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Fighting in a marriage can be hazardous to your health What happens when you look for peace and love at home, and you find too many squabbles? You are searching for refuge and find instead constant quarreling with your spouse? Wouldn’t it be healthier to be able to go home and find a smiling face and loving companionship? This kind of home will give your health a boost, and make your heart sing with joy. We need to say that couple confrontations are inevitable given that both parties, male and female need to start a fight sometimes when in need of refreshing the connection and companionship, and to keep the relationship growing. By challenging each other, they can find opportunities to define better what is what they need at the moment. But fighting without skills can do a lot of damage to your health and your relationship. It’s the quality of the fighting the factor that matters in preventing unhealthy consequences at the body level and at the relationship level. And the quality is decided by the correct attitude: you need to face conflict with a genuine interest to know what is going on with the other side, and your last interest has to be to win over the dispute. Why winning is a self-defeating attitude? Because it transforms a marriage relation ship into one where there are winners and losers, and not partners. Because it engenders reactions like getting even, recovering power and control and in short, showing to the other who has the more strength, persuasion or persistence…which is not the case. Marriage is not a competition! This begs the case for learning symmetrical negotiation skills for both parties. What happens when people don’t know how to fight with fairness and a genuine interest in improving the connection? There is the special style of waging a marital conflict when one partner shows passive aggressive behavior, when a supposedly mature person behaves in a way that pushes their own share of responsibilities to their partner’s side. And if the partner tries to redress this issue, the response they get is not a good conversation about “what do we need to do now to improve”, but blaming, accusations, bad temper and either sulking or complete withdrawal. Up until now, we knew that this was the structure for the making of a very unhappy relationship, like in this case: “I find him sometimes doing lies about the littlest things, blaming everyone but himself for any kind of problems, and picking arguments when unnecessary. I know he loves me and I love him dearly but I need to find a way I can deal with this behavior that is putting such a severe strain on our relationship. What are some ways that I can talk with him and tackle this behavior in a constructive way, rather than accepting either the constant fights and blaming myself for everything or finally silencing myself just to keep the peace?” If you are like this person, you have two choices: either challenge and protest, and be considered “too aggressive” or shut up. Is this response, the silenced choice that seems to be the easy way out, to stop the aggression and endless recrimination, the one you would use? When women make the decision to be silent, they are choosing the short way to protect themselves from a sad situation, and it also signals that they have given up the hope to be treated with respect. Giving up your right to be respected is so stressful that affects women further making them more vulnerable to heart attacksThe way the couple interacts is as important a heart risk factor as whether they smoked or had high cholesterol. And the main factor observed in the interactions was the degree in which the wife would silence herself to keep the peace. How often couples fight or what they fight about usually doesn’t matter! Instead, it’s the quality of the interactions between male and female, and how they react to and resolve conflict that appear to make a meaningful difference in the health of the marriage and the health of the couple. The main difference in the quality of a marital fight is if it is done with respect for the other’s opinions or not. The quality of the interaction hinges on the mutual respect they can show for each other, even in the heat of an argument. Do you want to know more about healthy fights, and how to keep mutual respect in a relationship? Please, check www.creativeconflicts.com for more information and strategies how to manage unhealthy behaviors, and find healthy peace.
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| Nora Femenia is a well known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and signup free to be connected to her innovative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.creativeconflicts.com. |
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