Nobody likes to fight.  It's tiring, exhausting and most of the time it gets you no where.  Especially when it is with your wife.  Most fights in my own marriage and in those I have observed are not caused necessarily by the misbehavior of one or the other. They caused by simple miscommunication, or mistakes in communication.

To use a personal example, I remember not to long ago I mentioned to my wife that I might want to see about getting a better job.  The one II had at the time was ok, it paid the bills.  But they increased the health insurance and this decreased the take home pay and so, "Well honey, I think...blah, blah."

It was simple enough, at least to me. Yet don't you know she didn't take it the way I intended.  You see, she also works. She took it as SHE wasn't bringing enough money home in her pay and well...when I got home that night we had a good old fashion argument.

I was dumbfounded!  "What did I do?" I asked her. "Nothing", she replied (that usually means you're really in trouble!).  As we talked it out though, I got the drift of where the misunderstanding occurred. 

She had misunderstood what I said and therefore what I intended.  But I too was at fault for not at least trying to make myself more clear.  I have a tendency to blurt out something without the appropriate preparatory phrases.

Now many years later, I kind of know what sets her off, and although hindsight, aI know now that I should have used more clear language.

This is exactly the kind of thing that happens all the time in the marriage relationship. It is almost unavoidable.

When two people live together in such close proximity it is almost impossible to not have a conflict or two, or three.  Yet some of these conflicts can be avoided by simply THINKING before we speak.  All we have to do is ask ourselves, "What am I trying to communicate to her?"  "How will this make her respond?", yet while still getting our point across.

Remember from our series, "Husbands Love Your Wives", one of the needs of the wife is SECURITY".   I forgot that and I wrote the series (getting old).  I forgot that before I bring ANYTHING up in conversation that has to do security (jobs, money, etc), I had better think it out first.

This doesn't mean you and I can't speak what is on our minds.  We do not want to walk on eggshells, and this is not to turn our disagreements into the blame-game.  But good conversation involves not pushing buttons that we know to exist, and if we have to discuss something, it is best to realize that it is all in the way we use the words we form to communicate. The balance of getting our feelings and desires out while considering the feelings of others.

There are always going to issues we discuss which inherently involved the needs so important to each of us. When they are threatened we tend to strike back.

By thinking about what we are saying, realizing that in order for two people to coexist in the same space, it takes a little thought and knowledge of the other's person's feelings.

(c) T.P. McAtamney, Hubbynet, Inc         Return to Home