Five for Friday: Rules of Engagement for Healthy Marital Fighting

These have been culled and invented over our 8+ happy years together, entirely out of necessity. We actually follow these rules, and I totally credit our practice of fighting fair for a good chunk of our happy marriage.

1. No Name Calling. Includes names like 'control freak,' 'imbecile,' and 'crazy person,' not that any of these have ever been uttered in our household. Also includes all name-calling expletives.

2. No Raising Your Voice. I know this kind of takes the fun out of it, but maybe that's the point.

3. No Generalizations. You always do that. You never do this. You're so [adjective] all the time. The idea is that if we're fighting, it's because of a specific incident that likely just happened. So now we're worked up, which is the worst time to do anything other than try to resolve the specific instance at hand. When a generalization is thrown into the ring, the appropriate response is, "Right now we're discussing X. If you feel that you'd also like to discuss the more general issue of Y, please initiate that conversation when we're more calm and have a better chance of seeing eye-to-eye. For now, let's stick to X."

4. No Interrupting. Want to make a mad person madder? Don't let them finish their sentence.

5. No Imitations. I know this seems bizarre, but does your husband use the same crotchety old lady voice to imitate both you and his grandma? As in, "And then you were all, [crotchety old lady voice begins now:] 'It's your turn to do the dishes!'" To which you reply, "I did NOT say it like that! I DO NOT sound like that!" So maybe you were about to have a tiny little fight about the dishes, but now you're going to have a big fat fight because you're seeing red over the misrepresentation of what you said. The appropriate alternative to impressions is, "When you said X (e.g when you asked me to do the dishes), it felt like Y (e.g. it felt like you were talking down to me)."