Is the person you’re with ready to fight fair?

A bit of a personal story…

(Early lessons in marital communication, with a lot of failures included!)

In life, we are always learning how to do relationships better. Is a constant process… and we can never be completely sure that we do it to the complete satisfaction of the person we relate to. In short, being happy in a relationship is a moving target, and we can aspire only to a decent average of happy days, and some percentage of painful opportunities to learn something about ourselves.

Today I want to comment on an old idea of mine, coming from way back in my life. When I was just married, and facing the adjustment to a different form of life for me, with a person not of my tribe, but from a different family, I was confused and only catching up. Too many things to learn simultaneously, from being away and independent from my parents, to working on developing a new partnership with my husband. All the time, being so young and painfully ignorant and having no coaching from grown-up female friends…

Facing the lack of good conversations and shared agreements….

Anyhow, things were not going well. We were very poor, and I had the task of dividing the little money from his salary into envelopes with names like electric bill, rent, and grocery store…and splitting the money in each envelope to cover four weeks. Of course, there were more weeks than money, so we would end up having pasta dinners 3 days in a row…last night with oil because all the money for butter was gone. Nevertheless, I was proud of my budding money management skills, when I was told that our household now owned a new motorbike! I do remember my shock: where the monthly payments will come from? there were not any envelopes with “spare money to spend” around!

My brain came up with this urgent and bright idea: we needed to have monthly management meetings! we needed to have a shared plan….I clearly needed to feel equally invited to make decisions in our family; I wanted to have a say in planning the financial future of our small but growing family…I was having a clear idea of my role as an equal member of the marriage, and I wanted to be equal from the beginning!

There was my plan: we would get together, avoiding all distractions, for one hour, and the agenda was to check how we were spending our income, how to improve decisions about choosing needed things or things that would enrich our lives, and how to save for the future. Not bad, for me being 21 years old…I even wrote a short article about my method for a parents’ magazine.

My failure brings bitter lessons!

Of course, you now suspect two things: that I was not going to be the new, shiny motorbike user (of course!) but also that my monthly shared decision-making meeting was dead on the water…It was a too steep challenge to “normal” concepts of machismo, what the role of a man in his house was, what the female role (silent and obedient?) was, etc.

I never forgot my clever, useful, and sensible plan to have two spouses discussing their shared marriage in parity. I’m sharing it here with you and saying again that there is no more important decision than to set up a method by which the two sides can decide together how to make their marriage better. This idea has evolved, of course, with my new focus on conflicts, and now I talk about “fair fighting.”

So, missing my monthly meeting to discuss the home management project, what is left?

Probably, periodic confrontations about who is deciding what of the shared home project. Marital conflict becomes part of the daily scenario!

Being open to sharing your feelings and accepting responsibility for them — rather than denying them by acting closed and defensive — is essential for developing an honest and deep relationship. We call it a fight fair because positions and arguments are delivered with love and respect.

Partners cannot even face conflicts without being open to accepting who they are and what they do to each other. Be aware and ask yourself: how this person of my interest reacts to a dispute?

The question to ask yourself is, “How does  this person behave when in a conflict?”

Some people can show patience and understanding in normal interactions until a conflict occurs. If and when there is an opposite view of what they think or want,  they feel they are under attack, then they get angry, withdrawn, resistant, or overly compliant. You can have the “counterattack” response or you can have the hideous silent treatment. If he chooses to close up, how long does it take him to open again and treat you normally? And, when the conversation starts again, is he willing to review and understand what happened to both of you, or is he too anxious to turn the page and leave all lessons behind?

If you can’t have a conversation and extract some personal lessons from what happened, it’s probable that:

a) it will happen again (and again!)

b) in the future you will be afraid of asking to have a deep conversation with him because he will get upset or  aggressive, or emotionally or physically abusive,

c) you will have to forget learning about his needs, or expressing your own needs…and the door to intimacy will be locked.

 

IN CONCLUSION:

Being open to lovingly resolving conflict by having a sincere conversation with your partner is essential for learning the lessons that marriage offers.

All of us need to learn about how to buildup trust and intimacy in a loving relationship.

Fair fighting is essential for good, solid marriages…You can find this book very useful: How to Fight Fair in Your Marriage

 

A couple learning to do a fair fight about their marriage.

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