly mess of words we never meant to say. Whether it's a fight over the way they load the dishwasher or a conflict over finances, we all fight with the ones we love.
The question is not whether you fight but how you fight that truly matters.
Dr. John Gottman has done a countless number of studies on relationships and marriages. He is able to predict with 93% accuracy which couples will divorce and who will stay together after watching them fight for five minutes. The couples who didn't stay together were more likely to use criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling as fighting techniques. Gottman called them the Four Horseman of the Apocolypse. I like to think of them as the jab, hook, upper cut, and cross punch of a relationship that leads to the knock-out of a marriage.
Let's look at each of these negative fighting styles a little more closely:
1. Criticism - this is when you attack your spouse's character rather than discussing the situation at hand. For example, you are fighting about who does certain house work, and you call him/her lazy.
2. Contempt - this is when you use insults, sarcasm, and mocking to make your point. Examples of contempt at its finest are eye rolling, name calling, and sarcastic comments meant to push buttons.
3. Defensiveness - this is when you don't take any responsibility for your contribution to the situation you are fighting about and remain the victim.
4. Stonewalling - this is when you are cold and shut your spouse out. Instead of asking for space to process the situation or communicating that you need time away from the conversation, you intentionally make it seem like you aren't listening and disengage from the conversation as a way to hurt the other person.
The next time you find yourself in an argument with your spouse take off your boxing gloves and think about how you are fighting, what your tone of voice is communicating, and the words you are saying.
