My Wife and I Don’t Fight

My wife and I don’t fight. I don’t mean that we don’t fight very often. What I mean is that she and I haven’t had one fight since the day we met.

Sometimes when I tell people that, they don’t believe me. Sometimes it makes them uncomfortable. Occasionally people even suggest that not fighting is not healthy. But sometimes people ask, “what’s your secret?” It’s with that question in mind that I’m writing this post.

So what is our secret? I’ve thought about it a lot and the truth is, there are quite a few factors working in conjunction to maintain our fightless relationship. Some of those factors are specific to me, her, or our relationship. Other factors are more generally applicable and perhaps you can (or already do) use them in your own relationships.

The first thing that may sound obvious but should be noted nonetheless is that she and I are exceptionally well matched. When I look at the relationships of those around me, I notice that some of the couples don’t actually seem like they are that well suited for one another. There are a variety of reasons for this. Some people are in relationships more for other people than for themselves. For example, some people end up in relationships with the type of person that their parents or their peers think they should be with instead of someone who they truly want to be with. Some people end up in a relationship with a person because they have one or two qualities that they like. Perhaps their partner is physically attractive, or wealthy, or exciting, or charismatic. Some people are in relationships because their partner is psychologically manipulative. Some couples are together because they got pregnant and thought they should stay together for the sake of the child. An awful lot of people seem to be together simply because they believed that it was "time" to settle down, or start a family, or they just got tired of looking. I can only imagine that if any of the above things are true, it would be exceedingly difficult to have a fight-free relationship.

The second major factor is that neither she nor I are emotionally volatile. We both are very rationally driven people who do not tend to let emotions control our behavior. For me, some of that is innate, some is a result of how I was raised, and some of it is due to the fact that I have made a concerted effort since I was a young child to not let negative emotions dictate my behavior. Not letting emotions get the better of us is probably the single biggest reason that we don’t fight, and it greatly improves our ability to control the rest of the factors that I’m going to discuss below.

Now we start to get into the factors that I believe may be more generally applicable. Some of these may seem simple or cliché but both of us take them extremely seriously.

First, my wife and I are on the same team. The team comes first. What is good for the team is also necessarily good for each of us individually. The team is made up of two completely equal members. By changing the decision calculus from “How does this affect me or how does this affect my partner?” to “How does this affect the team?” I change the way I think about decisions that affect both of us.

Second, we trust each other completely. There’s more to it than people usually mean when they say this. The common context for trust in relationships has to do with jealousy and fidelity, but complete trust is much more than that. Complete trust means a lack of pretense. Passive aggression is a slow time-bomb waiting to detonate. If she does something that bothers me or that I don’t like, I take a moment to think about it very carefully and then decide which of two categories the behavior falls into.

Category one includes minor things that aren’t really a problem. Perhaps the reason that it bothered me isn’t valid or perhaps it’s something that I can simply ignore. If anything falls into that category, I let it go. Here’s the trick: you have to ACTUALLY let it go. You have to make a conscious decision not to let it bother you. Do not, under any circumstances pretend to let something go and then continue harbor resentment about it.

If I can’t let something go or it’s something that is very important to me then it belongs in category two. If that’s the case, then I’ll bring it up with her in a kind, objective way. I’ll let her know what is bothering me and why. If either of us is upset or stressed-out for any reason (regardless of whether it has anything to do with the thing that’s currently bothering me,) then I wait. I bring it up at the earliest time when both of us are in a good mood and can be objective.

This leads nicely into the third factor. We never try to change the other person. Because we are both on the same team and because we have complete trust that the other person will behave with the best interests of the team in mind, we can avoid the temptation to try to control each other. If she does something I don’t like and I make her aware of it, I trust that either a) she will not do it again, or b) she has a good reason for continuing to do it. Maybe she doesn’t realize that she is doing it or maybe she doesn’t have control over it. Maybe it’s something that she feels she needs to do in order to be happy. Whatever the case may be, we can have a discussion about it and she may choose to change her behavior but it's not something I have any right to try to force her to do.

When she and I first met, I was addicted to cigarettes. She didn’t really like the fact that I smoked and she let me know that there were several reasons that she’d prefer it if I didn’t smoke but she never once tried to make me quit. I never felt like she was harboring secret resentment about my smoking that got in the way of our relationship. I liked smoking. I knew that if I tried to quit before I was ready, it wouldn’t work and it would cause me to become anxious and disappointed with myself. Those things would not have been good for the team. Eventually I was ready to quit. And I did.

The next factor is something I touched on earlier but I think it deserves its own section. We know when to give the other person space and we know how to ask for space when we need it. If I’m upset or stressed about something unrelated to her, I make sure she knows it. Not by lashing out but by simply telling her “Hey, I’m kind of stressed out about work right now” or whatever the case may be. This helps her to interpret my behavior in context. If I seem short, or agitated, or distracted, she understands that it’s not because of her. If one of us notices that the other seems upset or stressed, we’ll ask each other if there’s anything we can do to help. Sometimes the best thing to do is just to give the person space to work through whatever they’re dealing with on their own.

If we’re in the middle of an interaction and one of us notices that we are both stressed or upset, then the immediate responsibility of the person who noticed is to gently deescalate the situation. When both people in an interaction are upset or anxious (regardless of the reason) there is a tendency for it to create a feedback loop that reinforces those negative feelings and allows them to build on each other.

The final factor is that we NEVER do anything to intentionally hurt the other person under any circumstances. This one seems obvious but I am constantly shocked at how often people say and do things with the intention (sometimes conscious and sometimes unconscious) of hurting someone they love. People do this because they feel hurt themselves, or scared, or vulnerable, or angry, or sometimes just to provoke a reaction. It’s sad to see that happen because when it does - even once - it completely destroys the trust between the parties.

Even if she does something that hurts me, I know for a fact that that was not her intention. Knowing that makes a big difference in how I interpret what happened. I know that she either didn’t know that it would hurt me or at the very worst, wasn’t thinking about the fact that it might hurt me when she did it.

I’m a firm believer that people’s intentions should be heavily taken into account when deciding how to react to their behavior and knowing that she never intends to hurt me means that I can always give her the benefit of the doubt.

So there it is, the secret to why my wife and I don’t fight. I hope that you found this interesting or at least learned a little more about who she and I are as people and as a couple. I’m curious to hear your thoughts about relationships and fighting. Do you fight? Do you view your fights as a detriment to your relationship or as a natural and healthy part of it? Let me know in the comments.