Marriage: Communication & Fighting Fair

The Better Part - Intentional Living for Christian Moms with a Bible-Loving Catholic Mama

Communication is a HUGE topic, but let's go through a few basics:

1. Happy, healthy marriages are marked by at least five times as many positive comments about the spouse or relationship as negative
2. When there is a hurt or a problem, use a soft start up. Before launching into a problem, ask your husband, "Is this an OK time to talk about something important/difficult for me?" and respect him enough to wait if it isn't! Schedule another time to talk.
3. Use "I" statements rather than "you" statements that begin with your feeling. Use the form "I feel ________ when you _______, and I'd like to ask you to ________ in the future."
4. Avoid absolutes! "Never" and "always" are rarely true and almost never helpful.
5. When in a disagreement, ask, "How important is this on a scale from 1 to 10?" and take that into account as the conversation continues.

My husband and I have formed a few rules whenever we're in a fight that have helped us from going too far and taking a disagreement to a big, personal hurt. You may like to use these rules too, or you may find some yourself. The easiest time to identify what your specific rules are is [unfortunately] after a particularly bad fight. Looking back together, try to identify when something got too personal or mean in the fight and when it turned from productive conversation to harmful. PLEASE try to REFRAIN from blaming or accusing. The point is not to start a new fight, but to share with your spouse how something made you feel. Look at #3 above!

If the pain point you identify is something that has happened before and that you know is very painful, you may want to agree that it is off-limits. Make your rule specific enough so that you would know if this rule is broken in the future. Knowing that it is a rule may help jolt you out of a bad situation in the future. When a rule is broken, agree to take a breath, apologize, and work on communicating a different way. The person who is affected should make efforts to forgive and let the offender try again.

So without further explanation, here are our rules:

1. No cursing
2. All breaks must have a time limit (set beforehand), and you cannot drive somewhere far away.
3. Stay in the fight until resolution. Don't go to bed angry.

More wisdom to be found at the Gottman Institute:

https://www.gottman.com/about/

And check out wisdom from Doug Hinderer:

https://www.happymarriageforlife.com/about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr2PuvQFLTA&t=2225s