The Making of Marriage

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Why do my husband/wife and I fight about the same thing over and over? Why is it always the same issue? We’ve been fighting about the same topic for years, having the same conversation over and over and they can’t seem to listen! Why isn’t my point getting across? Why isn’t he/she understanding me? 

Amanda and I have thought these same thoughts before, many times in fact. In today’s blog, I (Michael) am hoping to shed some light on these perpetual issues in your marriage and hopefully give you a few tips on how to make the best out of these issues. 

To start our conversation I’m going to pull a piece of scripture that speaks directly to the heart of these issues. 

“What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.”

‭‭James‬ ‭4‬:‭1‬-‭3‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Whether you are a Christian or not, I believe these scriptures speak to human nature and can be applicable no matter what your beliefs are. Let’s break this down a little bit and apply this to why we fight with our spouse, or perhaps, why your spouse fights with you. 

What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have…

Couples often have the same things that they fight about for years. In fact, after going through counseling or marriage coaching, many couples fight about the same things four years later! Why? Simple. We all have a vision, a dream, or a desire or what we feel like our life should look like and when we don’t feel like our life is headed in that direction, we fight to keep our life on the predetermined path that we have chosen. You have probably seen this with how to parent your kids, where to move to, what type of home to have, career choices, and certainly how your household manages their finances. Well, guess what, you and your spouse are no different. If you and your spouse are arguing about the same things, year after year, you’re missing something. This leads me to my one and only point for this blog:

Stop trying to change your spouse and learn to understand them.

People don’t change their personalities simply because their spouse wants them to. Yes, that means that perpetual issues may not go away forever. They are issues that you will have to learn how to negotiate around, put up with, and accept as part of your spouse. Instead of trying to “fix” your spouse, try to understand why this issue is such a big deal to your spouse (or to you). If you keep bringing up the same issue over and over again, try to explain WHY the issue is important to you. If your spouse is bringing up the same issue over and over, try to understand WHY the issue is important to them. I’ll give you an example from my own marriage.

I love Amanda…but she likes to put piles of papers, items, or just plain “stuff” in areas and I can’t stand it! We have gotten into many ill-managed arguments over this. Why? After many attempts on my end to simply say “Stop doing this,” I had to explain why the situation was important to me. As a child, my dad did the same thing. He stored lots of work papers, books, and newspapers on the kitchen table. Every day when I went to sit down at the kitchen table to eat, I had to move a pile of papers out of the way so I could clear space for my plate. My whole family did this every single day. So when Amanda started to do the same thing, it brought me back to the frustrations I dealt with as a child. Since explaining the reasons WHY, Amanda and I’s situation has dramatically improved. 

I urge you to do the same thing. Why is this important to you or your spouse? Do you understand the meaning behind it? The trauma behind it? The pain that you or your spouse may go through every time you get into the argument? Take the time to understand your spouse’s dreams, desires, and pains behind these perpetual arguments. Here are some questions to help you out, straight from my favorite researcher, John Gottman in his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.

• What do you believe about this issue?
• What are all the things you feel about this issue?
• What does your position mean to you?
• What is your ideal dream here?
• Tell me the story of your dream. Does it relate to your history or childhood in some way? I’d like to understand what it means to you.
• What do you want? What do you need? If I could wave a magic wand and you’d have exactly what you needed, what would that look like?

Next time your spouse brings up the same issue, take a humble position and try these questions or this frame of mind. Your spouse will feel known and understood (which is an amazing feeling to build intimacy) and you will know your spouse more. You don’t have to solve the issue right then necessarily but just try to understand.

In the next blog post, we will unpack the rest of the verses from James 4:1-3 and we will also revisit John Gottman’s book to help solve these issues.

Enjoy the adventure,

Michael