Marriage Lie #3: If You Argue, It’s Broken
“You can tell that we shouldn’t be married,” he told me, “because we keep on arguing!”
“You argue,” I reflected. He nodded. “Right,” I continued, “but why shouldn’t you be married?”
“Because,” he emphasized, “we argue!”
To make the point, I again noted, “Got it. You argue. But why should you not be married?”
Ironically, I could feel an argument rising. My client was buying another lie of marriage: arguing and fighting in a marriage means the marriage is wrong.
**To be clear, we are not discussing abuse here. By “fighting,” I do not mean physical or emotional violence. I mean the struggle of opinions, emphasized with back-and-forth conversations that may or may not be productive.**
Conflict is part of marriage; it is unavoidable.
I don’t like conflict any more than the next person. Very few people actually savor an argument, especially in close and intimate relationships. Sure, attorneys and politicians seem to savor a disagreement. But that is within the professional interactions. When I worked with a program embedded in the legal system, I watched attorneys go at it in court, only to go have lunch together as friends.
I have had both politicians and attorneys in my office, uncomfortable with conflict in their marriage. But they personally had little at stake in their professional argument. It was just part of the job.
Not so in marriage.
One day in my office, a client burst through my door, announcing “I quit my job!” I knew he had been unhappy, but the job had supported his family very well. “Congratulations!” I exclaimed. He told me that he had finally had enough and “just up and quit.”
I asked how his spouse was feeling about it, since he didn’t yet have a back-up job. “I haven’t told her yet,” he somewhat sheepishly said.
That conversation with his wife did not go so well. His spouse did not congratulate him. His spouse did not act excited. Instead, they got into an argument. Why had they not discussed it? How could he take an action that impacted his family like that? What were they going to do?
Why could I congratulate him, but his spouse — his most intimate relationship — argued? The same reason marriages will have conflict…will have struggles and arguments: because his decision had no bearing on me, but did affect the future and welfare of the family.
Another client told me, “I don’t have arguments with anyone else in my life. Only my spouse.” She used that to demonstrate why her marriage was broken. It was the only source of conflict.
I noted, “But you can walk away from any other relationship. You can get up and leave, hang up the phone, decide it is their problem. You can just decide to disagree. You can’t do that with a spouse. Sometimes, something needs to happen. A decision needs to be made. A point-of-view needs to be understood. That is only really true in a marriage.”
Marriage brings your futures together.
When you marry, you agree to align your life paths. The arc of your lives must, in many ways, match. That doesn’t mean that you and your spouse will be lock-step in every turn in the road. You may have different interests and responsibilities. But a working marriage has a couple walking side-by-side down the path of life. One person’s actions do have a bearing on the other person’s life.
And as you are walking along that path, what you notice and what seems important will not match, either. You will have different viewpoints. Those differences can cause disagreements on what is happening along the way…and what matters along the way.
Oh, and while you are on that same path? There will be forks, where you have to decide which way to go. Because of those different viewpoints — and different priorities — there may not be agreement on which fork to take, which direction to go. Yet having chosen to walk that path together, you do have to choose one direction over the other. Which can also lead to conflict and disagreement.
That does not mean the relationship is broken. It simply means you see the choices and options from a different viewpoint. Like any two people would. It’s just that you both are on the same journey, having agreed to follow the same path.
Conflict is normal. That doesn’t mean conflict-all-the-time is okay.
Sometimes, when we are arguing a point, we challenge the opposite, which is rarely true, to invalidate the argument. For instance, yes, it is normal to have conflict in a marriage. Conflict does not mean that something is wrong. But that does not mean that fighting all the time is normal for a marriage.
When I was discussing this with my earlier client, he said, “So you think it is okay that we are always arguing?”
“No,” I replied, “that is not okay. But you can work on that. I’m just saying that having conflict in marriage does not indicate a relationship is broken. In fact, many marriages with no conflict are in deeper trouble.”
Over the years, I have had many people confused by the disintegration of their marriage tell me, “But we never fought.” It turned out, that very fact was part of the problem.
Not all conflicts are solvable. In fact, not even half.
The state of conflict is not much fun for anyone. And many couples seem to be stuck in a game of whack-a-mole, knocking down one conflict, only to see the same issue pop up somewhere else. Perhaps they haven’t found the solution. Or perhaps there is no solution.
Dr. John Gottman is a pioneer in studies of marriages and marital troubles. Decades ago, he created the “Love Lab” in California. Armed with recording equipment, he and his team would observe couples as they interacted in the apartment. They were looking for signs of distress and disintegration.
Over time, they got very good at predicting which couples would make it and which couples would divorce. With that information, they began to reverse-engineer on how struggling marriages could find health, and how intact marriages could avoid trouble.
One of the conclusions they reached is that 69% of marital conflicts had no resolution. They could not be solved.
That means that, statistically speaking, 7 out of 10 conflicts with your spouse do not have a solution. Often, this is because there is nothing to solve. There may be a point of understanding, or a difference of opinion. But there was no decision or direction to be solved.
Conflicts come from three areas:
· POV — Point of View
· Direction
· Decision
A POV conflict is centered around two people seeing the world from different perspectives. We all have a paradigm, a way of understanding the world. Each is unique, based on what we have experienced along the way. Life is a constant feedback loop of our paradigm. We build it, then defend it. Right or wrong, it seems to be right. Mostly because we disregard what confronts our viewpoint, but focus on things that continue to support that viewpoint. (Notice that this is exactly where we, as a society, are struggling right now, pretending that our way of seeing things is right…and others are wrong.)
You and your spouse have a different POV, a different paradigm. Much of the time, you may not notice it, since there is likely to be a significant overlap on your paradigms. But those spaces outside of the agreed upon perspective? They are the points of conflict, partly because you stumble upon the differences and want to get your spouse back to your POV — something that was never true. You just didn’t notice the differences.
A Direction conflict arises around the direction of life. It is a difference in how each person might view the unfolding of life, going forward. Do you have kids? How will you raise the kids? Do you move across the country? Do you take one career path or another? And so many others.
Remember, you are tying your future together when you tie the knot. But that knot might get a little strained when each has a different opinion about how life should unfold.
These Direction conflicts may also include some POV conflict, since how you think life “should” unfold is directly linked to how you view that life (and the world).
And then there are the Decision conflicts. These are about specific decisions we make in life. Do you buy this car or that one? Do you buy that house or this house? Do you paint the house eggshell white or ecru? Do you go to Aspen or the Caribbean for vacation?
While some of these decisions might impact your life direction (creating some Direction conflict), they are immediate. They are a choice of tangible options. And often, they really don’t have a bearing on the overall direction. The choice between this car and that is likely to have a very small impact on this life path or that. Even if it feels like it at the time.
Remember those POV conflicts? They encompass much of that 69% of unsolvable conflicts. There is no point of conflict that can be solved. The POV of each person is, well, their point of view. It often leads to arguments. But they cannot truly be solved, as they are really viewpoints or perspectives.
Which means that, if they can’t be solved with a choice, they can be soothed with understanding. Understanding each other’s point of view — and more importantly, feeling understood.
There is an overarching principle.
Conflict can eat away at the foundation of a marriage because it can cause disconnection. By pushing for your own wish and desire, you are often pushing against your spouse. The oppositional nature is what does the harm.
But what if you shifted perspective? What if you viewed it, not as oppositional?
Marriage is about creating a WE. As in, “WE are in this together,” “WE are a team,” “WE are a unit.” Not by giving up your own perspective, beliefs, hopes, and dreams, but by pulling them together. By bringing your best self, best ideas and ideals, best talents, to the relationship.
What does that do for conflict?
It brings us to an overarching principle for conflict: Conflict should be in the service of progress.
Many times, couples are caught in a binary struggle. “My way or your way.” I win or you win. If you win, I lose; if I win, you lose. There are only those choices. And this serves to amplify the conflict. When we are stuck in win/lose, it can feel like a struggle for your own survival — the survival of your perspective, your choice, your wishes and desires, your direction.
But instead of binary, what if there is a third option? Not “what is best for me?” versus “What is best for you?” Instead, the question can be constructed around, “What is best for US?” That illuminates a third option. One that is about facing the difference together.
“Will that stop the conflict?”
No, using the third option will not stop the conflict. But that is kind of my point: conflict is not the problem. How you handle the conflict is the problem. The conflict, itself, is unavoidable, as long as both people bring their opinions and perspectives to the relationship.
But what does shift is how the conflict affects the connection. Instead of undermining and undercutting the connection, conflict is a path to better connection. Facing the conflict together, as a team, creates a point of intimacy instead of division.
What if the conflict is POV?
We, as humans, have a deep need to feel understood. In fact, we need to both feel understood and accepted. What I don’t need is for everyone to agree with me. You don’t, either. We both can see that not everyone is going to agree with us. Unfortunately, that seems to be the trap we keep falling into.
Since our POV appears to be the right point of view (otherwise you would change your point of view), it is easy to forget the different point of views. Not wrong, but different. And if I think my POV is THE point of view, then I can also feel it necessary to make sure your point of view is corrected to THE point of view (that happens to be MY point of view).
This is, in essence, the heart of an argument.
Here is my definition of an argument: two different people, with two different opinions, trying to get the other to change to your opinion. Notice, it is not a conversation to understand the other person’s opinion. It is an exchange to change that person’s opinion (to the “correct” one…the one each person holds).
It also guarantees the failure of that conversation. Even if another person’s viewpoint seems more helpful, valid, even correct, once you are locked into the argument, you are unlikely to budge. In fact, most of the time, people simply double-down on their own opinion and move further from the other person. Not closer.
But what if you just start with the understanding that this is a conflict of perspective? And that there is no direct solution? There is no decision to be made, direction to be chosen?
Then, the task is to seek to understand each other’s perspective.
Understanding ≠ Agreeing
It is entirely possible, and totally valid, to understand each other’s perspective and still not agree with that perspective. In fact, there are many times when that is all that is necessary. As I noted earlier, I do not need people to agree with me. But I treasure when someone seeks to understand my perspective.
This one fact can transform those 69% of conflict that cannot be resolved. There is no decision to resolve. But there is space for understanding. The state of conflict can be resolved, even if the conflict, itself, has no decision resolution.
The conflicts where there is no decision to be made, direction to be decided, get stuck when agreement is the goal. When, instead, each person seeks to understand the other’s POV, the state of conflict is solved through understanding.
Conflict is NOT the end. It can lean toward progress.
How you actually resolve conflict is a much deeper discussion than the point of this article. My point here is simple: Conflict is an unavoidable part of marriage, and not an indicator the relationship is broken. The real choice is in how you use conflict. To divide or to unite?
The lie is that conflict means a marriage is broken. Don’t believe it.