It's not a matter of if you'll face conflict in your marriage, but when and then the question is,

how are you going to fight and learn to work through

frustrations and that conflict. I'm John Fuller joined by my focus colleagues

Aaron and Greg Smalley and Aaron there are some indicators that a couple is fighting

productively and probably some warnings that they're fighting poorly.

Give us some bullet points on this. Well couples that are not fighting well. We'll see patterns of

reactions, escalation, avoidance, blame and criticism, name calling, threats and ultimatums.

You know, it's chaos, we call it combat.

Versus,

Split is, you know, much more that we're having productive conversation we're listening

we're understanding we're taking time out we're reminding each other hey we're

in this together we're gonna find something that works for both of us and you know

expressing feelings not at the cost of the other person okay so you know very

different conflict versus combat and you know I don't want to put it out there that oh conflict

is so much fun and if you're doing it well it's going to be easy

no it's there's possibility of challenges even when we do it well so it's just

being aware of what do I want this to look like and if it's not going

well I'm gonna call a time out and step back care for me and then I'm gonna come

back and try again. That is hard to do in the moment but that's a great

commitment that you know what I'm not going to be

able to figure this out right this moment but I promise you we will come back and a

better me will show up to discuss this because right now I'm feeling combative and I want this to become

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