How to Argue Happily: Bank Easy Successes First

November 22nd, 2019

By Nikki Harper

Staff Writer for Wake Up World

Relationships are not easy. All couples argue, whether they’ve only just met or have been together for decades. Even the most stable couples are still two individual people, who will have different views, wishes and ideas at least some of the time during their relationship. However, new research suggests that the happiest couples tend to argue in a distinct way, which could account for their ongoing happiness.

In a study undertaken by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, researchers discovered that happy couples tend to tackle their easiest problems first [1]. They are then able to ‘bank’ that successful resolution, which eventually may make it easier for them to tackle any more difficult problems they come across.

The study involved two batches of couples – 57 couples in their mid to late thirties who had been together on average for 9 years, and 64 couples in their early 70s, who had been together on average for 42 years. All of the couples had self-defined themselves as happily married.

While all couples in the study ranked intimacy, leisure decisions, household decisions and money as among their most serious problems, they were observed to first focus on arguing out those issues which had the clearest potential solutions [1] – for example, they might argue about how to redistribute household chores, which is something with a clear potential outcome, with one or other partner taking on more or less, depending on the outcome of their argument and negotiation. Another potentially solution-focused argument might be that of how to spend leisure time, which again has a number of clear outcomes which a couple might reach.

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