Are you arguing or discussing?

Last night, my wife and I were driving home and discussing the possibility of going on vacation with her family.  The only problem was that she could either go for 3 days, or go for 5 and miss one class.  Early in the day, we were discussing her bad day at school was and how frustrated she was with it.  This is where the problem came in. 

Before I get to that though, let me elaborate on the Arguing part of it.  We were driving home and talking about her missing a class and what that could possibly mean.  So here I am getting frustrated because she wants to miss a class, when she just got done venting about how she’s frustrated with one of her classes and how the staff is riding her now.  She was getting frustrated because she needs to take a vacation and get the stress out.  So here inlies the problem.                                       

We kept arguing back and forth, we weren’t actually getting anywhere with it.  At one point Danielle stopped me, and said, “Before you say anything, are you going to say anything new?”  I thought about it and said, “No”, but I wanted to make my point anyways.  Instead, I stopped and thought about it.  This is a key point that we’ve learned over the last few years.  Dont’ have the circular argument.  You keep saying the same things back and forth and it get’s you nowhere.  You’re chasing your own tails.  One good way to recognize this argument, “you’re not understanding what I’m saying”.  Yeah, they do, but they think that their own point is better or more correct. 

At this point, I stopped and told Danielle, ok, I just need to think for a few minutes.  Luckily, we live in the middle of nowhere, so I had plenty of time to think and say what I wanted to say, while she was stuck in the car.  I started thinking about the “real Issue’.  We learned that in most arguments, couples start arguing against EACH other instead of resolving the ACTUAL ISSUE. 

Through discussing it further, we discovered that the actual problem was the difference between men and women.  I was hoping she wouldn’t miss a class because she’s already “on their List” according to what I got out of our earlier discussion.  What she was trying to get across to me in that discussion, is that she’s very frustrated with the staff and that’s she’s not doing as good as she normally does.  So it comes down to the fact that she wanted to vent her frustrations to me and that girls often exaggerate things in order to fully describe how emotionally distraught she was.  As a guy, I took it as a serious problem that needs a solution, and my solution was to be extremely safe and cautious and not try to rock the boat.  My initial reaction was to not rock the boat as well, instead, just blow it up (also a guys reaction, no problem is too big for explosives).  In the end, we worked together and came up with the real issue and solved it together, as opposed to fighting each other.  So, try to…

 Go from this      

To this   

By working like this

The tendency in relationships, married or not married, is to win the discussion/argument.  The only true way to solve the issue, is to solve the issue and not win the argument.  We’ve all heard that “you’re not arguing over that, it’s something else that’s turned into this” and that is completely true.  Next time your going through the circular argument, stop and try to find out what’s really the problem.