Why Couples Fight

June 13, 2012

Interview with Jenny Anderson, author of the book It's Not You, It's the Dishes (originally published as Spousonomics): How to Minimize Conflict and Maximize Happiness in Your Relationship

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Mike Carruthers:
The conflicts that arise with couples are often over the little things and one big reason is…

Jenny Anderson:
That we hate losing twice as much as we like winning - and what that means is in the face of loses we tend to act irrationally and even destructively.
 

Jenny Anderson, author of the book It's Not You, It's the Dishes

So how that translates to marriage is when you’re in a disagreement it becomes about being right and making your point and not about solving the problem.

So the advice is to not fight in the moment when you’re angry and come back to the topic later when tempers have cooled. Division of labor is another sore point for couples.

Many of us go into marriage thinking that everything should be 50/50 it’s a not a good way, it’s not the way human beings work. You should do that which you are relatively better at vis-à-vis the other task. Someone is probably better at cooking so let’s pick what we’re good at and divide up the rest.

Jenny says couples often look for big solutions to solve their problems when small solutions could work better.

There’s something called thinking at the margin which is trying to think of small changes that have big impacts. Rather than thinking of we need a new house, we need a new job, you think of those things and it just feels so immovable. But you think about small things like OK if we woke up 15 minutes earlier every morning would that make the whole morning routine less stressful for everybody? Maybe.