It is not the differences that hurt marriages it is how a couple deal with them. Most couples argue about the same 6 arugments that every couple has Dr Gottmans research says that 69% of a couple’s problems are perpetual. These 6 problems don’t go away yet many couples keep arguing about them year after year.

• Every couple throughout the life of their marriage will argue about the six topics below:
  1. Work Stress
  2. Preferences that come from the home your grew up in.
  3. Money
  4. Sex
  5. Housework
  6. Children

The problem is that these arguments don’t go away. These arguments may evolve and change but couples can get stuck and spend year after year trying to change each other’s mind – but it can’t be done. This is because most of their disagreements are based in fundamental differences of lifestyle, personality, gender, life experiences or values. The goal is to accept them and focus on the positive.  By fighting over these differences, all they succeed in doing is wasting their time and harming their marriage.

How do good marriages deal with issues that can’t be resolved? They accept one another as-is:

These couples intuitively understand that problems are inevitably part of a relationship, much the way chronic physical ailments are inevitable as you get older. They are like a trick knee, a bad back, an irritable bowel, or tennis elbow. We may not love these problems, but we are able to cope with them, to avoid situations that worsen them, and to develop strategies and routines that help us deal with them. Psychologist Dan Wile explained this the best in his book After the Honeymoon: “When choosing a long-term partner… you will inevitably be choosing a particular set of unsolvable problems that you’ll be grappling with for the next ten, twenty or fifty years”.

Arguments are not what destroys a marriage, it is becoming disconnected through of a pattern of communication and neglect.