What Have You Stopped Fighting About?

This is a great question. For my partner and me, it's less about the content of the fights and more about the tone of them. We used to get up in ARMS about the smallest crap. (like the "right" way to get from point A to point B). Now, we're still stubborn boneheads about the right way to get there, but we can laugh about it.

Politics. We don't see eye to eye on party politics, so we just acknowledge that our votes cancel each other out and move on...by the way, in case you're wondering, red and blue can marry and have a couple of little purples.

The issue in my marriage is not "what we've stopped fighting about" but rather "what I've stopped getting irritated about."

At a certain point I came to the realization-- without the help of meds--that I've been doing most of the complaining. That I'm the one most often finding fault and that I don't want to wake up one day wishing I hadn't spent so much time during our marriage complaining about a toilet seat left up or crumbs in the kitchen. I'm learning to just put the seat down, dustbust the crumbs and shut up!

And with regard to a sophomoric movie that my husband found entertaining and I couldn't stomach past the opening credits. Well, he can't watch "Funny Girl" and I would have it running on a loop in my bedroom if I could.

Ann Banks had it right: our soul mate is not us and I think that's a good thing. I'm not sure I'd want to live with a clone of myself (altho the house would be delectably neat and clean).

My wife and I have never ever not even once had an arguement... we have been together over 3 years now. When you realize that conflict in relationships is 9 times out 10 shadow one can simply end it....all!

Similar to Mick posted above, my husband and I have been together for over three decades and we don't argue either.

Perhaps it is because we have been together since we were school sweethearts, got our first apartment together, shared friends and everything else. Perhaps it is because we both keep busy and have many interests. Or because we are not argumentative types of people and enjoy pleasing each other. It helps that politically we generally agree.

But we don't argue, and generally find each others' quirks and foibles interesting, even charming and lovable. Some women might not like it to be awoken in the middle of the night to look at something interesting through a telescope, but it suits me just fine.

Like my husband told me, he is just so glad to wake up in the morning and find me breathing beside him. To us, there are the life and death issues and then there are the other things. My daily calendar never lists "argue with husband" on the schedule.

How long you've been together or how many years you've known one another , how busy you are or how many interests you have separately or in common are absolutely of no consequence when it comes to if and how often you argue with your spouse. The key factors are that neither of you are argumentative people and that you more than tolerate one another's quirks. How fabulously fortunate for you both!

When my husband and I were first married, we didn't live together for five months, waiting for escrow to close on our house. During that time I frequently spent the night at his place, but if we argued, I'd go home. When we finally did move into the house, the honeymoon period was largely over, and we'd have terrible, object-throwing fights about the most trivial things, such as which drawer the can opener should go in. Once he locked me out of the house, and I kicked in the aluminum door. Since we were both 30 when we moved in together, it was all about establishing power and boundaries, something neither of us had had to do up to that point.

We haven't had a fight like that in years. I can't say I miss them, but they did have one positive effect. When you have a fight like that with someone, after the smoke clears and you still love each other, you know you can survive together. Your marriage is stronger for having endured that kind of maelstrom. I'm not saying that this is true of everyone, and clearly some people have more volatile relationships than others, but it's not all bad.