Good Fighting: 5 Tips to Smarter Arguments
Fight smarter, and you’ll both end up happier.(Photo: Getty Images)
The whole goal of this marriage thing is a lifelong relationship with your fiancé. Inevitably, over the course of a life lived by two under one roof forever — and ever and ever — you’ll get into tiffs and arguments. You’ll have different needs, wants, and opinions about what’s right. That’s just two human beings being, well, human.
Here are five tips to help you fight smarter. Keep these in mind and they’ll help you avoid escalating to full-on knockdowns and drag outs, which can damage your love, trust and relationship.
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1. Maintain eye contact.
No feeling angry and burying your face in your phone. Or stomping off in another room while pissed off. Stay in the same place, and maintain eye contact, so you can keep connected emotionally to the other.
2. Have a sense of playfulness.
Don’t immediately get grim or critical. Keep a sense of loving playfulness, even as you hash out difficult topics and differing opinions.
3. Remember: he’s your BFF, and you his. Literally.
The happiest marriages are those with deep friendship between the spouses. So keep a sense of friendliness top of mind. It’s hard, in the heat of the moment, to remember this husband of yours who’s pissing you off is your most important friend. But it’s a great approach for your marriage.
4. Be OK with wrestling back-and-forth.
“My way or the highway” doesn’t work for a lifetime. Hanging in there together as you hash it out, over the course of a few minutes, hours, even days, is how you get to a good resolution. This only happens by the two of you being patient and staying in the back-and-forth, for as long as it takes.
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5. “We both need to feel good about this.”
This is such a great quote that you might want to put it up on your fridge. After all the discussions, negotiations, and compromises, you both need to feel good about where you land. Even if you began in diametrically opposed points of view, through wrestling it out, this is where you both need to land. The goal should be finishing the fight, without lingering resentment.
By Allison Moir-Smith
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