All of us can remember the new love phase of our relationship. We remember the romantic feelings, the infatuation and the burning desire we had to be together. We remember the feelings of elation as we discovered new things about another and uncovered our many points of similarity. Differences were not a problem, in fact, they were fascinating and even cute!
That’s how it feels in the beginning. We become smitten with one another quite quickly and some of us even claim that we were in love at first sight!
Love at first sight and love during the new love phase is easy.
it is much harder to feel love – at first FIGHT!
I don’t remember what all of our first fights we’re about but I do remember the feelings and the disillusionment that we had toward one another. I remember how it seemed like we had made a hard left turn off the road of elated discovery onto a dead end road of disappointment and disillusionment.
Neither of us could remember having any real serious conflicts (much less fights) within our dating relationship. So what changed?
The biggest factor that brought about our first fights (and likely yours as well) were unmet (due to unstated) expectations.
We talked about a lot of things on our dates and other times together, in retrospect, it’s clear that we spent the vast majority of our time talking about the kinds of things that we completely agreed on. We didn’t realize that we were carrying different ideas, desires, and hopes into our marriage. We were especially naïve to the fact that upon the words “I Do” our ideas, desires, and hopes would instantly transform into expectations – but that is exactly what happened.
Each of us had unspoken expectations in areas like:
- Who would do certain household tasks and when they should be done
- When and how to spend money
- With whom and how we would spend time
- We had different expectations regarding sex
- We had different ideas about work life balance
and so much more…
All of this added up to deep disappointment, bitter disagreements and escalating fights that were painful and brought injury to our marriage. It took us a long time to realize that fights, arguments
Our first fights were not very loving experiences but yours can be! We would love the opportunity to share winning strategies for communication with you that will transform the outcome of your marital fights!
Start fighting for your marriage today – click here – let’s talk!
“And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.”
Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry,”
~ Ephesians 4:26 ~