How To Argue With Your Partner

Arguments in relationships are typically so regrettable and often so bitter, it’s natural
to hope we might – with greater maturity – overcome them once and for all. But given
what human nature is like, it would be unwise to make this our goal: the hope can’t be
to eliminate arguments altogether, it should be to try to find our way to a better kind
of argument. Arguments tend to start when we are confronted – usually rather suddenly
– by what appears to us to be the radical selfishness, intransigence or sheer nastiness
of the partner. It is extremely tempting to react with equal force. We aren’t, after
all, a pushover. We have been hurt and must hurt back. We will make them suffer as they
have made us suffer. There may be variations in just how we opt to inflict the suffering.
Perhaps we’ll do a lot of shouting. Or slam a door. Or maybe we’ll eke this one out
with a sulk. But the underlying principle is the same: we have been hurt and we have
to punish. But at this point, we might ask what we’re really seeking. After all, we
are not trying to administer abstract justice or punish for the sake of it. This isn’t
a criminal court or the headmaster’s office. What we’re truly seeking in a close relationship
is something much more touching: we want the other person to love us properly and to be
kinder. That’s why we’re slamming the door, calling them a fuckwit and have been
pretending they don’t exist since breakfast. Surprisingly, almost the last thing we ever
do when we’ve been very hurt is to say that we’ve been very hurt. It feels just too
humiliating to reveal our wound to the person who inflicted it, to show ourselves as vulnerable
in front of the very individual who – it seems – has unbearably abused our vulnerability.
This is both hugely understandable and doesn’t advance things in the least, because we’re
not in a relationship to be emotionally safe, we’re there to find connection. An act of
retribution, while it may give us a momentary impression of impregnability, never increases
our chances of obtaining the love and understanding we’ve formed a couple in order to derive.
We might consider a different and slightly paradoxical approach: we might, exactly at
the moment when we’ve been wounded by our partner, instead of hitting back, make what
we could term A Dignified Avowal of Hurt and Fear. Rather than get furious, we might attempt
to move register and get directly at what is ailing us through a twofold admission.
We might say, firstly: I’m so hurt that someone I’ve put my emotional trust in should
say or do that to me. And secondly, (this takes proper courage), we might add: I’m
so frightened that I should be emotionally deeply exposed to someone who would appear
to hurt me like this. This should give the partner pause for thought. One hasn’t insulted
them or hurt them back in the usual way – which is what typically blocks their ears and sets
off a vicious cycle of attack and counterattack. We are being dignified and honest. We aren’t
lashing out, but nor are we begging. We are neither being very strong, nor very weak.
We are neither punching nor crawling. We are just standing still, admitting our genuine
sadness, fear and nakedness in a tone of marked self-possession. Too often, arguments become
interminable and, to outsiders, slightly daft because both people refuse to admit that they’re
sad not mean. It isn’t what time to leave for the airport or whose turn it is to do
the dishes that’s created the argument. It’s that both parties are, in different
ways, feeling unloved and misunderstood – but are refusing to say this in quite so many
words. In a wiser society, we’d study arguments at school for at least four years (they’re
as complicated as algebra and more important) and we’d all get a lot better at confessing
our wounds in a tone of self-possessed dignity. We’d admit with calm that, though we’re
capable and strong in most areas of our lives, here, right now, in the arena of the relationship,
we are hurt and scared – and yet are brave and mature enough, as well committed enough
to love, to dare to tell the partner so in the plainest, most undecorated and most heartfelt
words. We might save ourselves a lot of time.
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How To Argue With Your Partner

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