Fights and Arguments in Marriage – Introduction
Hello, I’m Geoffrey – a marriage and relationship counselor at Asheville Marriage Counseling.
In this section you’ll find some videos addressing fights and arguments in marriage. Now, fighting and arguing is something that occurs in most marriages and relationships, but how it occurs and how serious it is to the marriage can vary widely.
Almost every couple is going to have sometimes when they get into heated discussions. But there’s a difference between having a heated discussion over a disagreement with your marriage partner that passes and you reconnect into your fundamental relationship, versus getting into a pattern of debates, that become arguments, that become fights. Those can be extremely detrimental and harmful to a marriage and there are many factors that can contribute to it; it’s not just as simple as fighting over the issue that we seem to be arguing about.
So, in this section I want to cover a few different things related to fights in marriage. I’ll be talking about what contributes to a fight. What are some of the factors that lead us to get into an argument, rather than settling things in a cooperative manner? And it turns out we are actually kind of predisposed to that direction, more than we are toward collaboration.
We’ll also look at some of the ways that you can perhaps avoid fights; some paradigm shifts or some interventions that you can do when you see a fight brewing, so that you can avoid it. We’ll look at some ways that you can interrupt a fight – when you find yourself over the line and you’re in the midst of an argument… some ways to disengage from that, so that the duration…and the intensity… and the frequency can be reduced and it won’t do as much damage to the marriage or your relationship.
And of course we’ll look at some ways you can address differences and disagreements with your spouse that don’t involve fighting, and hopefully can shift toward working together to manage your differences, rather than getting into a fight or an argument over them.
Now, before I proceed – like in all the videos that I have on my websites this section and these videos are intended to be for information and educational purposes. They’re not expected to be a substitute for marriage or couples’ therapy. Although, I certainly hope that there will be some ideas here… and maybe some specific things that I suggest that you can do, that will improve your interactions with your partner.
I also want to stress, especially in the section, that if you have a history of violence or aggression in your relationship (especially related to fighting) I would really discourage you from using any of the suggestions offered in these videos without doing it in the collaboration and in cooperation with either a professional marriage counselor or someone who specializes in domestic violence issues.
And if you don’t feel safe within your marriage, I strongly encourage you do not take that risk; make sure that you get with a counselor, hopefully with your partner, to be able to address those things and avoid any risk to your safety.
All right, so with that being said… fighting and arguing is a big issue. And we pay attention to it partly because, it feels really lousy. I mean, I don’t know any couples who truly enjoy fighting and arguing.
But more importantly, it can be very, very, damaging to the fundamentals of your marriage and it can be damaging in some ways that aren’t obvious. So much so, that’s what I’m going to address in the first video. Ways that fighting and arguing on a regular basis, something that becomes a pattern, can be damaging to your marriage or relationship and can set up a trajectory or a pattern that can be increasingly difficult to get out of.
So that will be video number one.
