Tag Archives: arguing

Couples Fight… That’s Normal Right?

I often listen to many couples tell me about their fighting practices with each other. Some even tell me that they think they are pretty good at it. Occasionally people tell me they want their partner to improve so they can have better fights. People, and I mean a lot of people assume that fighting is just a natural and expected part of being in a relationship. Everyone fights, right?

As a Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in working with couples and who is in a successful relationship herself, I can answer that question with a certain amount of authority. No. Everyone does not fight. Everyone does not stand his or her ground and repeat his or her position and defend that position until the cows come home. No not everyone does this with their partner.

But all of us watch the news, television sit-coms and reality programs and see couples fighting all the time. It seems like the norm. We watch it frequently, so we accept that it’s just what happens. Couples may have the false impression that when a person stands up for himself or herself in a relationship they are being assertive. There may even be a short lived benefit to saying something firm to your partner. But there is also the wreckage; hurt feelings, being misunderstood, cut off from your loved one and alone.

You may be wondering to yourself how people communicate if they don’t get firm and assertive with the other. How do they get their point across when the other person isn’t listening? You may even wonder if people just roll over and let their partner walk all over them so there won’t be a fight. It’s hard to imagine exactly what communication could look like if you have been spending your relationship years locked in battle.

I know this pattern. I learned this in the family I grew up in. When people got their feelings hurt or felt wronged by someone they verbally attacked the offender. “Why did you drink my milk?” Then there was the retort. “Because, I needed it for my cereal.”
“Well you are selfish!” “You are selfish!” This back and forth was so familiar to my ears and my way of communicating it took a lot of work to get out of the habit of blaming the other person for my difficulties.

And that’s what has to happen. Each person in a relationship has a responsibility to the other to be good to the other. If you blame the other for something you are throwing down a gauntlet saying “The fight is on!”

Do you really want to make your beloved the bad guy? Really, there are other ways to get your needs met. Learn them. Unplug from a destructive pattern. It just plain feels better. I know.

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We Love Them Until We Don’t

Many couples tell me how much they love their partner.  They sit on a couch in my office with their mate next to them and they profess their love.  I listen to them convince me.  Then the other person adds their voice, “I love him too.”  They are very sure of themselves as if there is nothing more truthful in the world.

I hear these pronouncements often, and then I listen to how these two people actually treat each other when they are not professing their love, and it’s not very nice.

“He called me a @#$%”.  “She said I was (something belittling here)”.  Usually when I hear these tirades I can feel the bitterness and anger from each person.  It’s so thick you can actually feel it inside the therapy room.  I try and wade through the discontent to understand what they mean when they tell me that they love each other.

I think people believe that if they are with a person long enough, their shared history makes it love.  I think some couples convince themselves they are in love and are loved by their partner just because they have been a part of each other’s lives longer than any other relationship.

I don’t disbelieve that couples who act like this really love each other; it’s just that I don’t think they feel very happy in the relationship treating their partner the way they do and feeling the same treatment in return.  People who are happy in their relationships generally don’t belittle or rage at each other.  It’s my experience that if people harbor resentment and anger toward their mates then that’s usually how they will communicate with them, with words full of anger and resentment.  On occasion when couples are not angry at each other they can sometimes find closeness and soft, loving words, like, “You know I love you”.  When they hear those words they are lulled into the idea that they are loved, and all will be right with the world.

It’s just a band-aid though, until the next time there’s a big blow up.  Then these couples go right back to the fighting words first, not the soft, loving ones.  Couples who live in this kind of cycle go through extremes with each other; intense hate and intense love.

Isn’t that love they ask me?  Sure I say, it’s some kind of love, but my question to each person is, are you happy?  Are you happy in your life?  Are you happy with your mate?  Do you feel good?  Do you believe your relationship is good?  Do you feel supported?  Do you feel appreciated?  Are you treated with kindness?  How do you treat your partner?  Do you support him or her?  Are you treating him or her with kindness?

The answers to these questions will tell me a lot more about whether there is love than the words “Of course I love him” or “She knows I love her.”

Anyone can say the words “I love you”.  We all know that isn’t enough.  It isn’t enough to help us feel nurtured and whole in our life.  What’s needed is deep consideration for the other person and an unshakable faith in knowing that making your partner happy will be the best effort you can ever make.

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Tit For Tat; How Some Couples Cope…Guidance From A Marriage And Family Therapist

Many of us grew up needing to have the last word when we got into an argument.  It just doesn’t feel right if we can’t say what we have to say after the other person has said their piece.  We just want to finish the exchange with our own ending note.

It’s not uncommon to see this interaction when two people are discussing issues important to both of them.  It’s also not uncommon to see this type of behavior between two people who are in a relationship. He says one thing, she says another, he has to top her, she has to top him and so on.  We’ve all seen it; we may even have engaged in it.

On some level it can be satisfying, putting the other person in their place, having the last word and really saying or acting out something dramatic that makes our point.  Yes, sometimes we even feel better when we can have the last word and end with a flourish, like slamming a door, or stomping up stairs, or using a cuss word or flipping someone off.  There’s something very satisfying about really feeling like we have been heard.  Unfortunately, when two people are locked in this sort of contest no one is listening to the other; both are just waiting for their turn.

These dramatic moments can also cause harm to two people who are in a relationship. Sometimes there is real damage done during these matches, hurtful things are said, painful slights are seared into us.

Some of this sparing may remind us of squabbling with a sibling or a childhood friend. If we learned it at a young age we might even feel confidence when we spar with another person.  We may grow to rely on these skills as we get older and might even use them with our mate in our adult relationship.

Sometimes they are funny and can be laughed at in a calmer state.  But more often than not they are hurtful and leave wounds.  We carry around these scars and feel terrible and angry.  Maybe we get zinged, maybe we zing our beloved.  If we engage, it’s likely we leave something behind, some residue of hurt feelings that may get buried over the next time there is a spat.  Maybe we even compile all the zingers and hurl them back at each other reusing them again and again.

So what do we do about these actions?  Why not talk about them with our partner.  Why not have a discussion about how it feels to hurl these slights and how it feels to receive them.  Why not find out if there are some bruises left over from past arguments.  If the bruises are still tender chances are it’s possible to have some real connection with your mate.  Maybe you both agree on what you won’t say again.  Maybe if you are the offender you can apologize.  This can go a long way to healing pain.  What you don’t want is for couples to wall up against the other because of all the slights.  This can lead to resentment which can leave each person living behind his or her own wall of bricks, afraid to connect for fear of being hurt.

No couple wants to live with resentment toward their partner.  Living behind walls of resentment cuts down on closeness. And that’s really what couples want, to be close, to feel safe and loved, free from those hurtful zingers.

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When Couples Can’t Say What They Want To Say To Each Other

All the couples I work with have something in common.  They want a better relationship with their partner.  It’s universal.  We as humans want to be loved.  We want to feel safe, cared for, supported and nurtured.  We want the best out of life and we want it from our mate.

This is true with all relationships.  Who wants a relationship filled with hurt feelings, criticism, lack of support and silence?  None of the couple I work with.  In fact that’s usually what they talk about when I meet them.  They tell me what’s in their relationship now; fighting, sadness, aloneness, and they tell me they want that gone so they can feel the love again.

Most people think counseling is a way to remove the barriers that have crept in overtime and kept the couple from feeling connected.  The counselor is supposed to remove the barriers and then the couple is happy again. 

One time a client walked into the room and stated, “So this is where the magic happens.”  I laughed with him and responded, “Yes it is.  In fact my magic wand is right over there.”  We laughed again, but the truth behind that statement echoes what most people believe; therapy will fix the problem.

What I like to help people understand is that counseling helps couples understand themselves, their relationship and each other.  I’m their guide to help them in the process.  I know the real success lies in couples who can say everything to their partner without fear of hurting feelings or driving them away.  I know that happy couples know how to listen to their partners without taking everything personally or feeling they have to argue to the death to win an argument.

There are very few rules for a good relationship.  But these guidelines are important.  They sound a lot like the good book, or the Ten Commandments or any other philosophy that treats others with compassion.  They are simple because if you and your mate are conscious, you will not intentionally harm the other.  If you accidently hurt the other, your mate can tell you about the hurt and you can make amends immediately.  You recognize that holding on to hurt feelings harms you and your mate, it keeps you disconnected.  You work hard to resolve difficulties because you know that if you don’t they will build and build and you will have walls between you that leads to all the stuff you don’t want.

The recipe for a good relationship is simple.  The roadmap to getting there may not be.  Each person brings to a relationship his and her experiences from a lifetime of living without the partner.  Included in this history is an unconscious collection of rights and wrongs.  This collection is a template that people fit their lives on to. The rights and wrongs keep us safe in our world. When people find their mate there is an unconscious expectation that the mate will automatically understand the partner’s right-and-wrong template. A person might think, if he or she really loved me, they would automatically know what I needed.

Unfortunately each person brings his and her own template, and they differ.  Most people don’t talk about what they need in the relationship to keep them feeling safe and loved because most people don’t even think about it.  It’s unconscious.  You only are aware of it when it’s not working.  Something happens and you feel misunderstood.  Your perfect person doesn’t know that one important thing about you.  They must be heartless, or even, the wrong person.  The perfect person would know, automatically, because isn’t that what love is?

These are the issues you get to explore in counseling.  You become conscious of when you expect something from your partner without asking for it.  You gain the confidence in yourself to be able to ask for what you need.  You stop blaming your mate for not giving you what you needed when you haven’t let them know what it is.  It’s simple and it can be challenging.  Even so, it’s worth it.

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Research shows it’s not the fight that hurts the relationship…It’s how you fight that determines lasting effects

According to The New York Times Magazine, April 18, 2010, in an article that ponders the question, “Is marriage good for your health?” surprising studies show that people who fight are not in danger.  The research shows it’s not the fight that determines whether the marriage is good for you and your partner. It doesn’t matter how difficult the argument or how angry the fight, what matters is whether the people fighting stay connected.  That’s right, you have to tell you partner right in the middle of a fight that you still love them.  You have to find a way to grab their hand or call him or her a pet name, and you have to do this right in the middle of the argument or fight.

If you can do this you will have a happy heart and not suffer from stress.  When we argue without connection to our partner we put stress on our hearts and other parts of our body.  We get all keyed up and mad, sometimes we even get hateful.  The key, according to research, is to find a way to make a connection with the person we are fighting with, during the argument. 

Usually couples will have it out with each other and then they’ll have to wait until all the energy inside them dies down so they can talk to each other again, talk about what happened and start some sort of repair process to reconnect.  Research shows  us that if you can find a way to get out of the anger for just a second and make an overture to your partner, a small gesture or a couple of loving words are all that’s needed, you will keep yourself from getting into that mad zone that takes so long to come back from.

Going there, the mad place, and staying there, is one of the most harmful things you can do to your body.  Your body is now dealing with enormous amounts of energy.  It’s all stored up inside each of you and it has to go somewhere.  Maybe some of it get’s released through loud words said to each other, but chances are if you are yelling at the other person you are pretty amped up and those feelings are going to take some time to dissipate.  It’s this period that has the most negative impact on your body; elevated stress hormones, elevated risk of diabetes, elevated risk of heart disease, immune system weakens, increased risk of depression, nasty stuff to keep inside yourself.

Why not think of this now, before the next blow up. Talk with your partner, spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend and discuss the damage you each are doing to yourselves when you get in prolonged arguments.  Gain an understanding of the toxicity that fighting without connecting can produce.

Maybe you can come up with your special way of connecting before the argument begins.  Why not create a safe word or a funny phrase, a physical gesture or make a silly face.  Anything will work, as long as it brings the two of you close.  The idea isn’t to end the argument or fight.  The technique is designed to give the two of you a place away from the war zone.  It doesn’t even have to last a long time.  It just has to last a moment.  If you can do this the research says you will be served by your relationship, instead of it feeling like a weight.

Send your comments to Linda at linda@lindanusbaum.com

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How to Stay Focused on the Good in a Relationship

When couples try and work out problems often they get derailed with the pain that sits between them and doesn’t seem to go away.  It’s not that couples don’t want to get closer; it’s just that they are stymied as to how to get around the hurt.  If one or both are carrying around some deep pain, how can the couple get together?

This is a situation people find themselves in, even when they are in counseling.  It’s one thing to understand the pain, resolve the hurt and move on, but sometimes it’s hard to even get to that first step.  So how do you keep two people, who believe they have something special between them, focused on the big picture?

I like to help couples see what’s good in their relationship; find five things that work, five things that make you feel alive, five things that you know to be true, five things that keep you in the relationship because they are good.  If you can find five things that are meaningful to you chances are you are willing to continue to work on the union and you will be able to see a big picture.

So what is the big picture? 

It’s the vision of what your relationship looks like when you are gazing at it through hopeful eyes.  Make sure
you add your senses too.  What does it feel like?  Are you safe and full of love?  What does it smell like?  Is it full of fresh air and forest, or salt and sand from a beach?  Where are you and your mate?  What age are you and your partner?  Maybe you want to write about this image.  Perhaps you want to paint it or draw with pencils.  How ever you may want to solidify your vision you should do so. This is your relationship.  It can be any color you want.  And your partner’s may be totally different.

Maybe that would be a good exercise too.  Both of you create your image of your partnership and then share the visions with each other.  You are both right.  You are both creators of your happiness.  See if there is agreement.  See if there is connection.  See if you like hers better, or his.  Be open to the other’s ideas.  Be grateful for their vision.  Be appreciative that they see themselves with you. 

Agree to work toward your collective visions.  Make a pact to walk the journey together.  These steps are not designed to remove all barriers.  Sometimes old hurts and resentments take focused effort to remove them.  Even so, in my experience, when a couple has a goal, some place to travel to together, they grow a sense of “us”; us on the road together, us building something together, us against the world together.

A sense of “us”, not two people in conflict, not two people separated by resentment, but two people undivided and together.

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When It Feels Like It Will Never Work

Sometimes in a relationship a fight may bring out such deep feelings of being torn apart there might be an accompanying fear that the union is broken. 

Sometimes the fights are so painful that it feels useless to even think about trying to work things out.

Isn’t this evidence that the relationship just doesn’t work?  How much more proof do we need to know that we can not get along and we are making each other miserable.

Of course you would think this.  Of course you would feel as if your relationship was on the rocks.  Who wouldn’t?  What crystal ball do you have to tell you things could be different?

As a couples counselor I am familiar with people believing that their partnership is in shambles.  I have heard from all types of couples about the terrible things that sit between them, and I have been a witness to some pretty difficult times in a therapy session.

I know it feels terrible to be involved in something that just feels wrong.  I know it weighs heavy on both people when they get mixed up in it.

I also know that every time there is big emotion, it’s a sign that people are becoming vulnerable and dropping deeper into what could become a rich connection with each other.

The emotion tells us of pain.  Pain in a relationship is usually present when one or both people are desperate for something.  They are seeking something from the other.  It could be understanding, closeness, connection, tenderness, intimacy, love.

It’s usually something from deep inside the soul that desires this.  And it’s probably been a deep longing for awhile. Unfortunately all attempts to fill the desires and longings have fallen flat.  The partner hasn’t delivered.  The partner isn’t available.  He/she doesn’t understand, connect, have time for, need, want, and desire me.

This is the message the person receives when their attempts at connecting fall short.  If we receive the message that our mate can’t fill our deepest longings, we might get pretty angry, and we might even get really mad at them.

So of course there will be big arguments.  Of course there will be people raising their voices and saying things that they might not say in other circumstances.  That’s what we as humans do when we have a lot of energy stored up inside us.  We have to let it out, and we do, at our partners, especially when things are not going well.

So do fights mean the relationship is on the brink?  No, it just means there is stuff to work on.  It means there is an opportunity to understand what each person needs.  It means there’s hope; hope that when we understand each other we can give our partner what they want.  And that’s what everyone is looking for, to be understood by their mate, to be listened to when they need an ear, to be treated tender because the world is a lot better knowing we’re loved.

Don’t let a big fight tell you something else, that if we loved each other you wouldn’t do this to each other.  This would be true in a fairy tale, not in real life.  Fighting doesn’t mean you are wrong for each other.  Fighting means you are desperate for understanding.  

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