Honest answers: How often do you really fight?

[Anonymous]

Less as the kids are older. Sleep deprivation, traveling a lot husband, and just the stress with kids lead to a lot of fights. They could be bad, like I would get in my car and just drive somewhere. We both have said things we regret. I come from a fighting family, he does not, so to him it seems very wrong to fight. Our kids are now in late elementary school and we fight maybe one-two times a year. Nothing like the get in my car and go scenarios. I think it's pretty normal, and we try to keep the name calling away at this point. Maybe we are just more mature, maybe we realize we are committed, who knows. When the kids were little, he was near to cheating on me. I found out a few years later and I think it was a wake up call for both of us. Negativity is a habit and is so damaging all around. Truth be told (and I am not the only one to blame here) but I started Wellbutrin and it has made a lot of difference in my handling day to day life better, combined with exercise and Vitamin D in the non summer months.

[Anonymous]

We have quite a few arguments, but I can't imagine hour long ones with raised voices the whole time. That's exhausting. DH doesn't yell anyway, he's that cold, calm, scary angry, but even that's difficult to maintain for an hour. But we do have the same old arguments all tthe time, and I do get pretty shrewish at times.

[Anonymous]

Disagree and bicker plenty. Screaming matches? Probably not since we were young and just moved in together.

I'm more quick to anger and say something I will regret than DH is. I've learned to dial it back.

[Anonymous]

Clearly I had no idea how outrageous my behavior is. I raisey.voice once a day and will totally scream. My husband doesn't scream back, but since it is the only way he seems to pay attention, I somehow figured this was more normal. Time for counseling.

[Anonymous]

I'm OP. Thanks for the honest answers. I posted because DH and I had just had a big "fight." (I use quotes because this wasn't physical or name calling or even nasty - just very, very intense with raised voices and extreme frustration with both of us feeling like we weren't being heard or making progress. It's what I suspect might be described by others here as an "argument.")

At any rate, we have these about twice a year and I was wondering if that was normal. Turns out that normal varies quite a bit.

Things are fine now. It's was issue we aren't ever going to see eye-to-eye on and there can't really be a compromise, so it requires one of us to "give in." That person was me, but I'm sort of glad it went the way it did because he knows just how difficult it was for me to do that. I think he feels like he owes me one when the next issue comes up and I'll be happy to cash in.

[Anonymous]

Just had one this morning (I had previously posted that we've had a few a year). DH and I had to move our old sofa to the curb for pickup tomorrow. It was frustrating. DH has trouble with impulse control and how it effects others. Halfway through moving it, we are both frustrated, he starts pushing on it really hard and practically runs me over. I step out of the way, make him push it the rest of the way himself and I scream at him that he's being an uncaring a**hole. I Kids were on the bus to camp at this point so they didn't witness it. DH is furious but doesn't say a word. Then he dials it down and is extra nice and careful about moving the other part of the sofa but the damage is done. He runs upstairs, changes his pants (which got muddy from moving the sofa), and runs out the door with a "late for a mtg, gotta go."

So there you have it. I'll patiently wait for him to text me an apology, I'll ignore it for a few hours, and then I'll respond with the same. This is typically how our fights go.