What Do You and Your Husband Fight About?

We've been married for over 15 years and we have argued consistently over two things throughout those years:

1. I like to be on time while he doesn't mind being late.
2. He is a homebody and I love being around people.

We still occassionally argue about these two things, but we're quick to work it out now. We've learned to compromise and respect one another's feelings.

Whenever I take the time to arrange something and to find out he changed it the way he wants it. That drives me crazy! I spent time packing the car up and go back out to it and everything is moved. Argh! Any time I want to be involved helping with something and he tells me to do it different or watches over what I'm doing.

We fight about money, but also about who is going out socially when & with whom. We have very different groups of friends who do not mesh very well together so we will generally go out separately, but a lot of times little to no notice will be given to the other which is definitely annoying. I will say though after a very rough couple of years together things seem to be calming down a lot in the argument department for us.

Stupid stuff mostly. Like:
"Look how CLOSE the kitchen counter top is to the dishwasher! Can't you just go ahead put that coffee cup IN there?"
"Are washcloths really best left in a BALL on the side of the tub--or do you want it to dry off?"
"Do you realize just HOW those cans actually get INTO the recycle bin?"

Seriously--in my house, it's not money, sex, politics, in-laws...it's the stupid little stuff. But I wouldn't call it "fighting" it's more like "annoying"!

We fight over free time--i really don't like having an active social life (always been sort of an introverted loner =type), and I guess I sort of expect my husband to be my sidekick 100% of the time. He still keeps in touch with all of his childhood friends and I don't think he needs to--they've turned into "drinking buddies" because only a couple of them have actually met our kids. I get really upset when he wants to go off overnight to a kegger with them (they're all childless and single) and leave me at home with a 2.5 year old and a 9 month old. I just don't understand why he feels like he has to keep these people in his life that obviously don't care about his life or priorities, and he doesn't understand why I don't go out more and try harder to have a social life. It's really hard :(

We also fight about our families. My family is very different than his in the fact that we are all much more dependent on each other. I have 4 siblings and we were raised by our single mom and all of us live near her and we all help each other out with pretty much everything. My sister lives next door and I watch her kids all the time (she also watches mine) and my other siblings come and go constantly through our house like they live here. It drives my hubby nuts because his family is very much into having their own space and lives. He calls his brothers and parents maybe once a week and it's to barely check in. He would like to have more boundaries set for my family and our home, and I would like to have his family come over more often . Some fights you just can't win!

Him doing the household chores that he has promised to do and still hasn't done. And disipline!

We argue most about home/garden/landscape decisions. This sounds stupid and mundane as I type this! The root of these disagreements is $, time, and energy. We will have something that needs attention and we will have different ideas on a solution. He usually wants to take the cheapest way out and I have more expensive taste. He wanst to do the work himself or with a little help, but procrastinates. I would rather pay someone and have it done NOW.

We have a couple friends that are marriage and family therapists and they have both said that the top hot issues are money,sex, and childrearing.

We don't argue about money or sex...we are really compatible in those areas and very accomodating. But..the childrearing is a different story. We talk things out now...read books and have attended some parenting classes together which has pretty much solved that problem.

We don't get ourselves worked up over the small and annoying things. Usually if we mention lovingly that "I would really appreciate it if you'd do x,y or z" then we tend to comply. Nagging and being rude never works...usually becomes counterproductive and causes resentment.

Time and household chores - who should do them and how often they should be done.

Hi Suzanne. The same stuff you do :) I am working on myself to not let certain things get to me and to be more relaxed about my expectations.
My husband is a good man, works hard, honest, loves me, good dad...so I figure the rest of the stuff we can work out.

Good Luck.
Jilly

I guess we really do not have fights. To me fights are yelling and usually not handled in an mature adult way. We disagree, which we then discuss on how we can compromise.

Disagree on:
-- money (priorities on spending, why it cost "SOOO much" for clothes, shoes, makeup, food which I just give him the receipt to show this is what I spent I did not get much but quality... life is not cheap)

-- discipline (he thinks I am too soft since I go by love and logic, where at times I think the punishment is to harsh or does not fit)

-- Helping out with paying for college, my daughter is 5 is this is way in the future BUT we strongly disagree on this one. My dad helped me out, I did have a job throughout college, I did take out a student loan but he did help out and I WILL be doing the same for my daughter (not paying for all but helping out). My husband says he had NO help and that is the way it will be for his daughter... the thing is his parents tell me otherwise, he had to pay for college BUT they helped out with room/board, books and clothes. So there will be MANY long discussions on this when we get closer, we do have a college fund already started for our daughter so she will have a good chunck of change from us.

Money and how it is spent and child discipline issues. Also, sometimes our agendas don't click...so we have to work it out...I am not passive at all so it can get pretty lively at our house.

No husband, but bf and I argue about his snoring - he's got apnea and is getting treatment, is planning surgery soon, but I'm a light sleeper and can't sleep with his snoring. He thinks it's really awful to sleep apart and "not right." It doesn't matter to me - I need sleep, we're both asleep so we don't know where the other person is anyway. I keep trying every weekend to sleep with him but after 1.5 hours of misery I go into another room and sleep. Sometimes in the morning I'm tired and crabby and ticked that he wants me to keep trying this when it's not working; other times he gets angry because we can't sleep together. Very frustrating. I'm praying the surgery works for him.

Our only fights are about money. My husband has a great job, and I work 16 hours a week for the adult communication, and fun money. Once every single item is paid for each month, we have about $900 left over. To him- that $900 needs to go into savings. To me, that means we eat out for dinner, buy new things for the kids, take a trip to Costco and stock up on diapers, toiletries, and food. And after we have fun and enjoy life a little, whatever might be left can go into savings. You only life once, right? I'm annoyed that money is the kryptonite of all marriages. People go to bed at night and wake worried about money. I'm 33, and I'd like to live every day like its my last. hopefully my husband can come aboard my ship someday!

Hmm. We honestly don't fight much. We had 2 arguments this past 8 months, and that was because we were sooooo stressed out about moving (I did not want to!) for his job and then getting here and living in an apartment (too small!) and trying to get a house (but people kept pulling their houses of the market--they didn't want to go as low as the banks said they had to). It was frustrating! I was concerned, but my mom said it was to be expected under the circumstances.
That said, we have a really good team mentality for our marriage, and we remember that no matter how we feel temporarily, we love each other, respect each other, and our lives are WAY better together than they were before we were together. That keeps the fighting to seriously few and far between (the last time we fought was when he got bell's palsy and was flipping out over his face being paralized and mad at EVERYONE for it, but then he realized we didn't give it to him and we were trying hard to "make it better" but there was no making it better, it just had to run its course...but we made amends and all was ok before bedtime).
We DO get annoyed at each other though. I hate that he would put his cereal bowl in the sink and not rinse it or whatever, and then I have to scrub off dried on cement-flakes. Sometimes I get pouty and sad because he will work too much and I don't feel as connected. He gets annoyed with me for biting off more than I can chew and getting (or looking) stressed with all I'm juggling...he thinks I should chill out more. Or sometimes we misinterpret facial expressions. Today we were explaining the difference between alligators and crocodiles to our 4 year old and he said alligators are in North America and crocodiles are in Africa. I nodded but pursed my lips because I was thinking about Australia, and was there any in South America, I don't know...he thought I was "arguing" in my head and asked me about it. It gets on my nerves when people judge my expressions wrong, which is stupid, but I just said "No, I was wondering what about Australia and South America" so we looked it up online. We don't fight, but we still have nerves...we just choose to talk and handle it better. And, it helps teach the 4 year old that was in the room with us that if we have a question about something, we can look it up. No big deal.
We DO agree whole heartedly on money and discipline, thank goodness!

Our biggest disagreement has been about how to help aging parents who are having financial difficulties.

Generally we laugh off little things, like when I've just filled up the dishwasher and he comes in from work and puts all of his dishes from the day into the clean sink...I make fun of him and leave it at that, because there are things that I do that drive him crazy too (leave the recyclables on the kitchen counter forever instead of just putting them out the back door into the recycling bag). So whatever, those things don't really matter to us.

We used to fight about money, but that's because we were disorganized with it, didn't have a clear budget, and just got frustrated that we thought we weren't spending too much yet watched our savings slip down. So we acted on it, signed up for mint.com (free site to set up a monthly budget), and now we totally get what we're spending our money on and there's nothing to fight about. Of course we'd love to have more money to spend, but who wouldn't - and we're on the same team now when it comes to $.

The only thing that can still cause a fight is if one person has been getting stressed out about something/things and starts being cranky around the house. It's not really fighting I guess, more just giving each other emotional tune-ups when we need it.

Stupid stuff mostly. Usually it involves money, his help ( or lack there of) with the housework, his mom or a combonation of any or all of those things. Its allmost always something that we could have just talked about but one of us ( and I admit it is usually me) is upset about something and a little stupid thing like not throwing away an empty dog food can becomes the worst possible thing in the world at that very moment.

We fought about the same things.

We disagree about medicine and what should be given to our baby. She's 10 months old and in her short little life has had a multitude of colds/illness. It takes her a long time to get over being congested, resulting in nebulizer treatments and antibiotics. My husband believes the body will figure out how to get over things on it's own. I practically have to go behind his back to give our daughter Tylenol if she's teething! Also, we fight about sugar, and how much of it she should have. Also we fought about breastfeeding, and as a full time working mom it was hard to pump in a work place that isn't family friendly. We compromised on 6 months, and I stopped immediately afterward. I was so stressed out to produce and kayleigh was too. Every couple fights... I wish there was a way to make it all 100% all the time!~

We don't fight in the traditional sense of yelling or screaming...we have never called each other names. Fifteen years of marriage boil down to...he is super neat and I am not...I cannot clean well enough for him. He used to clean behind me...re-mop/sweep floors, reload the dishwasher, re-wash dishes, re-iron clothes...so finally we found a cleaning woman who cleans to his satisfaction. Our budget is super tight, but we make sure there is enough in there for her twice a month visits (he would love her to come every week...honestly so would I, but we are not made of money).

We do have discussions about free time...he spends every free hour working on remodeling our house. I want him to spend time with us as a family and me alone. The house project is getting ready to enter its second year and I almost walked out with the kids twice. I told him I wasn't sure he would even miss us until Monday morning...or there wasn't a meal on the table. Not to really leave him but to make a point. I just want the remodel over and have regular family time again.

I keep saying we have "rich people fights" meaning they are sooooo lame.

I JUST told him AGAIN he NEEDS new SMALLER clothes. He's lost so much weight since December his clothing is just horrible looking. He's replaced some clothes but some things keep coming out of the closet.

He's donated 5-6 bags already and could EASILY get rid of another three bags without blinking an eye. (I even set MONEY aside for new clothes for him!)

I'm actually worried he's going to get a shirt tail or a part of his work pants caught on something at work they are THAT baggy.

We've never fought about money in 25 years. It's POINTLESS. I'm so worried about having everything covered he KNOWS how wacked in the head I am about our credit score and always makes sure we're taking care of all the necessary things.

I bet the number one response here is financial or sex. Usually statistic wise that is the major two factors in divorce! My husband and I argue over both of those issues but to be honest with you here lately we both have been working our butts off to even HAVE an arguement. We don't even have the time to argue-lol! Who wants to argue anyways? I hate it but gosh darnit why did God have to make man and woman so completely different??? Maybe because one is supposed to compliment the other??? hmmmm....something to think about anyways??? We have been married for 14 together fo 16. We know each other pretty well but that also means we know how to push those buttons so neither one of us usually wins until I started to keep my silence and bite my tongue at most of his rampages and let God deal with him-hahahaha! Poor God! hahahaha! He has to deal with me too though so maybe it evens out?? ;())

Time and space! Who has it, who doesn't and how to get more of it.

"SO" and I argue about the division of labor. How when he is off he spends the majority of "HIS" time watching his shows, playing his video games or listening to his podcasts. I am fortunate to be a mostly SAHM, I have two homes I clean one on Monday and one on Friday, I also clean at a laundromat several nights a week and during weekend nights. When I am "off" my time is spent on maintaining the house, making meals and entertaining kids ( very little me time) I do not dispute the need for "me time" but I do dispute his dis-interest in spending More time with the family.
We rarely argue about money, we maintain separate accounts and have since about 2 years into the relationship...he is not very good with money, Over drafts on a regular basis and I could not deal with that.

I think the only thing we fight about is whose turn it is to change the baby's poopy diaper.

All I can really say is that you need to write these things on a list and you and he sit down and discuss each item and get to the root of it, coming up with solutions. Then don't fight about it again. My friend will call me and gripe about the same things, until I remind her how difficult SHE can be and she better be lucky this man puts up with her! LOL