Are You and Your Partner “Normal” When It Comes to How You Argue?
I envy couples who are able to disagree by sitting down and calmly talking things over. The ability to do that is something I desperately want to achieve.
When it comes to disagreements with my husband, I have two temperaments. I'm either at a peaceful simmer or I'm at a full boil which means hands are being tossed in the air and I'm speaking at an abnormally loud volume. There is no in-between.
I read research all the time about how the best way to have a healthy marriage is to remain calm in the middle of arguments and to use certain "calming "phrases such as, "When you speak like that to me it makes me feel." To me, that feels patronizing. My husband and I are both passionate people who don't hold back our feelings so each of us clearly knows exactly how our words or actions have made the other person feel because we don't mince our words.
Normal couples throw it all out there, right? There's voice raising and crying and silence and pouting and forgiveness and then it's done, resolved, and life moves on until the next fight, right? According to PR Newswire, the answer is, "yes."
A majority of people, 56 percent, say the argument isn’t over until they’ve found a way to talk through their issues (notice they don’t say at what volume they speak though), while 4 percent of adults say the way they deal with their other half in the middle of an argument is to stomp out of the room because that always makes it better. And, another 8 percent say they clam up and do the whole silent treatment thing until the disagreement blows over (which is basically called denial).