Why Your Natural Reactions in an Argument Can End Your Marriage and What You Can Do About It

P.S. Trying harder is not the answer

How do you and your spouse fight? Eye daggers? Guilt? Shame?

My wife and I would shout silence at each other.

The voiceless screams were so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think. It would go on for days. Weeks sometimes.

For us, intense quiet was a clear sign something was wrong, very wrong. I would try to break through the problem, solve it, fix it, but I never could. Not on my own.

After 20 years of fighting and a looming divorce, we finally found a counselor who could help.

What he taught us saved us.

When it all goes wrong, you try hard to make it right

But most of the time, that just makes it worse.

Words are my modus operandi. They’re my tools. I use them to defend myself against the hurt a fight brings.

When the disagreement arrived, I would start talking. Dig in, ask 1000 questions. Information is power, look for it and don’t stop. More words, more data, more uncovering. Solve the mystery.

My wife is the opposite. Her mode is action.

Words are cheap to her. In fact, they’re not just cheap, they’re a way to deceive and manipulate so you don’t have to do anything, especially what matters. Fools and liars love words and they talk so they don’t have to walk.

My natural inclination — using words to find the root of the problem — is exactly what she doesn’t want. The more I talked the more she thought I was trying to avoid responsibility, blame it on her, on the dog, on the world.

I’m just trying to defend myself in my way against the looming war. And in her way, she’s doing the same.

By following our natural tendencies, we just make the fight that much worse.

Your natural defense intensifies the conflict and creates a negative cycle

By asking more questions, I’d drive her away more. My contribution to the situation happened in just the right way to push her away.

In turn, she contributes by engaging with her own style: action. Her action is to withdraw, not answer my questions, ignore me, get on with life, cook supper, clean house, pay the bills, take care of the kids.

She’s showing me what she wants — a lot less talk and a little more action — by doing the things she wants. But I’m not getting it. Actions don’t speak to me. What is this, a game of charades? It’s all Greek to me.

We’re both using our own styles of “fixing” things but all we’re doing is pushing each other away.

You break the cycle by doing something different, not doing the same thing harder

As the situation got worse, I thought “Clearly, these are the wrong questions”. So I’d double-down. Ask even more questions.

Results? She ignored me harder.

The mistake here is trying the same approach with more intensity instead of trying a totally different approach.

After 20 years of this terrible back-and-forth and $1000’s in counseling, we tried something different.

When a fight appeared, we paused. No more knee-jerk reactions. We started stopping, thinking, and then trying something different.

I wouldn’t panic and machine gun her with questions. I would use her language of action instead.

“Somethings going wrong here. I’ve either done something I shouldn’t or didn’t do something I should. Honey, what action did you want to see from me?”

When she told me (a huge step up from silence) I’d do whatever I could to make it happen or stop it from happening. I apologized and loved her through behavior, not words because that’s what was important to her.

This stopped the cycle. It softened her. She reciprocated by using words. Lots of them. Beautiful, lovely, gorgeous words that sang to my soul.

The solution to the fight is inside you

Whether the fight is big or little, you need to stop and reconsider your natural emotional reaction. More times than not, this reaction is what drives your partner away.

A good rule of thumb is to consider how they view the things. What is important to them? What do they want or don’t want?

Most likely, this will seem foreign to you. You’re stepping out of your shoes and trying to think, communicate, or act from their perspective. This is the try- something-different part.

Don’t think this will be easy. It’s not. It’s damn hard internal work. Your emotions are a freight train and they’re driving your natural reactions. Once they get going, they’re hard to stop.

This is the challenge: pausing, thinking about the other person while your own emotions are trying the carry you away.

But think about the reward: the loving smile on their face, the emotional release of connecting again, the happiness of a smooth marriage.

The joy and satisfaction of a healed relationship is so worth it.

If you’d like to learn more about this, read the books of John Gottman, a pioneer in the study of marriage and relationships. Also, look at Sue Johnson’s book Hold Me Tight. It’s an excellent exploration of this principle.

This idea saved our 20 year marriage but it wasn’t magic. It wasn’t the secret that instantly gave us our happily ever after.

We had to put in a lot of intense personal effort after finding this, week after week, practicing what we learned.

But without it, no amount of work would have ever saved our marriage.