Why arguments are good for your relationship

There is the misconception that arguments are bad for relationships. In reality, arguments are an integral part of healthy relationships!

According to Dr. Gottman, one of the leading clinical psychologists; marriages don’t fall apart because people argue, marriages fall apart because people don’t learn how to argue! This was the one lesson that saved my relationship with my husband.

While we were dating and couple of months before we got engaged, things were absolutely perfect.  During this period, we were also having really deep and intense conversations that were helping us learn more about each other.  This was a good thing, until the day we both discovered things we didn’t like about each other!  These issues were not fundamental, major differences, but I guess we weren’t really expecting it, so it caught us both off guard, especially my husband.

We were talking about our future and I told my husband I would like to stop working after we got married.  After years of working my way through school and then working as an international technology consultant, I was exhausted and wanted to take a break and shift my focus to raising a family.  I didn’t want to miss the formidable years of my children’s lives being away at work.  While my husband respected my desire to be a stay at home mom, he couldn’t understand why a young, educated woman like myself with a great job would want to stop working – even before she was pregnant.  This caused him to draw other conclusions about me and led him to questioning my work ethic, which of course, didn’t sit well with me. Our conversations quickly went downhill and my husband began to have doubts about the future prospects of our relationship, leading to us breaking up.

This period turned out to be a pivotal time in our relationship because it taught us that we shouldn’t be afraid of arguments.  We learned through this process that for a relationship to thrive, you must get comfortable with having opposing views about certain issues, as long as those issues are not at the foundation of your core belief system.  Once we realized this, we knew we just needed to learn how to control our passions when we felt differently about something and try as much as possible to not let those differences lead to angry, emotional outbursts.
This is not easy and is an ongoing learning process every healthy relationship must go through. This is one of the primary reasons why my husband and I have a healthy marriage – we have learned how to differ without our differences overcoming our love and respect for each other.
We only grow though difficulty, not through the good times.  I have learned so much more about my husband from our arguments than I’ve ever learned when things were rosy.  This has allowed me to actually find a way to embrace every new argument we have. One thing we both decided is that when we argue we need to ask ourselves the following question. “What is this argument teaching us about us?” This has totally transformed our relationship, and I know it can transform yours as well.

I’d love to hear from you! Ask your questions, share your views, comment, like and share this article with a loved one who might need it. You can also read my post “The One Key Ingredient Discovered In Awesome Marriages” to give you further insight on how healthy communication makes a marriage thrive.

About ZeeZee

ZeeZee is a certified Relationship and Marriage Coach who believes her purpose in life is to equip couples with the right tools for a successful relationship. Through her website and YouTube channel she shares practical tips and principles that help couples understand the inner workings of a healthy marriage.
sourced: the guardian