The Healthy Way to Fight With Your Spouse

First, why couples fight: According to this piece in the New York Times, the issue most likely to provoke a man to argument is sex.  For women, the big issue is kids (a common consequence of sex), followed by sex, housework and money. That’s the interesting part of the Times story. The instructional part concerns the best way to argue, and the worst way to argue. The paper reports that when Utah researchers videotaped 150 couples to measure the effect that marital arguing style has on heart risk, they found that the style of argument detected in the video sessions was a
powerful predictor for a man or woman’s risk for underlying heart
disease. For women, the biggest influence on health was whether a husband’s arguing style was warm or hostile. For men,the level of warmth or hostility had no effect on a man’s heart health.
What really mattered was if disagreements with his wife involved
a battle for control. Read more in the New York Times.