Fighting on the Road: Five Tips

So, we spend a lot of time together. Like, all of it, pretty much. And while we don’t fight very often, we’ve learned that fighting on the road brings its own challenges, given that we are more or less each other’s sole support system. Here are the five things we do to keep things humming along, even when we’re unhappy with each other.

Avoid Fighting Altogether

When you’re frustrated in life, there are really only ever two choices: change the inside or change the outside. That is, you can tackle your frustration by working yourself out of it, or by trying to change the situation. Each of these can be appropriate in given circumstances, provided they’re approached bravely and honestly.

To take a minor example: John occasionally snores. This doesn’t make him a bad person, but it does sometimes make it hard to share a room with him. Sometimes Laurel wakes him up, sometimes she doesn’t. And one of the things she does is to remind herself how grateful she is to have him around. More often than you’d think, this helps. The key is to remember that if it doesn’t, you’ll need to try the other strategy. If we have to be up really early on a travel day, it’s important to get good sleep. Then it makes sense to change the situation. And do pay attention to how you’re actually feeling. It’s easy to fall into the habit of stuffing your feelings. This is not that, or it shouldn’t be.

Schedule the Fight and/or Take a Break

Sometimes now is not a good time. Like when you are packing to leave and everything is going wrong and where the hell is your phone charger and why is everybody always against you? Becoming aware that now is not a good time for fighting often makes you realize that you’re actually having feelings about something else. It’s useful to take some time to think through what is really going on. But do make sure to schedule the fight for a specific time (and a specific topic), rather than simply postponing it, and the sooner the better. Bonus: sometimes you realise you’re not mad anymore, as when you realise that you are always crabby on the day of a departure.

We take this one step further, by having a check-in, once a week. It’s usually on a walk; sometimes it’s easier to talk without making eye contact. And one of the items in our check-in is to identify things we are ‘afraid to tell each other’. Having this as a regular category decreases the burden of bringing up a difficult topic; it’s just a normal thing that happens, all the time. Often there isn’t anything. Sometimes we get cross with each other. Sometimes we find we have more than one fight to schedule. And sometimes we get to do some really good problem-solving.

When Fighting, Stay on Topic, Stay in the Moment

It’s easy for a fight to turn into a ‘how come you never…’ discussion, in which you get out all your grievances for the past decade(s). This is especially likely if you don’t actually fight much but often find yourself annoyed. So before you start a fight, take a moment to feel: what are you actually upset about? Why? Keep asking yourself until you find something that is true. Most fights start from something little, because one person or both have created a story about its larger significance.

The sooner you can get to the bigger thing, the better for your relationship. So be specific, and honest, e.g. ‘I hate it when you do the dishes. I feel like you are saying that I am incapable of doing them, like I am a person who would never do dishes on my own because I am messy and a slob.’ [NB: This is not an actual fight we have ever had…]

When your feelings are very strong, it can be tricky to stay in the moment. But doing so can help you move forward. Bonus points if you do this out loud, e.g. ‘I’m still feeling angry about X but now I’m also mad at myself for calling you a no-good poopyhead.’

Anger is a big, powerful emotion, and sometimes it feels good. But usually, there is something else hiding behind the anger. Fear, sadness, jealousy, shame – it could be almost any of the emotions people find even more uncomfortable than anger.

And don’t forget that only one of you should talk at a time!

Get on the Same Side

Yes, we know: fighting is all about being on different sides. But when you are a team, as we irrevocably and (mostly) happily are, one person’s problem becomes the other’s. Treating the contentious point as a given, a fact that you need to take into account in moving ahead (rather than a character flaw) can help you to move beyond hurt feelings to the larger issues. If this is hard, try starting from a place where you do agree. For instance, ‘So we both want what’s best for our pet rhino, but we don’t yet know what that is’.

Really listen to each other, even if what is being said doesn’t make sense to you. Cultivate a sense of curiosity: isn’t it strange that you keep fighting about whether to get matching tattoos? What might be behind that? When one of you doesn’t feel heard, the same issues will keep coming up. (This is why fights are often so repetitive.) Ask questions and acknowledge feelings, even if you don’t know what to do about them. Even saying something like, ‘I know trying out for the WWF is important to you and so I’m willing to try to find a way forward’, can deflate a fight.

Set Ground Rules

This is best done before a fight. (It also works after a really big one.) Probably, you already know how to treat other people, having learned the basics in nursery school. But when you are upset, you might forget. So it’s helpful to have a clearly articulated set of rules for fighting. Like no silent treatment, no name-calling, no yelling. Or maybe being told not to yell makes you even madder. In which case, what should the other person say that wouldn’t upset you? Perhaps you should come up with a specific way to ask for a time-out in the fight, especially if one of you easily becomes overwhelmed. The goal here – as with the previous tip – is to recognise that you each deserve dignity and equal space. ‘Winning’ every fight means you will eventually lose a partnership. So winning a fight can’t really be your goal.

We know a couple who took rule-making to such an extreme that they even wrote the rules down in a notebook. And then they also listed their most-used arguments, so that they could refer to them by number. This both defused the situation and helped them to see that they were always fighting about the same few things, over and over again. And that, in turn, enabled them to have genuine discussions about them.

Perhaps this is all too complicated for you. In which case, keep it simple: never go to bed angry.

Those are our tips, and they have worked pretty well for us even under fairly stressful situations. (But you might want to check back with us in a year!)