Healthy Conflict: Why you should argue with your Partner!

By April Galarza

Excerpt from original article

The word fight has a bad connotation especially when talking about relationships.  Frequent fighting is the beginning of the end, some have said.  But I beg to differ.  Thanks to some helpful insights my husband I gained during our pre-marital classes and plenty of experience in the category, we have learned that fighting in a relationship is to be expected and is necessary for making the relationship stronger and the intimacy between the partners deeper. “Conflict is the price smart couples pay for a deepening sense of intimacy,” According to Marriage and Partnership Magazine writers Les and Leslie Parrott.  By fighting, we bring our concerns out into the open.  Instead of ignoring our problems with our partner and praying that they will change, fighting is an active solution to the everyday difference of opinions that occur between couples.  No two people are alike and as of such, each person has their own opinion on practically everything.  Your opinion and that of your partner’s (no matter how alike you are to each other) will not always be harmonious.   The only appropriate way to deal with these issues is to communicate your beliefs and your opinions and then together find a solution that satisfies the both of you.  Ideally, couples would have communicated their differences instead of letting them accumulate. However, we hardly ever live in ideal situations. Sometimes one partner or the other may believe that by giving in or ignoring the issues that they are avoiding conflict, when in actuality they are merely turning up the heat.  If the issue is strong enough, it will eventually surface. 

Contrary to popular belief, most fights in a relationship do not indicate a need for a break up.  Although it may seem like the end of the relationship when you’re shouting and cussing and the door that just slammed shut sounds like a funeral dirge, in most cases, a healthy fight between couples is a good thing.  You have probably heard couples say “we never fight” but odds are they are lying, or fooling themselves. Most couples fight at least three times a year. It has been my experience that there are three types of arguments in a relationship.  They are: The Bad Mood Battle, The Foundation Builder and The Deal Breaker. 

The Bad Mood Battle is just what it sounds like.  One or both of the couple could be tired, stressed-out or hungry but in any case they are grumpy! One or both take out their negative feelings on the other.  In this situation there is usually not a specific cause for the discord. If you leave the grumpy person alone to cool off and deal with their bad mood, they’ll come around soon enough and will probably even apologize for their grumpiness.   When my husband and I have this kind of fight it usually happens in the morning when we are late for work, or when we get home after a frustrating day before either of us have eaten.  My husband and I have discovered that some days, we need to disconnect for a while before we can talk over things.   We may need to camp out in front of the TV or Internet until we have calmed down from our stressful day.  In short, we need some general alone time before we can answer the all-consuming question “How was your day?”   Once we’ve eaten and started to relax, both of us are in a much more tolerable state for discussion. However, if I barrage my darling with questions the second he gets in the door, we could both be in for a rip-roaring brawl.   The best way to avoid the Bad Mood Battle is too catch yourselves when is happening and simply ask your partner “do you need some alone time?” or “do you want to finish this discussion after we have both calmed down?”  Odds are, your partner will be as glad as you to have an out, and when you civilly discuss the issue later, you’ll probably discover that it was only bad attitudes that propelled the disagreement and not some specific problem in the relationship.