Caught in a Cycle

Q:

My husband and I are caught in a cycle of endless fights, and I’m feeling emotionally and physically drained from it. The issues are always small, but the fights are long and bitter. Usually they start because one of us doesn’t like the way the other one is speaking.

Last night, for example, we were discussing who should give the baby a bath after dinner. My husband offered to do it, and at first I thought that was a good idea. I agreed that while he was bathing the baby, I’d put our three-year-old to bed. But then I realized that I should give the baby his bath because our three-year-old has been begging for his father to put him to bed, and I’d promised him that tonight it would happen.

When I told my husband this, he was so upset with me and used a very unpleasant tone of voice to say something like, “We already made a plan and I really don’t like it when you go and undo everything like nothing we agree on matters.”

I thought he was being ridiculous and like I said, I didn’t like his tone of voice, and I told him so. I guess he felt attacked because he got defensive and told me he was tired of all my criticism and complaints. I told him that he was the one who was complaining and then we just fought the rest of the night. This happens all the time, and I don’t know how to make it stop.

A:

One of the things that makes marriage so very challenging is our human emotions. We’re a sensitive bunch! Husbands and wives seem to continuously hurt each other’s feelings. They don’t want to — it usually happens in self-defense, as you describe in your own scenario. We get hurt and then we strike back. Our partner gets hurt and again hurts us back and, exactly as you described, we may go back and forth like this for a very long time.

There are different variations on this theme. Some spouses have long fights because even though their skirmishes are short, their “debriefing” sessions are very long — sometimes going on for days. In these sessions a spouse — let’s say it’s the wife — explains how hurt she is by something her husband said earlier. She wants him to understand where she’s coming from, why it hurts so much, what it means to her, and she wants him to acknowledge what he did wrong and vow to never do it again.

The husband knows that he has to repeat everything his wife says and show her that he has remorse and promise her that he’ll do better — otherwise, the conversation will never end!

But sometimes he gets his back up and refuses to acknowledge the error of his ways, or he makes a case for his own complaints against his wife and tries to get her to acknowledge the pain she caused him. This slows down the conversation or even brings it to a halt. She feels unable to exit from the drama without his formal apology.