HOW TO ARGUE WITHOUT RUINING YOUR MARRIAGE Is arguing destroying your marital bliss? It doesn't have to. Passionate partners argue for their points when they feel a sense of urgency about getting their point across, and meet resistance. While disagreeing can be unpleasant, painful and even destructive, there are relationship tips that you can follow to not just avoid spoiling your bond but also to enhance intimacy. Prevent Arguing From Ruining Your Marriage: Relationship Tip 1 Understand that human beings argue because we like a good fight. Fighting is part of human nature. It is a way of expressing passion. As much as you may hate conflict, you have to realize that you are choosing to do it when you do it. No one makes you argue. Don't blame your mate because you argue with frustration when your mate rejects your viewpoint. As you drop blame, you lose resentment, and that opens the door to intimacy. Prevent Arguing From Ruining Your Marriage: Relationship Tip 2 When you argue in anger with your mate, you relate with your mate as your enemy instead of as your most trusted ally. This undermines trust, causing distancing, defensiveness, and either passive-aggressive or aggressive retaliation. Even if you are right, there is a price to pay for trying to force your mate to see things your way. Try shifting out of arguing and into playfulness. Maintain a kind, caring, sporting attitude. When couples play together they nurture their bond. Prevent Arguing From Ruining Your Marriage: Relationship Tip 3 Passionat verbal sport with one another does not destroy intimacy. It can enhance it. Debating passionately, but with a playful attitude, can act like a catharsis of pent up frustrations and resentments. After passionately, playfully conversing with your mate, do not hold onto a negative idea of your mate. Holding onto a negative mental image of a person keeps you feeling trapped with what you do not like about that person. Prevent Arguing From Ruining Your Marriage: Relationship Tip 4 After verbal combat with your mate, do not permit yourself to imagine that you have lost the argument, that your efforts to get through to your mate came to naught. Otherwise you place yourself in a negative, self-defeating mindset. You just made a huge effort to accomplish something. Even if the results you want do not immediately appear, trust that you actually have made a breakthrough. Prevent Arguing From Ruining Your Marriage: Relationship Tip 5 If you have children, do your absolute best to not argue angrily in front of the children. When children see or hear their parents fighting fiercely instead of playfully it makes them feel insecure, confused and angry, which undermines their ability to demonstrate healthy attitudes and positive behavior. Bob Lancer offers powerful couples' counselling for making relationship breakthroughs. For more information, click here. To release the soulmate potential of your relationship, check out Bob Lancer's Book, The Soulmate Process. For more advice on how to avoid losing your marital fulfillment and how to create the fulfilling relationship you desire, check out Bob Lancer's Relationship Advice CD's. |