On your wedding day you said “yes” or “I do” to the question; Do you take________ to be your lawfully wedded wife, to love, honor and cherish her as long as you both shall live? Sometimes the wording varies from the one stated above but the intent is the same. Do you take her to love, honor and cherish her. My first question for you is, when you said yes, did you mean it?
With that said, let’s talk about the subject of arguing and winning. Is your goal of arguing to; A. get your point heard and accepted, B. to prove you are right, C. to get her to accept your superior logic, D. to get even for losing the last argument, or E. getting her on your side so you can be one and work as a team? Never launch an argument without knowing what goal you want to achieve. Otherwise you are dead in the water. Once you have that in mind, you can focus on the best strategies to accomplish that goal.
Likely, you already have strategies in place for each of the goals, A through D, so let’s talk about goal, E. The secret to winning any argument with your wife is, SWITCH SIDES. With both of you on the same side, when she wins, you win. After you’ve done that. there is no more switching sides because there is only one side. You’re on the same team. If I don’t miss my guess, you are thinking, or even saying, “That’s just losing before you start”. And you are right if you only pretended to switch sides and didn’t really do it.
Now let’s look at how this will increase your integrity and not compromise it. Remember the “love, honor and cherish” clause when you were married? Remember how you wanted to make her happy then? Can you do that now? Do you desire now to make her happy? It is unthinkable that I could argue with my wife, trying to prove her wrong, while I am loving, honoring and cherishing her. If I am truly one with my wife, I can’t put her down without putting myself down. Here is how it works. If I say my wife is dumb or stupid, I have hurt the one I promised to love, honor and cherish and I have cast negative feelings on me for choosing a dumb person to be my wife.
Personally, I prefer to have to have a bright, intelligent and happy wife so that is how I see her and I compliment myself for choosing such a bright girl to marry. The result of this attitude is, I still want to make her happy every day. Therefore, it is easier for her to want to make me happy since we are team mates and not combatants. She does everything she can to make my life happy. One day I asked, “am I in your way?” to which she replied, ”You are my way.”
Many will find it hard to trust this approach to building a relationship that will, love, honor and cherish with integrity. If you decide to go there, don’t be timid or tentative about it. Go with a firm resolve. It will make you a winner. It will take some time to build the trust to allow it to work for you. Your wife needs to see that you will not argue. Not just this time but the next and the next and the next until she can be sure you will discuss and not pounce on or belittle her thoughts and feelings. Let her hear compliments instead of criticisms, Gratitude instead of a platitude. Remember you already promised to love, honor and cherish her. Do it with words and actions and you will win every argument you never have.
Now I ask you, how life-changing is it, really, if the toilet seat is left up or down as long as we each have hands to change it to our liking. I say that most things couples argue about just drive wedges into a relationship and are not worth the price they cost in cold and strained relationships. If you still choose to argue just remember, even when you win, you’ve lost something far more important than the position of the toilet seat.