My husband and I got into a big fight in our marriage last night for no good reason.  Fighting in a relationship hurts.  Relationship fights don’t need to happen.  This is what we learned, and how we’re going to overcome our marriage fights in the future.

To tell the full story, I need to rewind to where this fight first started…

A couple of weeks ago, I, Amanda, was at home relaxing and doing my own thing.  

I started getting bored and thought I’d spend some quality time with my husband.  Even though we fight intensely sometimes in our marriage because we’re both strong-willed people, we do love each other deeply.  

I walked downstairs and met him in the family room.  He was sitting in front of the TV, and instantly, I became irritated with who was in the room with us.

He was watching a political show, and I hate politics.  Politicians heads were bobbing up and down on the TV.  Donald Trump was blabbering about something, and Hillary Clinton was arguing back.  

Oh great, I thought, we are going to have to watch this collection of political loons argue about how they’re going to try to fix America for the rest of the night.  

My mind started to slide into a negative swamp and I started to get mad. This show is stupid, I thought.  My husband is wasting his time watching it, and now he’s going to waste my time when we could be spending time together.

I sat down on the couch next to my husband, and I tried to talk to him. But he was busy doing several things, and he wasn’t a very good conversation partner to solve my companionship needs.  He was engrossed in his show, and editing writing on his computer. Since nobody in the room was paying attention to my wants or needs, the negative self-talk in my brain kept getting louder and stronger.

Anger started brewing inside of me like a hurricane forming in the ocean and headed toward shore.  Then, the anger started turning into rage in my mind.  Why are we watching this stupid political show anyway?   Who are these stupid people in my living room?  They’re ruining my time with my husband!  Aren’t I more important than this?  Why is my husband even wasting his time watching this stupid mess!

Without asking him, I grabbed the TV remote and changed the channel.  My husband looked at me like I was crazy.

“Hey!” He yelled at me, “What the heck are you doing?  I was here first and I was watching that!”

At that moment, I didn’t care what he thought.  I was raging like a porcupine who’d just been stabbed with its own quills, and I yelled back at him. “This is my house too!  This political garbage is making me mad and I have the right to change the channel!”

At this point, we were both starting to get really angry.  He pointed at the doorway out, “Then get out of here!  I was in here all by myself, minding my own business, just trying to learn a little bit about what’s going on in the world, so we could make the best plans for our future.  I’m just trying to learn more about the world we live in.  Why are you trying to ruin this for me?”

He aggressively grabbed the remote, and turned the channel back. “I don’t care about these politicians either, but the truth is, they’re running the country we live in, and I’d at least like to learn a little about their views and plans if I can.  If we’re going to become great investors, we have to learn how to see the future of America before anyone else can.”

At that point, I was so furious I was thinking some pretty crazy thoughts. I stormed out of the room.  I heard the echoes bounce off the walls as I shouted some pretty strong and vulgar words back at him.  I left our living room and walked upstairs into darkness and loneliness.

Whenever my husband and I get into a relationship fight, I force myself to listen to worship music.  Something like this great song always helps me see clearly again.  As I try to calm down, I always feel my selfishness trying to stay mad, but the music helps me see into the bigger foundational problems that caused the actual fight in the first place.

In the dark bedroom I was crying in, I found myself blaming my husband for all the fighting in our relationship and my anger at him.  

I caught myself crying to myself, “This was all his fault that I felt so neglected and angry.  This was his fault that he wouldn’t even turn off the TV to help me.  All of our marriage fights are all his fault!”

But as I talked myself into this frenzy, the worship music started to shine through my tornado of anger, and God started to reveal to me the real truth of what was going on.

The anger started to leave me as the truth started to pour in.  This marriage fight wasn’t my husband’s fault.  My anger was coming from my own narrow and short-sighted views of my selfish attitude.  My husband hadn’t done anything wrong that evening.  He had simply been trying to learn something new.  I was the one trying to pull him away from growing as a person, so that he could fix my feelings of boredom and lonliness.  I then felt really bad, because I had tried to ruin his path to find his own path in life and improve his thoughts.

That’s when God really humbled me.  The revelation became clear.  I had to apologize to my husband for the fight I had caused. I was the one with a closed mind.  All of this over-reaction and emotional turmoil was my fault.  If I allow my mind to be closed and angry, then I will be the one limiting the potential for God to work in my life.

I started to realize who cares who was wrong or right.  It doesn’t matter anyways.  It’s always up to me to take responsibility for my own actions. If I want peace in my life, then I have to lead the way to create peace in my life.  I realized that leading myself back to peace, was the best choice I could make.  

I dropped my pride and humbled myself.  I walked downstairs and apologized to him.  Surprisingly, it didn’t kill me.  In fact, I found it actually made me stronger, and smarter, and a better leader, and wife to my husband.  Surprisingly, I liked that feeling more than being prideful and stubborn.

*

So a few weeks later, when I came home from visiting family, and saw my husband watching a political show on TV, I decided I was going to try this again with a more successful attitude this time.  I opened my mind, and I sat down on the couch with my husband.

My husband looked at me nervously, remembering the last fight in our relationship.  He said, “I remember the last time this happened. Do I need to change the channel before the night gets crazy again?”

I smiled and shook my head. “No, teach me about what you’re learning.  Let’s see if we can learn about seeing our future together.”

Wow, what a difference a teachable attitude made in my life. I felt peace the rest of the night as we explored our lives and thoughts, together. Rather than closing my mind because I didn’t fully understand something, I chose to open it and learn something new with my husband next to me.  Learning together led to some of the best quality time we’d ever had together.

Incredible amounts of wealth can be found in our lives and relationships, when we choose to open our minds and learn together, rather than wasting all that energy fighting in relationships together.

I learned a lot about healthy relationships these last few weeks.  I have evolved into a new and better person because I simply opened my eyes, heart, and mind to what God was trying to show me about fighting in a relationship.

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