No fighting!

One of the most important things that has to happen for a marriage to recover and for a couple to be in love is that there has to be no fighting.  If you want to be happily married, then you need to have a high balance in your account in your spouse’s love bank.  If your marriage has been in a bad place, you can’t afford to be making any withdrawals from that account at all.

Fighting is like nuclear war in marriage.  Everybody loses; everybody gets hurt horribly; and the radioactive fallout lasts for years.  Avoid fighting in marriage at all costs.  Even if your spouse wants to fight with you, avoid fighting with them.  Even if your spouse breaks all the rules, don’t go breaking the rules yourself, because you will simply make the problem worse.  If you thought they didn’t like you before, just wait till you make several more withdrawals from your account in your husband or wife’s love bank.

To a great extent, it is true that it takes two to fight.  To a great extent, one person can make sure there are no fights in a marriage, by simply refusing to fight!

How do you avoid fights?  You’ve got to avoid three specific behaviors:

• Selfish demands
• Disrespectful judgments
• Angry outbursts

These three behaviors form a continuum of abuse and control.  A selfish demand is anything you do or say that makes your spouse feel that they have no choice but to comply with your wishes, or else there will be consequences.  A disrespectful judgment is anything you do or say that makes your spouse feel you are devaluing their feelings and opinions.  And an angry outburst is anything you do or say that makes your spouse feel punished.  There are hundreds of examples of each of these kinds of behavior.  If your spouse is upset with you, there is a good chance you are engaging in one of these without realizing it.

Typically when somebody wants something from their spouse and the spouse is not willing, they issue a demand to their spouse.  If that does not work, they escalate: they move to a disrespectful judgment by telling their spouse why they “should” do this, why it’s wrong not to do this, calling them names if they don’t do it, etc.  Finally, if the disrespectful judgment doesn’t motivate their spouse to give them what they want, they punish them with an angry outburst to try to make them comply.

It all starts with feeling like you’ve got to have something from your spouse, like you are entitled to it, and like it would be right to do whatever it takes to make your spouse give it to you.

If you want to have a recovered marriage, you must stop fighting.  You’ve got to commit yourself to never doing or saying anything that your spouse finds demanding, disrespectful, or angry – even if your spouse becomes demanding, disrespectful, or angry!  That can be difficult to do: a person in an abusive marriage tends to become abusive themselves.  But those of us who have recovered marriages can testify that you can and must break the cycle and eliminate these three behaviors.

If your spouse frequently withdraws from your conversations or is combative, it is possible that you are doing or saying something that they feel is demanding, disrespectful, or angry.  Your intent doesn’t matter as much as the effect on your spouse’s feelings.  If they feel you are demanding, disrespectful, or angry, you need to change something.  Personally I had a lot of trouble figuring out how I was being disrespectful and why my wife saw me as disrespectful.  I’d be happy to help you if you don’t understand why your spouse is upset.  Send me an email at MarkosOnMarriage@gmail.com, and I will answer in this space.