We Fight All The Time

Forty-two year-old Karen sighs as she talks about the state of her marriage these days.

“In our house, even the stupid stuff is ammunition for a battle royal,” she says.

Arguments over spending, how often her mother-in-law should visit, how much she talks on the phone and how little, round out the list of volatile topics.

Mike and Karen have been married five years and have two daughters - a 4-year-old and a 9-month old.

Karen is tired of trying to make this marriage work.

Mike, 41, is tired, too, of hearing his wife complain that she’s the only one who’s working on this relationship.

Mike’s biggest complaint is the demeaning way Karen speaks to him all the time.

“I don’t think she has any idea what she sounds like. Karen is smart and very sharp tongued …,” he says. “I don’t appreciate the negativity, the sarcasm and the biting remarks.”

But most difficult to handle is Karen’s obsessive worrying. Though Mike tries to be helpful and practical, his suggestions are often rebuffed.

Ironically, Mike feels the same way Karen does: “She’s got time to talk to her friends, but no time to talk to me, no time for sex.”

Fighting for your marriage: Learn to be selfish

“This is a classic example of how unresolved arguments engender bitterness that festers and continues to corrode intimacy,” says Jane Greer, Ph.D., a marriage and sex therapist in New York City and co-author of “How Could You Do This To Me?” (Doubleday, 1997). Karen and Mike stayed angry, and that anger pushed aside any positive feelings they had for one another and erased the joy they should have been reaping from their children and their relationship.

Like many busy-every-minute couples, these two failed to realize that at the root of many of their misunderstandings and arguments was a deep sense of emptiness on both their parts because they weren’t getting enough of their own needs met.

“When you have children, it’s natural to put their needs first, and many times you simply don’t have a choice,” notes Greer. However, if you consistently shove your own interests and needs aside, you’re going to feel unloved, ignored and last on your partner’s list - exactly the feelings Mike and Karen were experiencing.

The following exercise helped Karen and Mike tune into the parts of their lives that were missing and thereby tune into their marriage:

For one week, both of you should keep journals of your fleeting thoughts or suggestions about what you wish you could do or would do if your work and parenting responsibilities didn’t take up so much of your time.

At the end of the week, hand your list to your partner and discuss them without making any blaming or disparaging comments. The point here is to accept your partner’s wishes and suggestions without commenting negatively on them or being defensive.

Now, from each of your lists, pick one point that you will make happen in the next seven days. Karen’s first choice was to have Mike simply listen to her without interrupting. She also said she wanted to go to the orchid show that was opening soon.

Mike wanted to spend time in the bookstore that had opened several months ago which he had never had a chance to visit. They arranged for the college-age daughter of a close friend to watch the girls one Saturday and took off.

They spent several hours at the bookstore, browsing and talking over cappuccino. Karen was thrilled to discover that Mike, who no longer felt that his favorite passion was being sacrificed, took the time to listen to her talk without leaping in with a solution.

Because he’s really listening, Mike hears what Karen needs and is able to respond appropriately. “I thought I was being the good guy,” Mike admitted, “but I see now I was responding the way I would have wanted someone to respond to me, not the way Karen wanted.”

Karen has been working hard to calm herself before she spins out of control. And since she can now talk to her husband, she no longer needs to be tethered to the telephone. What’s more, because she feels more attended to, Karen no longer gets so worked up over her mother-in-law’s visits.