Manliness and Living With a Woman

A good fight may clear the air and lead a couple in the right direction. If you think fighting is always bad, learn how to fight better. Because if you don’t take the fight, you’re likely to face the same problems in the next relationship.

A new study by the University of Tromsø in Norway finds that fighting is healthy for most relationships. “Many think that fighting is negative, but it seems that being open to fighting may in fact be good for the relationship,” says Marte Rye Heimdal, one of three students behind the study, to Dagbladet.

Sex and chores are the most common reasons why couples fight. If you or she feel that there’s not enough intimacy or sex, it’s easy to become grumpy and hot tempered. It’s the same with balancing the household workload. It’s normal. We have to remind ourselves that these kind of fights are not symptoms of a mismatch marriage. They are normal. Even necessary.

“Some divorces are necessary because the spouses are destroying each other. It has been like this through all times. But increasingly often people chose divorce because it’s the easiest choice. A lot of them could have grown by staying and facing the problems. Instead, the same difficulties may surface in the next relationship because they were not solved,” says psychiatrist Hans Olav Tungesvik to DagenMagazinet.

The trick is to fight fair and not too often. Here are five rules for the good fight:

1. Listen to your woman.
Try to figure out what the problem is before you react.

2. Allow her and yourself to be angry.
If you try to contain your feelings important issues may not be resolved.

3. Go straight to the point.
Beating around the bush may cause misunderstandings that can escalate the fight.

4. Do damage control.
Have a fair fight without attacking her as a person. Also, take responsibility for the outcome of the fight. You don’t want it to spiral to a point of no return.

5. Compromise.
Fighting is very rarely solved by facts, as they’re based on feelings, opinions and expectations. You have to give to receive.

Photo by mrhayata