The Psychology Of Fighting Fair: 5 Ground Rules Every Couple Needs When Arguments Get Heated
When love meets conflict, it's not about who wins; it's about how you handle the fire.
Vitaly Gariev | Unsplash Along with all the good stuff, getting married means embracing conflict. Fighting is a normal and healthy part of any relationship. Conflict helps us grow together and as individuals. But fighting fair is not as easy as you would think.
The point of a fight is not to win anything, not to be vindicated, or to take out your crankiness on another person. The point of a fight is to come to a mutually satisfying solution to a problem. Even if it doesn’t always feel like it, you both are on the same team, and it’s in your best interest to work it out. At the end of a good fight, you will have both won.
Here are five ground rules every couple needs when arguments get heated:
1. Keep it classy
That means no swearing, biting, kicking a wall, throwing a lamp, or (obviously) no domestic violence of any sort. When you don’t have the words for the amount of passion you are feeling, it’s easy to blurt out name-calling, but this kind of language won’t help result in a resolution.
On this same note, never try to resolve a conflict when you are drinking heavily. Take it from me, even when you are weeping and emotional, take a nap and pick up on the fight when you are both sober.
Additionally, keep it off the front porch (or the street, in front of dinner guests, at your kids’ parent/teacher conference). Fighting should be done in private, and involve only you and your spouse ... not a bevy of rubberneckers or your whole family.
2. Leave your parents out of the relationship
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It’s just too easy to say something along the lines of, “You’re just like your father, who always did blah blah blah.” You’re deliberately hitting below the belt, and when you put your partner on the defensive, they aren’t going to easily be able to listen to your point of view.
Also, don’t bring your friends into the conversation. “My friend Lucy always said that I never should have married you…” If Lucy isn’t part of your relationship, then she shouldn’t have a say in your conflict resolutions.
Negative in-law dynamics can increase stress and the risk of divorce. A lack of differentiation can lead to triangulation, where a third party is brought into a couple's conflict. Research shows this dynamic is destructive to the couple's relationship because it damages boundaries and impacts mutual emotional support.
3. Don't be sarcastic
“Oh yeah, you really know how to be somewhere on time. They should call you Flava Flav with that built-in clock you have.”
Sarcasm is a method of belittling someone. There’s no way for your partner to continue to talk about the problem at hand if your replies include snide asides or comments like “Whatever.”
Also, don’t start arguing about the details. Like if your partner says, “You were 20 minutes late to pick me up!” it’s ridiculous to come back with “Actually, I was only 17 minutes late, thank you very much!”
Think of everything in the conversation as a way to get to a conclusion. Sarcastic replies and being overly specific about the details are just ways to avoid moving the conversation further along.
Relationship researchers have found that contemptuous behavior is highly destructive to the relationship. This is because when a partner is met with a sarcastic remark, they are more likely to become defensive rather than engage in a productive conversation. This stalls progress and can escalate the conflict further.
4. Avoid using labels
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Avoid telling your spouse that they are neurotic, depressed, boring, stupid, or a loser. Notice that I told my husband this morning that he was “being” a jerk. That’s different than saying that someone “is” a jerk. “Being” a jerk is something that is not their constant state; it’s just an unusual circumstance.
My husband could have easily told me, “You seem cranky today, and you are acting like a psycho,” and he would have been right. But if he had told me I was a nutjob, that would have been just rude.
Couples should avoid using labels during arguments because they erode trust, escalate conflict, and shift focus from solving specific behaviors to attacking a partner's character. A 2022 study explained that name-calling introduces disrespect, emotional harm, and a defensive dynamic that is counterproductive to resolving the issue at hand.
5. Never bring up the 'D' word
If nothing else, remember this rule. When anger levels escalate and emotions come to a boiling point, it is really easy to think in your head, “Why in the world did I ever marry this person?”
But never, under any circumstances, ever, are you to utter the word “divorce” in front of your husband or wife. Threatening to walk out of your marriage is seriously manipulative, and also quickly escalates the argument into a situation that needs a good couples counselor.
Bringing up divorce also creates an atmosphere of distrust and can cause abandonment anxiety. It’s not easy to restore trust afterward, and most importantly, it certainly won’t resolve the issue at hand. You might feel like you won when you get your partner to cave into your demands, but you’ll be losing at marriage.
Meredith Craig de Pietro is a writer and reporter with a degree in journalism and popular culture from NYU. Her fiction has appeared in Fictive Dream, Variety Pack, Full House, Literary, Stanchion Journal, Invisible City, Scribble, Sierra Nevada Review, Backchannels, and Rock Salt Journal.
