4-2 Fighting for Love
A. Desired Distance Activity
To do this activity, you and your partner should face each other approximately 12 feet apart. As you continue to talk you are to walk up to your partner until you make physical contact. Then you begin to slowly back away until you reach a distance from your spouse in which you feel comfortable continuing your conversation. At this point measure with a tape measure what this distance is. Repeat this exercise with your partner doing the walking and backing up. Then measure the partner's desired distance.
1. Do you and your spouse have the same desired distance?
2. Is your distance closer than that of your spouse’s or vice versa?
3. When you made physical contact did you feel ill at ease and stop talking?
4. How comfortable were you and your spouse in doing this exercise?
5. Do you f ind that the partner who desired more distance is the one who is more likely to initiate a fight? If yes, why do you think this is so?
6. When you fight what is the average distance between your body and that of your partner?
7. Do you two have problems in maintaining the intimacy in your relationship? If yes, Yes No [1] what interferes?
Yes No [2] Children
Yes No [3] Sex
Yes No [4] Your Spouse’s work
Yes No [5] In-laws
Yes No [6] Lack of motivation
Yes No [7] Lack of interest
Yes No [8] Continued arguing
Yes No [9] Too close too often
Yes No [10] On the road too much
Yes No [11] Social life too active
Yes No [12] Inability to communicate at a feeling level
If you answered Yes to any of the above then you should continue on with this chapter. If you answered No to all of the above then consider yourselves one of the blessed generation who are either awfully lucky or too unaware to see the truth.
In maintaining a healthy marital relationship, partners need to establish a healthy oneness or intimacy with one another. However, such oneness can create tensions and the fear of being swallowed up or over taken by the other. In all healthy relationships constructive, healthy, normal expression of aggression through fighting acts as a defense against such engulfment.
Contained, constructive and intelligent fighting regulates the intensity of intimate involvement by occasionally creating relief from it. It makes intimacy controllable. Such fighting, enables partners to locate "optimal distance" from each other- the range where each is close enough not to feel "left out ," yet free to engage in personal thoughts and independent actions uncontaminated by the other's encroachment or over-powering.
B. Identifying Hidden Issues in Your Fights
1. Identify the Hot topics in Your Relationship
A. List the hottest five topics you and your spouse frequently fight over
Five Hot Topics:
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Which of the above hot topics arouse most hostility and negative feelings in me?
Which of the hot topics arouses most hostility and feelings in my spouse?
B. What are we willing to change in ourselves in order to settle each of the five hot topics of argumentation in our married life?
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Hot Topic
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Change I must make
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C. List barriers for each of the five hot topics which prevent or have prevented us from making the desired change:
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Hot Topic
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Barriers to Change
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D. When we fight over these hot topics what are our normal responses? Check those which apply:
_____ Emotional flare up and explosion
_____ Silence
_____ Pouting
_____ Verbal attack on partner
_____ Verbal debating
_____ Intellectualization and rationalization
_____ Giving in
_____ Anger or rage
_____ Dropping the issue as soon as it comes up
_____ Diversion - switching the subject quickly
2. What are perceptions of our fighting?
A. Do we view fights as:
- Challenge to the security of our marital relationship
- A threat to our security
- A chance for revenge against each other
- An opportunity to ventilate our disappointment in our choice of spouse or state of our marriage
- A chance to ventilate pent up emotion
OR
- A chance to identify areas in our relationship needing change
- A growth opportunity for our relationship
- An expression of honest concern for issues preventing optimal marital satisfaction
- A projective device to identify underlying feelings or concerns which are blocks to good communication
- A problem solving exercise to assist one another to probe alternatives and to understand each other better
B. The next time we get into a fight we need to ask ourselves the following questions, before engaging in all out warfare:
- Is this a legitimate problem we have with one another?
- Whose problem is this anyway? Is it mine, hers/ his, someone else’s, his parents, my mother's, society's, the government’s etc.
- What emotional gain do I get from this fight? A masochistic chance to f eel hurt; a sadistic chance to put my partner down; a chance to say hurting things under the guise of a legitimate problem solving session; a release of feelings that have been building up, etc.
- How important is this specific fight to our future happiness and growth? What is at stake? Does this issue have real meaning to me or is it part of a habit I have fallen into of picking fights with my spouse?
- Am I over reacting? Am I being fair? Am I being honest with my feelings? Am I exaggerating my position?
- How is my partner reacting? Am I pushing my partner too far or too fast? What price am I going to have to pay for this fight? Am I giving my partner a chance to speak and give opposing points of view? Am I being open and listening to my partner? Is this issue worth my partner’s anger, retaliation or hurt feelings?
- Is it important for me to win in this fight? Is it important for my spouse to win? What are the possible consequences of each of us holding out to win? Am I so caught up in the winning that the real issues are being lost?
3. What Behaviors do we Exhibit in our Fighting?
A. In fighting with each other we often find ourselves very busy in telling the other:
(Check which are true with us)
_____ How to act How to think
_____ How to look
_____ How to manage the finances
_____ How to raise the children
_____ How to have sex
_____ How to treat others
_____ How to talk
_____ How to dress
_____ How to shop
_____ How to argue
_____ How to f eel
_____ How to breathe
_____ How to ____________
_____ How to ____________
_____ How to ____________
_____ How to ____________
_____ How to ____________
B. In looking at the above list, ask yourself honestly: Am I trying to get my partner to change into the image and likeness of me? How comfortable am I with the differences in my partner? What would happen if my partner remained unique, independent and different from me?
List the unique differences you have from your partner which you do not want your partner to change in you:
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List the differences you see in your partner which attracted you to this person in the first place.
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What are the ways in which you can alter the way in which you argue, to rejoice in and nurture the legitimate and growth enhancing differences in each other?
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