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welcome back to the Road of Life podcast. Welcome back. What are we talking about today? We're talking about how not fighting, not arguing is bad for your marriage.

We're two human beings. There's two human beings in a marriage. And regardless of how connected, how close, how in sync two humans can be, you're never so in sync and connected that you don't ever disagree. it's impossible to agree on every single aspect of everything in life. If you are agreeing on everything all the time, chances are one of you is not being themselves.

One of you is just trying to fit into the marriage. One of you is trying to just keep the peace. You don't want to fight. So you just go along with, or you don't share your truth or you don't speak up because it's easier to keep the peace, even though it's not peace inside of you. It's easier to keep the peace in the marriage than it is to actually engage in a disagreement.

Yeah. You're essentially just suppressing your true feelings, your true self, which I mean, that's ultimately you're not connecting, right? Right. It's the, it's the opposite of what you want to be doing, which is growing your connection. But by, by pulling yourself back and not being your authentic self, you're removing that connection.

It's literally removing the sense of belonging that you have within the relationship, your marriage, your relationship is, The one place in the world you feel like you should belong, like you can be your true self because you will always be accepted, you will be able to belong for who you are in your marriage.

The first time that you don't speak up because you just don't want to argue, then you're hiding a piece of yourself. You're covering part of yourself, which means you're fitting in, which is the exact opposite Opposite of belonging and it's undermining the intimacy in your relationship And every time you do that you put a brick in the wall and it eventually builds a wall between even though you feel as Though you're keeping the peace.

You're doing the things that you need to do to keep the marriage In a good place what you're actually doing is not being yourself and by not being yourself You're not connecting and by not connecting you're putting a brick in the wall And every time you put another brick in the wall, it builds up until eventually you've got a wall between you that Now you have a real problem that you have to try to figure out how to bring that wall back down.

Not to mention you probably resent your spouse because you've been not being yourself for a while. When you're not yourself, it makes you feel like yourself isn't good enough. It undermines your self worth and it's going to make you resent your spouse if you do it on the regular. And it's funny because even in my 20s, even in my like early, earliest relationships, I always somehow had this innate feeling that not arguing was not a good thing.

And I could never articulate why, and I'm a very conflict averse person. I do not like to argue, but I also knew that not arguing was a bad sign.

And we're not saying that you Argue, fight, have conflict. Those are all necessary. There's a right way to do it. We're not unhinged fighting, not unhinged, right?

Like it's what we're saying. The opposite isn't necessarily true. Not fighting is bad for your marriage. That's what we're saying. What we're not saying is the opposite. We're not saying that fighting is good for your marriage. That's not necessarily the case. There's different ways to disagree and have conflict and fight and argue.

And there's a productive and healthy way to do it. And then there's a very unhealthy unproductive way to do it, right? And if you can have healthy disagreements, healthy conflicts, healthy arguments that you resolve then That's good for you. It strengthens your marriage. It strengthens your marriage. So it's really about addressing issues respectfully And coming to some sort of common understanding and resolution.

When you can do that, that's what we mean by conflict is actually healthy for your marriage. It actually strengthens your marriage because you've now both come together and worked through it. You both showed up as your true self, spoke your true intention, your true feelings, and worked through a common problem.

Yeah. That's how you build a bond. Yeah. It's what makes you closer and feel more connected. Exactly. The, yeah. Sweeping the problems under the rug and ignoring them and hoping they go away is the opposite of that. That leaves that stuff simmering under the surface so that you never know when you're gonna step on the booby trap that's gonna bring that, that simmering problem back to the surface and have a big blowout about it.

until the lid gets put back on it and you wait for it to blow again. So I think that's one of the first things. Things is when you're thinking about conflict is a change of mindset around it is to think of it as an opportunity Versus oh, no, this is the downfall of our marriage or this is the this is the end and of what everything we know about our happiness in our marriage if you believe that fighting is bad for your marriage Then you're never gonna engage in healthy conflict, right?

and the other thing I think that we've talked about before is You can disagree on something without it escalating into a big giant argument.

Inevitably, some of it will. And when you're in the middle of that conflict, that argument, when you're productive in that argument and you bring it to resolution, you've worked through that together, that is what strengthens your relationship.

Yeah. Like for us, we don't full blown fight or argue ever really. We have disagreements and there's conflict. You can call it conflict in our marriage where we get together and we try to figure our way through it.

Um, and actually as it pertains to the Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I do think that By doing that, it has strengthened our marriage. With time, our marriage has only grown stronger. A lot of that is because of the issues that come up in our business, that you might have an opinion A on, and I have opinion B on.

And we eventually talk that through and we come to sometimes opinion A, sometimes opinion B, and sometimes opinion C, where we, but. it's working through those issues, having those healthy disagreements and ways that you do that. It's really about listening and understanding the other perspective and not just bull in a China shop.

They're wrong. I'm right. It's being open minded to hearing and understanding the other perspective and being respectful. Yeah. Well, I mean, it goes back to our podcast episode we did a month or two ago. on conflict resolution and the rules to fighting fair. So when you do find yourself engaged in a conflict in an argument with your spouse, keeping it clean, fighting fair, being respectful, no name calling, no yelling, no winning, no attacking vulnerabilities, that that stuff's all off limits.

And then also bringing it to resolution. So listening to understand, finding that seed of agreement, something that you can agree on together, and then focusing on the solution. Okay. Not staying mired in the problem and spinning in the problem, but this is the problem. Okay, that's, we can agree that we're having a disagreement disagreement's about.

What's the solution? How are we going to solve this? And working it through to resolution. And when you can bring it to resolution, whether it's opinion A, opinion B, or X, Y, Z, it doesn't matter. It's the fact that you were able to work through it together that's going to strengthen your marriage. Okay.

And so we say that not fighting is bad for your relationship because if you're not fighting, that means you're not showing, One of you is not showing up as your true self and being fully engaged in this marriage. You're not being yourself for the sake of keeping the peace or whatever the case may be.

And that healthy conflict Is good for your marriage because you can work through it together and bring you closer when you get to the solution But there needs to also be a balance if your relationship is 99 Healthy conflict the conflict can be as healthy as possible But if you're living your life state of conflict the time in a state of conflict that in and of itself is a problem there needs to be a balance between Most of the time life is peaceful Conflicts do arise, but your default level is peace.

And when those conflicts do arise, you have those healthy ways of dealing with them and they strengthen your marriage. So that's why we say that conflict and disagreements are actually a good thing in your marriage.

Embrace it and go deeper and find that understanding the resolution because you've now just taken another step towards true connection in your marriage. So get out there, put on your gloves, keep it clean..

We know that this episode was helpful for you. And we'd be honored if you'd share this episode with a friend who might also benefit from this episode. Plus we've got a great Facebook group called marriage reconnection for empty nesters. Where we share strategies and tactics to help you transform your marriage.

We do live trainings in there. Plus you get to join other couples working on their marriages to for accountability support. Celebration. We love to see you in there. You can join it at www.facebook.com/groups/meredithandcraig. Can't wait to see you there.

Don't be shy about sharing this episode with your spouse, with your friends, with anyone you think might also get a little value from this episode too. And we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.