My husband and I fight endlessly. How can we stop?

Q:

My husband and I are caught in a cycle of endless fights, and I’m feeling emotionally and physically drained from it. The issues are always small, but the fights are long and bitter. Usually they start because one of us doesn’t like the way the other one is speaking.

Last night, for example, we were discussing who should give the baby a bath after dinner. My husband offered to do it, and at first I thought that was a good idea. I agreed that while he was bathing the baby, I’d put our three-year-old to bed. But then I realized that I should give the baby his bath because our three-year-old has been begging for his father to put him to bed, and I’d promised him that tonight it would happen.

When I told my husband this, he was so upset with me and used a very unpleasant tone of voice to say something like, “We already made a plan and I really don’t like it when you go and undo everything like nothing we agree on matters.”

I thought he was being ridiculous and like I said, I didn’t like his tone of voice, and I told him so. I guess he felt attacked because he got defensive and told me he was tired of all my criticism and complaints. I told him that he was the one who was complaining and then we just fought the rest of the night. This happens all the time, and I don’t know how to make it stop.

A:

One of the things that makes marriage so very challenging is our human emotions. We’re a sensitive bunch! Husbands and wives seem to continuously hurt each other’s feelings. They don’t want to — it usually happens in self-defense, as you describe in your own scenario. We get hurt and then we strike back. Our partner gets hurt and again hurts us back and, exactly as you described, we may go back and forth like this for a very long time.

There are different variations on this theme. Some spouses have long fights because even though their skirmishes are short, their “debriefing” sessions are very long — sometimes going on for days. In these sessions a spouse — let’s say it’s the wife — explains how hurt she is by something her husband said earlier. She wants him to understand where she’s coming from, why it hurts so much, what it means to her, and she wants him to acknowledge what he did wrong and vow to never do it again.

The husband knows that he has to repeat everything his wife says and show her that he has remorse and promise her that he’ll do better — otherwise, the conversation will never end!

But sometimes he gets his back up and refuses to acknowledge the error of his ways, or he makes a case for his own complaints against his wife and tries to get her to acknowledge the pain she caused him. This slows down the conversation or even brings it to a halt. She feels unable to exit from the drama without his formal apology.

In these examples we see a common theme: enormous emotionality. It’s all about feelings. Nowadays, people know that feelings matter. Everybody wants to express their feelings and be heard. The problem is that delving too deeply or too frequently into the minutiae of feelings can backfire. What is supposed to bring clarity ends up bringing a muddle of negativity and pain.

A good example of this is the story you told about your husband’s reaction to your change of plans regarding the baby’s bath. He decides to share his feelings about your desire to change the plan. Since his voice wasn’t friendly at the time, you shared your feelings about the way he was speaking to you — and then the two of you were off to the races.

But what if your husband had not shared his frustration? Then you wouldn’t have shared yours and perhaps the two of you would have had a nice evening. Or, if he had shared his in a not-nice voice, you could have refrained from commenting on that.

Similarly, in the second debriefing example, what might have happened had the wife not sought out an apology from her husband for what he had said earlier? Perhaps they, too, could have had a nice evening.

Do you know that it’s not necessary to talk about every little marital offence? While we don’t want to sweep major issues under the carpet where they can dangerously fester, we also don’t want to “catch” our spouse every single time they say the wrong thing or say the thing in the wrong way. Letting things go is a very important marital tool that should be employed as often as possible. Let your spouse breathe; allow for human imperfection. Save the negative feedback and serious debriefings for the rare circumstances that necessitate working things through. Try this and see if it helps to reduce the frequency of conflict you’re currently experiencing.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 952)