by Barbara FeliceHowarth

Created on: July 29, 2009

Fighting and marriage go together like hot dogs and buns, you can't enjoy one without the other! There are two kinds of fighting in marriage. A healthy fight is when something is legitimately bothering you and you need to express your feelings even though the feedback from your spouse may cause a verbal rumble. A non healthy fight , in my opinion, is that spouse who constantly nags to the point of the other spouse getting so annoyed that they start spewing inappropriate accusations and start in on the name calling.

Not to make this article too personal, but this is worth a mention. When I first got married to my husband and we got in to our first fight, he surprisingly said "Are we getting divorced?" My husband never saw his parents argue or fight so when we fought he assumed our marriage was over. It took me quite a long time to convince him that fighting can be healthy. My parents fought all of the time but in a healthy way. If you let things fester too long, it will cause more problems and even bigger battles later on in your marriage.

The best way to fight is to blow up and let it go. After the blow up, make sure you tell your spouse you love them just as you would a child after a punishment. We all need reinforcements after any kind of altercation. The big mistake couples make is to either ignore or shut out the spouse that is speaking his/her mind. Don't walk away, this not only does not solve the issue at hand but will add fuel to the fire. As mentioned before, name calling is a no-no and can make lasting impressions on your spouse. Don't make it personal. If your spouse breaks a lamp, don't tell them they are fat. If your spouse spends too much money, don't call them stupid. Keep on point. This is one of the biggest mistakes in unfair fighting. Hitting below the belt will make things worse and often blow up to massive proportions.

No one is perfect and we all make mistakes. If you truly love your spouse, you don't want to physically or emotionally scar them. It's not always about the win, sometimes it's just about getting things that bother you off your chest. That's OK because that's life. A good fair fight should not last longer than 15-20 minutes. Once you pass the 15-20 minute mark it will start getting too personal. Whatever your spouse said that made you angry should be resolved in that time frame unless of course they do something that is beyond repair. In that case, there would not be a fight, there would be a separation or divorce in which that case, no fight is even needed.

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