I’ve struggled to navigate conflict in marriage. Elaine is the easily the smartest, most capable person I know, heavily armed in a battle about money, kids, calendar, whatever. It’s hard to keep up, and, in the early years, I frequently found myself either shutting down or getting super angry, rarely in the healthy middle.

My southern Christian culture says that the man is the head of the household, the pants-wearer, the strong one. The woman is the “helper,” the “weaker vessle,” an associate of sorts. In our early years I showed up with that cultural baggage and tried my best to prevail over her in every argument we had, as any self-respecting pants-wearer should.

Years later (many, many years later), I came to understand that my job is to grind whatever grist the mill requires to have a good relationship, like my wife and I are actually friends, of all things. Sometimes that requires arguing, fighting, and pushing for my values to be respected, sometimes that means letting her “win,” and all points in between. I’m no longer keeping score as if my male-ness is measured by how many times I prevail in an argument.

Instead, I’m constantly asking if we’re getting closer to one another.

That’s the point of conflict, by the way, and I’ll mention that relational growth doesn’t happen without it – we don’t get closer if we’re not willing to fight it out. But us men struggle here, we want peace in our home after a long, difficult day of work, and we feel pressure to prevail, so we show up in all manner of broken ways when it comes time to argue.

Shortly after Elaine and I got engaged, a pastor friend said, “I don’t know why it works this way, but in every broken marriage I’ve counseled, the guy checks out and the wife gets angry and controlling. The more he checks out, the more angry and controlling she becomes, the more angry and controlling she becomes, the more he checks out.” I’ve experienced the same, not only in my marriage but in the marriages I’ve counseled. I once sat with two friends, listening as they hashed out their differences. She said something mean and snarky, he looked down at his knees and turned 9 shades of purple, trying his best to hide the rage.

I don’t mean to sound sexist, or contribute to unhelpful gender stereotypes; this is simply how men and women tend to show up when things sour. It’s an eerily consistent phenomenon, but helpful for us spouses when it comes time to argue. I can’t run and hide when Elaine spools up the ICBM’s, and whatever disrespect/retaliation/etc. that might come from her is inappropriate.

So, I’ve learned to engage, and discovered a few things about the fine art of arguing with my spouse, shared below in annoying blogger list form.

1. Listen First, Argue Last

If you can’t articulate your spouse’s point of view, you’ve got no business pushing yours. But her’s is ridiculous right? In listening, aren’t you in some way supporting a foolish, life-threatening agenda? Who wants to sit and listen patiently as someone outlines why their stupid point of view is the one that should inluence a big decision?

Unfortunately, most arguments are about two people fighting to be heard. I’ll unpack this below, but we come into marriage with values, perspectives, and emotional ties to our personal truths that we desperately need our spouse to respect. When we’re listened to, we felt known, honored, like there might actually be something good about us.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wrestled with someone on social media who couldn’t in a million years articulate my position, or how I got here. I also can’t tell you how huge it would be if just one of my adversaries invited me to a zoom call where they sat, listened, and articulated my position back to me. I can assure you that I’d be hard-pressed to reciprocate.

Listening in an argument is a powerful way to push the marriage forward, to communicate to your spouse that they have weight, that they matter, regardless of how silly their perspective may sound. But it’s also in the listening that we learn why they’ve embraced their perspective, why it’s so important to them, and where their preferred trajectory comes from.

Listening is also where great ideas come from. That’s certainly been true for us.

Ultimately, if you want to be listened to, you’ll have to listen first, to the point where you can articulate, maybe even defend, your spouse’s position.

2. Respect the Baggage

As someone who’s counseled many, and as a result learned to ask difficult questions of myself, I assure you that nobody comes into marriage without some broken stuff. We’ve all been misused, mishandled, misappropriated, rode hard, put up wet, etc. We hide it well in our dating chapter, but it comes out full force in a union where the two are hopelessy interlocked, now forced to put all cards on the table.

If my wife somehow agitates my unhealed places, I’ll do the 9 shades of purple thing, and when I can’t manage that, I’ll lash out. And none of that’s her fault. The land mines she frequently steps on were placed well before we met. But it’s easy to blame her; she’s the one that dug up the hurt, the one that misstepped. In my pain and hurt, I retaliate, as we all do when someone hurts us, especially when we’re completely clueless about why we’re hurting.

This is a common dance. Spouse A says something that interfaces with Spouse B’s past hurt, said past hurt stirs from its slumber and causes Spouse B to experience pain, Spouse B retaliates which causes Spouse A’s past hurt to wake up, and soon a war develops that has nothing to do with anything good.

I’m fortunate to know where these areas are for both Elaine and myself. When things get angry and heated, I’m much more likely to stop and think about what’s driving things, and a bit more skilled at redirecting.

3. Unleash

I’ll brag a bit. Elaine, again, is the most capable person I’ve ever met. She’s got our calendar memorized, and has led our family into a level of fiscal responsibility that I never thought possible. You might not believe this, but, thanx to this newfound value, I’ve crafted a spreadsheet for our yearly spending, full of formulas and calculations that Elaine herself can’t keep up with. It’s brilliant, but born from her very high expectation that we avoid wasting what we have.

I struggled with this at first, always a free spirit when it comes to money, as my dowry will attest. If we’d have gone with “the man runs the show” system of marital thought, we’d be in a different financial place, among other things.

If you know Elaine, you know she’s a leader. She hates small talk, often speaks her mind, and doesn’t spend much time worrying about what people think. Weak people see her as a threat, as I did in our first years. She has a very clear vision for the day-to-day operation of our family, and could easily run the country, much less our small gathering of humans now trying our best to navigate a pandemic.

I’m more of a stereotypically right-brained type, a big-picture person with little tolerance for day-to-day details. Feelings, creativity, freedom, etc. are deeply held values, and I feel stifled when someone from the wrong side of the brain comes along and tries to bridle me.

We tried to do just that in the early years of our marriage, constantly applying force that might form the other person in our image. I wanted her to be more like me, vice versa, etc. It’s a long story, but we’ve finally come to appreciate each other, rely on our collective gifts, and celbrate the wide range of arrows we have in our quiver. When things get confusing/scary/overwhelming and a decision needs to be made, it usually falls to me. When it comes to decisions that require a mountain of information, Elaine shines.

In the interest of being the “man of the house,” I could resist her gifts and ignore the way God has put her together, but our entire family would suffer, including me. There are two of us in this marriage, each uniquely resourced with talents and abilities that the other doesn’t possess. Insecurity is threated by this, always trying to stifle the other person’s gifts.

Maturity, the kind that understands what leadership is, unleashes them, and celebrates.

4. Take out the Trash from Past Arguments

Many times, well-meaning spouses resolve nothing in their arguments, departing the arena in shame, covered in a dusty film of defeat, bitterness, anger, and feeling cheated. This of course condemns the next argument to be even less productive as the negative emotions from the previous one will be rekindled.

This isn’t a product of two people that just need to get a divorce. It’s simply what happens when two people who don’t know how to argue, argue. If we do this too much, the marriage begins to make little sense. We pile hurt upon hurt, scratching our heads wondering why our spouse has become so repulsive to us.

As Americans, we’re a bit ridiculous when it comes to naming our feelings, i.e., admitting when we’re hurt, being honest with our spouse about the residual emotions from a bad encounter. Unfortunately, emotions that shall not be named cannot be dealt with. If I can’t go to my spouse and say something akin to “hey, I’m not sure if I should be hurt, but I am. Can we talk about this?” And if our spouse can’t put the cannon down and listen, things aren’t going to go well.

I don’t have the time or the psycotherapeutical chops to unpack all that’s required to help make your next argument relatively garbage free. Suffice it to say that great levels of maturity, strength, and humility are required to pull it off.

But that’s why this is such an American thing – humiltiy isn’t a big priority for us, nor is the maturity and strength that come with it. The high divorce rate in our country isn’t caused by some inability to find the right spouse, we simply refuse the requirements of a good marriage, so we have bad ones. There is no middle ground, or fence option.

If you’re reading this, thinking that you’ve got some work to do, we all do. We’ve all bitten off more than we can chew, we’re all the pipsqueaks who’ve wandered into the gym for the first time. A good marriage requires work, forcing us to confront, maybe for the first time, our weakest, most broken places. That’s scary, and difficult, especially because it makes us dependent on someone else.

But I don’t know anyone who’s stepped into these arenas, used the gifts that they possessed, however meagre, and didn’t prevail to some degree. More times than not, the effort we expend on behalf of our marriage comes back multi-fold. If nothing else, the effect that this work has on us personally is worth whatever hell we have to walk through.