3 Rules to Fighting Fair in a Loving Relationship

If you were awarded an R-rating for your love life, wouldn't you rather get it for hotness and not for violence, abuse, and other disturbing themes? If you're anywhere close to well-adjusted, of course you would. So let's see if we can make that happen—today.

Conflict is an essential and inevitable part of every intimate relationship. Favorite teachers argue with favorite students, best friends argue, and two people in love have to argue effectively or they will never learn to resolve the conflicts that keep them apart. Unresolved conflict, after all, grinds love into dust.

The concept is called "Fair Fighting." This is the opposite of the thinking of many couples where the goal of the argument is winning. Winning in a fair fight is not the goal, and the reason is simple: we're on the same side.

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You can't win football games by sacking your own quarterback. In the same way, lovers who have formed a strategic alliance with one another can't forget the goal of their whole relationship.

That goal, quite simply, is to have a wonderful life together, and we do this by solving the problems life throws at us. This includes the most important problem of all: how can we both be happy?

Let's be honest, we can't fight by invoking the law of the jungle: "Might makes right," where winning is based on survival of the fittest. You're with the person you love above all others in the world—don't they deserve a more civilized approach?

Fair Fighting is based on three simple rules:

Rule 1

First, and most important, "no abuse." This means no name-calling, yelling, put-downs, and other controlling behaviors, like telling someone how to dress, or who their friends should be.

Rule 2

This next one is called "any one subject," meaning we can talk about anything—including your mother, our sex life, how you spend money, and how we are raising these little monsters—but only one subject at a time. It's hard enough to solve problems that really bother us without asking us to solve three or four at a time. So, if you're mad and hurt about my never doing anything special for our anniversary, let's skip the character assassination where you point out how I treated your mom last Christmas.

Rule 3

We argue by "mutual consent." You can establish mutual consent in any way that works for the two of you, but here's the way it works in my own romance:

Me: "I'm having a problem I need to talk to you about."

Wife: “You deserve my best and fullest attention. But now doesn’t work. Can we pick a time that works for both of us?”

Me: "OK, when would be a good time?"

And then you mutually pick that time, ideally when you’re both rested and fed. The real challenge is forgoing instant gratification while still responding in a timely and supportive enough manner to ensure everyone feels respected.

The goal is to treat solving the problems that are keeping us apart in a serious and deliberate manner, more like a boring and dispassionate board meeting where industry titans are trying to solve a disruption in the production lines of their factory, and less like The Sopranos.

Now, go get that R-rated romance, just let it be for the good stuff.