Mediate Michigan

Newlywed? Congratulations! Hope the wedding was grand. And now…let the fighting begin.

Marriage is a lot of things—a source of love, security, the joy of children, but it’s also an interpersonal battlefield, and it’s not hard to see why: Take two disparate people, toss them together in often-confined quarters, add the stresses of money and kids—now lather, rinse, repeat for the rest of your natural life. What could go wrong?

But if fighting is inevitable, why do so many marriages last—and, indeed, thrive—for a lifetime? The answer isn’t whether or not you fight, but how you go about it, as a study in the October issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family shows.

To conduct the research, Kira Birditt, a professor of human development and family studies at the University of Michigan, analyzed data from 373 participants in the Early Years of Marriage (EYM) project, a longitudinal study run by University of Michigan social psychologist Terri Orbuch. The EYM is an ongoing survey of couples who applied for marriage licenses in Michigan’s Wayne County in 1986. The participants have been tracked at four intervals in their marriages so far—the first, third, seventh and sixteenth years—and have been asked about how frequently they fight and how they resolve their conflicts, or don’t resolve them. (More on Time.com: Not Faking It: Why a Placebo Can Improve Sex Life)

via Are You at Risk for Divorce? It’s Not Whether You Fight, But How You Fight That Matters – TIME Healthland.