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Automatic transcript; may contain mistakes, especially in Hebrew.
This week's question is, from your experience, what is the most common argument to come up, and what can we do to prevent it? Well, I don't know if there are common arguments. There are common themes, but each couple fights in their own unique way. Some of the common themes include money, priorities, intimacy, children, especially children in crisis. These are very often causes of tension in a marriage. Husbands and wives have unique needs. Each couple has their own unique needs. Each person deals with financial crisis in their own way. When it comes to raising children, that can be very complicated. Intimacy is very complicated. It's very common for men and women to have different needs. Priorities is a huge one, the way we see the world, how we allocate our time. These are common themes, but I don't know if they're common arguments. So I don't know if we really can prevent them because marriage is designed tension. So there's always going to be tension in a marriage and trying to prevent these arguments.
from coming up is probably a waste of time. What we can do is we can learn to negotiate a very narrow terrain when these issues come up. And it's cliche, but it's true. The way to deal with these things is through communication. So let's spend a couple of minutes talking about what healthy communication looks like. The first stage of healthy communication is creating the ground for communication to occur. We cannot control other people, but we can contribute in a positive and a healthy way. in the marriage to creating an opportunity for communication to occur. So be a listener. When your spouse has something to say to you, be a listener. You may not want to hear what they have to say, but whether or not you hear it, they're thinking it. And if they're thinking it, I guarantee you it's in the relationship. Communication is only 7% verbal. Most of communication is happening non-verbally. The belief system that our spouses have about us, it's in the marriage. So it's good to get it out in the open.
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Now the thing is, it's hard to accept criticism. And so what we'd rather do sometimes is just not hear it. But by not hearing it, the problem isn't there. The problem is still very much there, it's just that we're ignoring it. So how do we learn to hear our spouse criticize our way of being, especially if we feel it's undeserved? Well, the answer is you are not trying to listen to whether or not their claim is true. You're trying to hear the validity of their experience. Now there's a difference. something is true or not true, that's rooted in facts. But when we're talking about how our spouse sees us, that's not true or not true. It's a valid experience. Even if the experience is their own stuff, it's still a valid experience. And as we learn to listen, to validate someone else's experience, to consider the way that we see us, and then ultimately it's our responsibility to draw our own conclusions. When we do that, we till the ground, we make it a fertile place for.
communication to occur. So let's take the following scenario. Let's say a husband thinks that his wife is spending money and she's not considering the larger impact on the family, and he's working really hard to provide a parnasa. So he says to his wife, I really need you to be more careful about your spending. It feels to me as if you don't ... As if you don't care about the money that you're spending. And that's really hard for me considering I'm working so hard to provide. Now, the wife may not want to hear that. A, she may not think it's true. She's spending the money on important things. She's buying food. She's buying the children clothing. She's making sure the house is well kept. She's doing important things with the money. So maybe it's not factually true. And her initial response will be to say, what are you talking about? That's, of course, not true. But once you do that, communication comes to a halt. And why would anyone want to communicate with someone who's telling them you're wrong? That's how arguments start. Rather, your husband's experience, while it may not be true, it's a valid experience.
So take the opportunity to let him know, I hear that you feel that I'm wasting our money and that I'm not using it appropriately. I'm going to consider the way that you see it. After that, draw your own conclusions. It's not your responsibility to agree with your husband, and frankly, it's not your responsibility to agree with your wife. It doesn't really matter. But there should be the feeling in communication, that what I have to say matters. and what happens is if you can create that ground for communication to occur. then when you have issues in intimacy in finances in priorities in children there's a safety that exists in the marriage there's a feeling we work for the same team we both want to be on each other's side and the reason why this is so important is because when there's that feeling in the relationship then these tense opportunities tense tense moments become opportunities to draw close to one another because at the end of a conversation where each side feels validated where.
each side feels heard where each side feels recognized there's actually a kerva there's a closeness that occurs and even when you see it differently at the end of the day the wife will feel, my husband really cares about me the husband will feel my wife really cares about me and that's the ground where we negotiate, if we both care about each other let's figure out how we can meet each other in the middle so that each one of us can get what we want, So to sum up, we're not trying to stop fights, that's futile, it will happen no matter what. There are common arguments in terms of themes, but each couple fights in their own unique way. What we can do is really try to validate and listen to our spouse's experience, which lays the groundwork for negotiation because we're all on the same team.
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