Arguing less, talking better

1. Before you begin

It started with a remark about the washing-up. Twenty minutes later you were talking about his mother, about your holiday three years ago, and about what she or he "always" does. One of you slammed a door, the other retreated into silence. The next day no one really remembered what it had started with, but everyone was exhausted.

Or perhaps in your home there are no arguments any more. There is avoidance. There are subjects no one raises, a distance that has set in, and the feeling of living as flatmates.

Three things, straight away.

Arguing is not the problem. All couples disagree, including those who last and are doing well. What research distinguishes is not whether there is conflict, but how it unfolds and how you come out of it.

Many disagreements will never be resolved, and that is all right. Couples who do well have not settled them: they have learned to talk about them without hurting each other, and to live with them.

You can change the cycle even on your own. An argument takes two, but if one of you changes their part, what follows cannot stay the same.

How to use it

Read it all the way through once. Then choose one thing to change — how you start a conversation, the break, repair — and stick with it for three weeks. Couples who try to apply everything at once often end up arguing… about the right way to apply the method.

2. What research says

What has been observed

Researchers including John Gottman and Robert Levenson filmed hundreds of couples while they discussed a disagreement, sometimes measuring their heart rate, then followed them for years. Several findings are solid.

Four attitudes during conflict are associated with separation: criticism aimed at the person rather than the behaviour, contempt, defensiveness, and silent withdrawal that shuts down any discussion. Contempt — mockery, sarcasm, disgust, eye-rolling — is the most corrosive. Section 7 describes them, with what replaces them.

Stable couples are not those who have no negative moments, but those in whom, during a conflict, positive exchanges — humour, interest, affection, acknowledgement — remain clearly more numerous than negative ones.

How you start matters enormously. A discussion that opens with an attack usually ends badly; the first few minutes often predict the end.

Repair attempts — a touch of humour, a gesture, "hang on, I'm going about this badly" — and whether they are accepted distinguish couples who do well.

Most lasting disagreements are never resolved. In the couples followed, a majority of conflict topics were perpetual problems, linked to differences in personality or needs. Satisfied couples had as many as the others; they talked about them differently.

The demand-withdraw pattern

Andrew Christensen and his colleagues described a very common pattern: one partner demands, criticises, insists; the other avoids, defends, falls silent or leaves. The more one pursues, the more the other withdraws; the more the other withdraws, the more the first pursues. This pattern is associated with dissatisfaction, and it keeps itself going.

Stress from elsewhere

The work of Guy Bodenmann, and of Lisa Neff and Benjamin Karney, shows that stress from outside the couple — work, money, young children, illness — spills over into the relationship: you become more irritable, more critical, less attentive, and the same differences become unbearable. Relationship satisfaction also falls, on average, after the arrival of a first child.

What helps

Couple therapies are effective. Reviews of studies show that they clearly improve satisfaction, on average, compared with no treatment. Several approaches have proved themselves, including integrative behavioural couple therapy, which combines concrete changes with acceptance of differences, and emotionally focused therapy, which helps each partner put into words the needs and fears hidden beneath anger or withdrawal.

An online programme based on integrative behavioural couple therapy, evaluated in a controlled trial, improved the satisfaction of couples in difficulty.

Even a very brief intervention can help. In one study, married couples asked three times a year to rewrite their latest disagreement from the point of view of a neutral observer who wished them both well saw their satisfaction hold steady over the year, while it declined in the others.

Common misconceptions

"Happy couples don't argue." False. They argue, and repair.

"You need to let it all out." Shouting, hitting a cushion or dwelling on your anger does not make it go down: studies on venting show that it tends to keep it going.

"Never go to bed angry." Nothing supports this. A discussion held while exhausted, at one in the morning, is very likely to end badly. Better to agree to pick it up the next day.

"If we really loved each other, we would understand each other without words." No one reads minds. Waiting for the other to guess is a major source of disappointment.

"All you need is to learn to communicate well." Techniques help, but they are not enough when the problem is a deep difference. Acceptance matters as much as change.

---