How to Argue without Hurting the Marriage - Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch

[Music] one of the most important questions I'm asked all the time is should a couple aim to avoid fighting at all costs and the answer is not necessarily according to John Gman one of the leading marriage researchers in the world he believes that arguing sometimes is a normal and natural part of a relationship he says you should try to avoid arguing sometimes arguing allows you to assert yourself express your needs work through feelings with your spouse but he says arguing is not a problem the problem is how you argue you need to argue in certain way and if you do that effectively the arguments will not be as damaging let's take a look however at four ways that you could hurt each other by arguing in the wrong way and Gman calls this the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in fact he can show you scientifically he can predict up to 97% accuracy if a marriage will fail based upon the fact that they're using these four uh negative Horsemen in their relationships the first of the four uh Horsemen of the Apocalypse is what Gutman calls criticism I have to tell you one of the most poisonous thing in all relationships is criticism when couples come to see me for help I'll notice right away are they highly critical or are they accepting of one another if a spouse is always being told what's wrong with them they're going to feel miserable if they're always told they do this wrong they do that wrong they're going to not feel very good about themselves and when a person is criticized most likely they're going to do one of two things either going to criticize back to the other person and escalate the fight or they're simply going to withdraw from you so it's extremely important you're allowed to argue but reduce criticism try to stay on point on the subject talk about your feelings talk about it as objectively as you can what you believe is important but don't criticize the other person the second of the Four Horsemen of the of the Apocalypse is contempt contempt is the next stage the next logical stage past criticism contempt is when I don't just disagree with you it happens when I don't like you I don't like something about you so for example let's say a kid um spills milk so if I were to criticize a kid and saying hey you spilled the milk well that's not the best thing there's better ways of saying it but contempt happens when you turn to the kid and say you're a terribly sloppy miserable kid that's always making a mess in the house what you're doing is you're attacking the essence of the other human being that you're with it could be a child it could be your spouse when you attack them on such a personal level that's called being contemptuous you want to avoid that if a couple gets the level when they're fighting of contempt and disliking the other person it's going to cause a tremendous rupture in the relationship the third of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is called defensiveness defensiveness is a very destructive mechanism in many relationships defensiveness is when a person does not take responsibility for their behavior I've seen this all the time in my practice one person will attack the other person for something they did wrong and they may have done something wrong but the person doesn't take any responsibility if you don't take responsibility and you start saying it's not true it's not true then what happens is things will just get much and much worse in that relationship defensiveness means that I don't take responsibility for what I've done wrong and if you don't take responsibility for what you've done wrong it's simply never going to get better so I tell couples all the time it's okay to lose stop being so defensive you don't have to win in every argument in the relationship sometimes you can say you know something I hear what you're saying I did something wrong now there might be several reasons why I did this wrong but at least I'm admitting I did something wrong in that relationship to the other person if you reduce defensiveness you have a greater chance of arguing but not hurting the relationship and the fourth and final Horsemen of the Apocalypse is what gotman called stonewalling stonewalling is a psychological term used to describe when somebody starts withdrawing from from the relationship and I see this so many times in marriage uh sometimes people behave in what a way we call passive aggressive what does passive aggressive means passive aggression means that I'm angry at somebody but instead of like saying it directly I kind of do it indirectly withdrawing from your spouse is a form of passive aggressiveness withdrawing means I'm just not going to talk to you I'm going to ignore you sometimes I hear people complaining that their spouse will suddenly start coming home late every single night or just not be available or not answer their phone calls I had somebody recently said they WhatsApp their spouse and he didn't respond for a few hours and the wife felt terrible they were having an argument beforehand she wanted to kind of apologize and resolve it but he just wasn't available so stonewalling is another negative thing which people should avoid at all costs so to conclude with it's okay to argue sometimes as long as you're not using these four negative strategies there's respect for the other person there's a lot of listening and most importantly if you're arguing you stay on point and you maintain a lot of goodwi for one another welcome to this new series on heah brute called marriage matters my name is Rabbi Daniel shach and I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist based in New York and around the world via Skype on this important series I'll be answering your questions you have about marriage relationships dating parenting and about any issue dealing with family and relationships but more than what I have to say I want to hear what you have to say so please email to this address and send in your questions and I'll try to answer as many questions on this new show