One of the main reasons that people seek couples counseling is conflict.
In truth, conflict is a normal part of any close relationship like marriage. You have two people who have made a life-long commitment because of the deep emotional bond they feel toward one another. They share a significant level of intimacy, which involves a lot of emotional and physical vulnerability. You are with someone you care about deeply, and you know how deeply they care about you.
And yet, there are so many ways that you are different from one another. The differences may be subtle, but still, they are there. There are differences in temperament or personality. There are differences in life experiences and what you learned about life from your family of origin. There are differences in beliefs and how you look at the world. When you bring these two together—the deep emotional bond of marriage and the differences between you and your partner—you can expect some conflict.
One of the myths about marriage that still has a strong hold on many people is that good marriages do not have conflict, or if they do have conflict, it is minimal. If you buy into this myth, when a conflict of any kind happens, you are now dealing with two problems: the conflict and the worry that something is wrong with your relationship. At the same time, you want to be able to handle conflict in a way that is respectful and can even strengthen your marriage.
In their book, Reconcilable Differences, Andrew Christensen and Neil. S. Jacobson, cite a study by Don Peterson, a psychologist at Rutgers University, that tried to answer the question: What starts an argument? In this study, Petersen had a group of volunteer couples record their daily marital events. The couple would meet every evening and pick out the most important contact they had that day. They each wrote a detailed account of the contact: how the event started, what each person said and did, the thoughts and feelings they had about the event. It was not surprising that many of the important daily contacts identified by the couples were arguments.
Peterson identified four events that start arguments.
The most common trigger for an argument was criticism.
There is a difference between a criticism and a complaint. A complaint expresses thoughts and feelings about a situation. A criticism expresses thoughts and feelings about the other person. The word, criticism, comes from a Latin word that means “judge, censor, estimator.” With these meanings you can see why critical comments are heard as negative and lead to an argument.
It is one thing to notice that your spouse often leaves the car door unlocked when it is parked on the driveway. That is a complaint. It is another thing to call them careless or empty-headed. That is a criticism.
Sometimes criticisms are unintentional. One person may offer what they believe to be a constructive suggestion, but the other person hears it as blame for doing something wrong or a comment on who they are as a person. One person speaks a helpful suggestion; the other person hears hurtful criticism.
The second trigger for an argument was a demand that one hears as unfair or illegitimate.
Peterson shares the example of a wife who asks her husband to stay home from his weekly card game with his friends because she has the flu; she thinks she will fell better if he stays home and takes care of her. However, the request doesn’t make sense to the husband, since this is an important social time with his friends, and she is not that sick.
The third trigger for an argument is what Peterson calls “cumulative annoyance.”
If your partner occasionally runs late when you are going somewhere, you may be able to tolerate it, and you don’t say anything. However, if they are late over and over again, the frustration builds, and when you do say something, it can be harsh and critical.
The fourth trigger for an argument is rejection.
Perhaps you do something special for your partner like cook a favorite meal, but they come home not feeling well and not really hungry. As you think of how you wanted the evening to go, it is easy to interpret those actions as rejection.
As you listen to some of the examples of these conflict triggers, you may find yourself favoring the perspective of one spouse or the other. If so, multiply that tendency to a significant degree, and you have a sense of the power of these triggers.
One of the reasons that identifying these argument triggers is important is that the trigger can get more sensitive if not handled well. In the example above, if you have a spouse who is often late, you may feel some frustration and annoyance even as you get ready to go out, and those thoughts and feelings can shape how you interact.
It may seem like these argument triggers can happen in response to unimportant events. But there is usually a history of interactions that have led to these moments of conflicts. In future posts I will share an unfolding process that can lead to conflict.
For now, if you would like to know more about how counseling could be helpful for your relationship, please visit my marriage counseling specialty page.