Ah, the married fight. We’ve all heard the apocryphal (and usually downright sexist) suggestions on how to deal with it: the ‘yes dear’ ignoring routine, the ‘just let her have her way’ tactic and then – paradoxically enough, the female versions of ‘just pander to him and smooth it all over’.
Clearly, these approaches are about as useful as most other relationship advice I have heard from the 1950s. “Buckle down and bear it” is no longer the preferred option in these more emotionally bewus times.
That said, the married fight – particularly those exploding ones that escalate from ‘Why haven’t you fixed the garage door yet?’ to ‘My mother was right, I should never have married such a useless dolt’ in 30 seconds – remain ageless.
So do I have better advice than our grandparents? I hope so. Well, I have advice that works well in my relationship, and might be worth a try in yours.
I think most exploding fights stem from some essential relationship compromise, which has resulted in a power imbalance in one of the big areas: Money, Sex and Household Responsibility.
The thing with compromises is they work when you’re your best you. When you’re tired and stressed or just gatvol, you’re not your best you. And you suddenly can’t remember why you compromised, and even if you can, you need to rock the balance.
Often, all this is happening unconsciously. You just think your garage door fight took a vicious turn, not that you’re too tired to deal with the relationship compromise, accepting that your partner just isn’t very handy. And because you’re not actually fighting about the underlying issue, you’re both bewildered by the ferocity of this ‘petty’ fight.
We find if we put our known compromise issues front and centre, we become aware of the real issue underlying trivial fights. We even label them for easy reference, and can often avoid the blow-out. Like so:
‘Hey, did you fix the garage door today?’
‘Ah no, I think I’ll do it next week.’
‘You won’t you know, you never do. It’ll just be one more thing that never gets fixed like the rest of the…’
‘And when last did you fix anything?’
‘Hey, wait… we’re having fight No 2, you know, the household responsibility fight. Let’s not let the garage door kick it off? I’m ratty. Let’s wait til we’re in better moods and then tackle the household compromise stuff. Okay?’
This really, really works for us. And I think it saves the whole family a fair amount of unnecessary aggression.
How do I know this? Because just last week, we were getting a little heated in the car on the way out to dinner, and Son 1 piped up from the backseat: ‘Hey, can you two just realise this is Fight 2 already and park it? I’m really looking forward to tonight.’
Hmmm. Perhaps it sometimes works TOO well.
Leave a Reply