Does anticipating common marital issues make it easier to combat them?

[Anonymous]

Mike Tyson said, "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

Helmuth von Moltke said, "no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy."

Talking about what you're going to do when you have kids is like that.

[Anonymous]

I agree that trying to plan ahead about these possible issues doesn't accomplish much. The key is how flexible and good humored each of you is, and how functional and resilient. If you're both good at rolling with the punches, handling whatever life brings without too much drama, being part of a team, and sticking with things (such as a marriage), you are in good shape. If not, you'll have problems.

And I completely disagree with PP's list of causes of divorce - those are probably the top causes of friction within a marriage, but people get divorced because they can't work things out or one or both is disfunctional, not because they disagree about something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And I completely disagree with PP's list of causes of divorce - those are probably the top causes of friction within a marriage, but people get divorced because they can't work things out or one or both is disfunctional, not because they disagree about something.

I'm the PP and if you re-read what I wrote, you will see were are in agreement.

I said the problem was an inability to reach compromise or to have respect for your partner's attitudes about any of those friction points leads to divorce.

Some of those are non-trivial (have/not-have kids).

[Anonymous]

It's not so much planning ahead as knowing it's coming.

There was no way to know exactly how we would react to the intense newborn period. I think we had a sense of a range, but there are certain situations in which you just cannot be your best self, or even a very decent self, every single moment. Recognizing that those times can and do happen--and recognizing them for what they are when they occur--helps tremendously.

Had I not known, for instance, how common it is to have some terrible fights somewhere in the first six-twelve weeks of your baby's life, I would have been more devastated. But I knew, no matter how mean we were to each other, that it had more to do with the situation than anything, that it was in fact somewhat normal, and we pulled through.