After Your First Argument: Marital Partners Have Differences and Disagreements
Some differences between marital parties, people planning to marry and people already married, greatly enhance the relationship and complement each other well. One loves to cook, and the other doesn’t mind doing dishes. Some of those differences do not affect the marriage negatively. One likes to socialize with friends, and the other is a homebody. However, inevitably, some differences lead to disagreements.
This is the minefield in a marriage because a failure to handle disagreements well can lead to disagreements becoming unresolved disputes, and in many marriages, grow into persisting conflicts. When this happens, spouses often begin to develop negative opinions about one another. Rather than discuss a disagreement, they can begin to criticize and even denigrate each other. This is how divorces get started. More and more marital time is spent in negativity or cold wars, leading to apathy and finally a divorce.
Let’s back up. Remember that it all starts with a disagreement, based on natural differences between people. Because of this, people considering marriage or just married, who have their first argument, should pay close attention to how the argument was handled. In successful marriages, spouses resolve their argument, keep it clean and repair any damage done quickly. Resolving arguments takes skills. Our book, The Road to Marital Success is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work, details the research-based skills that people in successful marriages have for disagreements.
In this Blog, we highlight one of those skills and point out the importance of having rules. The skill that we are highlighting is getting perspective. Two points to consider:
The first point is an important observation and a needed skill. When people argue, the natural tendency is to try to convince the other person and, essentially, win the argument. In other words, each person is talking and making arguments. Evolution gave us the biased belief that we are right and people who disagree with us are wrong. This worked well for hundreds of thousands of years, but is a real problem in modern times. Thus, marital partners waste much of their time trying to convince each other. The needed skill here is to spend the time, in the argument, really trying to find out what the other person is trying to accomplish with their opinion or position. In other words, instead of speaking, the thing to do is to ask questions and get the perspective of the other person. Hopefully, both people will do this so that they understand what the disagreement is really about. Then they have a much better chance of coming up with a solution that works for both people.
The second point is do less damage and repair any damage quickly. This is accomplished with rules. Making a list of rules for arguments makes arguing emotionally safer, so that both people can stay on track. Staying on track with the disagreement, rather than getting frustrated with each other, makes recovering from gut-wrenching arguments much easier. These rules will be very specific to the particular people involved.
For example, some people might not be terribly bothered by swearing, but others might have a real problem with it. No swearing might be a good rule. Some points in a disagreement might actually be reasonable parts of the argument, but also might be very hurtful. Arguing about how much time to spend with extended family might include one spouse yelling, “You never grew up; you are still like a child in your family.” This might actually be true, but is likely hurtful to the spouse. However, when something hurtful is true, it still deserves an apology. Making an apology when appropriate might also be a good rule. These rules might need to be included in a successful discussion about a disagreement.
Our book includes some lessons and drills on how to develop the skills of getting perspective, and making appropriate rules, knowing this is an important first step in resolving disagreements with success.
