Fighting With Your Partner Often? Try This Totally Different Way
Seriously. The stressful, conflict-heavy way doesn't end well.
True story: Wife and husband are driving to a local sandwich shop to pick up dinner.
She’s driving. He’s poking at his phone in the passenger seat.
She decides to call ahead with the sandwich order to speed things along. But she’s been having some Bluetooth connectivity issues with her phone lately, and while she’s on the call, the mothereffing phone starts acting up again.
It’s been a long day—a long week, a long month, a long year actually; she carries a lot of health- and parent-related stressors as a default condition—and this evening, her frustration boils over a bit.
She looks over and her husband is seemingly oblivious to all of what’s happening—her stupid phone, her chronic pain, her mountain of legal stresses, the fact that she’s driving him to get sandwiches for no other reason than to be with him because she’s not even that hungry—and she’d had enough of being THAT invisible to someone she’s been ultra-close friends with since high school.
I wasn’t there. So, I don’t exactly know what was said, but probably something akin to: “Hey. A little help here would be nice.” Probably with a tone that communicated: How can you be this oblivious to my struggles? How can you be this checked out when I feel like I’m drowning?
…
In the passenger seat, an entirely separate reality was being experienced. My man was just chilling after a long day of work. He was riding in peace, without a care in the world, to get dinner with his wife and long-time good friend. He was poking at his phone because, well, a lot of us poke at our phone when we’re sitting still for too long.
Minding his own business, unwinding from a workday with his own version of stresses (his wife’s health, the situation with his daughters who he’s helped raise since before they were two years old) are also difficult for him. So, he was taking a short escapist break before dinner.
His intentions weren’t to upset his wife or to be unhelpful or negligent in any way, so when seemingly out of nowhere, she was suggesting he was failing her again in another small, but not inconsequential way, his frustration boils over a bit.
Again, I wasn’t there. So, I don’t exactly know what was said, but probably something akin to: “Hey. Jesus. Chill for a second. I had no idea your phone was acting up. I didn’t break your phone. Stop yelling at me about it. Let me call them back.”
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Despite their long personal history and genuine love for one another, they’re now both feeling deep-seated pains that have been simmering in their brains and hearts for a long time.
This is just another example of how he can’t be trusted, she might think. He doesn’t see me. He doesn’t hear me. And if he DOES, then that means he does this shit on purpose. Not only is he not being a good husband, he’s not even being a good friend.
As the person who has loved and cared about her for a long time, and who willingly embraces the challenges of living with someone with disabilities, and lovingly embraces being dad to two girls he’s not biologically related to, he has a much different take.
Why am I constantly being painted as a bad guy here? This isn’t that deep. I was just looking at my phone on a ride to get food, and I honestly didn’t know anything was wrong, and now I’m getting mountains of shit and attitude about it? Not only is she not being a good wife, she’s not even being a good friend.
Make a Conscious Decision to Do Something Different. It’s the Only Way.
I’ve come to believe that consistently unsuccessful conversation patterns between relationship partners are the No. 1 threat to the health and viability of a marriage or partnership.
There are a bunch of contributing factors, of course. All of the things that prompt the uncomfortable conversations people have when they share lives together.
But it’s the process of discussing these things that most threatens the long-term partnership.
It seems so… regular. So whatever.
Two people—especially when they’ve known each other for such a long time—surely can have a “harmless” disagreement, right?
I mean, do we always have to agree with one another about everything in order to have a healthy, lasting relationship? Do we always have to do what our partners want us to do in order to be deemed “good enough”?
Of course not.
You don’t have to agree on everything. But you should probably share key personal values, and I hope one of them is I give a shit about what happens to this person I love and promised the rest of my life to. I understand that they have an entirely different lived experience than I do, so my own assessment of what looks or sounds or feels good versus what looks or sounds or feels bad won’t always line up nicely with what my partner experiences. In the instances in which something bad is happening to the other person, even though I don’t feel as strongly about it, they need to be able to trust me to demonstrate care about the bad thing happening to them.
I say it a lot, and maybe it’s getting annoying, but my experience eating peanuts or even just walking into a room where a number of people are snacking from bowls of peanuts is WAYYYYYYY TF different than the experience of someone—or the parent of someone—with a potentially fatal peanut allergy.
This same divergent reality scenario applies to EVERYTHING, all of the time, and we don’t, as people, lend it enough credence.
We are notoriously bad about demonstrating care when it comes to things we don’t, ourselves, consider important, valuable, meaningful, etc. But this is the work of relationships. Demonstrating care about the things that matter to them.
It starts with our conversations.
The goal of your relationship conversations should NOT be to be “right.” When someone is communicating a problem or pain point they’re having, and you come back with an argument about how what you believe, and how your body feels about that thing is somehow superior and more correct than your partner’s, really bad things ensue.
There cannot be trust in a relationship in which someone learns over time: Anytime I tell my partner that something is wrong or that something is important to me—and they don’t agree—their response is always the same. I shouldn’t think it, or I shouldn’t feel it. They have to AGREE that I’m ALLOWED TO HURT if I’m ever able to get them to speak and act in a manner that feels like love and care. If they don’t think I’m allowed to hurt, they suggest that I’m wrong, and then they generally abandon me to feel horrible alone because they’re so frustrated that I won’t agree with THEM about MY experiences.
The goal of your relationship conversations should be to demonstrate both care and curiosity around the experiences of your partner—even when they seem foreign or confusing to you.
“You know me well enough to know that I don’t think the same way about this, nor necessarily feel the same way about this, but it matters to me how this affects you. I will always root for you. I will always be on your team. I will always have your back. I understand why people with fatal peanut allergies act afraid of peanuts, even though they seem so innocently delicious and non-scary to me. Once I learned that some people can get sick and die from peanuts, I stopped being an insensitive cock about it. Similarly, once I learn WHY you think and feel the way you do about this situation, moving forward, I’ll be much more in tune and understanding. You have to be able to trust me to love, respect, and honor you EVEN WHEN our brains and bodies don’t think and feel the exact same things as one another.
…
Your aim should be to strengthen your relationship at every one of these opportunities—not let your default-setting conversation habits sabotage you and inadvertently hurt the other person.
Putting your energy into communicating in a way that says you’re wrong, you’re stupid, you’re crazy, you’re weak, you’re hypersensitive, you’re overreacting, you need to grow up, or Hey I didn’t TRY to hurt you, so you shouldn’t feel hurt by what I just did is a one-way ticket to major trust erosion over time.
It won’t end your relationship in the first week, or the first month, or the first year.
That’s what’s so scary about it. The sneaky insidiousness of it. This will end your relationship in year 10 or year 15 or year 20. After you’ve invested so much of yourselves and your identities into one another and your family life.
We have to do better.
It starts with a decision. Operate on auto-pilot, and keep engaging in the exact same conversations and fights over and over and over again, even though they feel horrible and tear you apart.
Or.
Love the other person enough to protect them from the bad thing happening to them.
Protect him from feeling as if you don’t think he’s good enough. Protect him from feeling like you’re blaming him for everything that feels bad in your life.
“I don’t think of you as someone who would ever hurt me on purpose. What’s happening is I’m being hurt by accident because you’re not noticing or being careful. I’m not attacking your character. I’m asking you to notice how something you’re not paying attention to is hurting me.”
Protect her from feeling invisible. Protect her from feeling like she can’t trust you to see her, and hear her. And when the situations pop up where she does, don’t try to convince her she’s wrong.
Focus on repair. Repair, repair, repair.
It’s not: “I’m sorry I’m a bad person who does bad things.” You probably aren’t doing bad things. So don’t defend yourself. There’s nothing to defend. There are only things to be accountable for.
It’s: “I’m sorry you couldn’t trust me to notice how that was affecting you. You really should be able to trust me to know the difference between what hurts you, and what does not. And you definitely need to trust me to try to understand you when I’m confused or not noticing, instead of trying to convince you to think and feel all of the same things I do.
“When something’s wrong, I really want to be the person you talk to. I may not be able to fix what’s wrong, but I can always speak and act in a way that never abandons you to feel the pain alone.”
Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.
P.S. - I know these things can present really small to some of you in your busy lives and marriages/partnerships. But that’s exactly why developing mindfulness and communication habits around these domestic scenarios is so critical to maintaining peaceful, loving relationships. If you have trust erosion, and/or pain points and frustrations around things like this at home, consider working with me as your relationship coach to develop these skills and habits. This stuff matters. Book your next appointment here. - MF
Great post! And posted on my wedding anniversary, too :) I find the language you use, most notably your focus on trust, protection and repair to be so helpful, Matthew!