Chances are, you have no interest in fighting with your spouse – few of us do. A fight may seem inevitable, but truthfully there are many things we can do to help ourselves avoid these so-called ‘inevitable’ fights. How, you might wonder, can you avoid a fight? You do it by stopping the fight before it can even begin. The following tips are designed to help you avoid those fights with your spouse by putting both of you in a better frame of mind to cope with each other and potential upsets.
The following tips can help you avoid fights, especially the unneccessary ones:
- Attempt to look at the situation from your partner’s viewpoint – do they have valid points? One of the fastest ways to nip an argument in the bud is to not fight; if you can honestly see your partner’s grievance chances are you aren’t going to sit there arguing with them over it, you’re going to agree with them and that can eliminate a number of the negative feelings
- If you can’t see the matter from your partner’s viewpoint and what they have said is angry or hurtful, take a deep breath and count to 50 or 100. Literally control your reaction, because two hotheads are just going to make the argument worse for both of you – by counting and breathing deeply, you can deplete some of your own anger and be more rational in your responses
- Set some ground rules and stick to them, even in anger. One of the reasons we refer to the rules of war in a civilized world is because rules can help to avoid larger problems – in the case of your marriage, your rules should be to stay on the topic of discussion, don’t lob verbal bombs into the fray in the form of blame, personal attacks or inflammatory criticisms. If you’re angry, these rules can be hard to follow, but these rules can keep you both on the argument and trying to resolve it, rather than dredging up the past
- Don’t fight before food, seriously – it’s bad for the digestion and it’s difficult for the two of you to be remotely reasonable when you’re tired, hungry, cranky or all of the above. So table discussions that are liable to get you into a fight at the meal table and you may discover what was really annoying when you were hungry is far from as bad as you may think
While these tips will not resolve your problems, not exactly, but they can help you to resolve them without a lot of fury and noise.
How do you avoid a fight?
Related Articles:
Don’t Quarrel in Front of the Kids
Problem Solving: Resolving Together