6 hours arguments that need to happen right now are a pretty big red flag...
You can work through it, you just have to care enough. We no longer have arguments longer than maybe 20 minutes now. It can just be personality types and where you are in life.
But a valuable person in your life? You work through that stuff to keep them, even if it's hard.
We went through the same. A few years of me getting my head on straight and not escalating fights so I could effectively communicate "I don't want to fight about this" and either "this isn't a criticism, this is something that's important to me" or "you're right, I'll start doing that" has made our fighting dry up almost entirely.
Having been on the receiving end of this - don’t keep trying to make it work if it gets to this point. Work on being a grey rock to them (non reactive) until you can get yourself and others to safety.
Also don’t tell them you’re leaving until you have a viable plan B that they can’t find. Kids make it much much harder, and unfortunately around 2 yrs old is often when it gets the toughest and this can happen.
Would either of them stop fighting instantly if there as a gun to their heads or offered a million dollars?
If the answer is "yes", then it's entirely within their control to solve the problem.
The only people I think that fail this are psychopaths, and I think those are rare.
the solution then is obviously to learn to resolve arguments in a short time. actually, resolving the argument itself is not even the issue, but knowing that we still love each other is what matters.
so what needs to happen right now is to find a way for both of us to calm down, maybe hug and kiss and then get back to work until you have time to discuss the issue later.
So much this. Having been taking classes and reading up on intentional/effective communication strategies for relationships one of the key aspects is having a way to say "i love you and acknowledge your grievance however i do not have the time, energy or emotional strength to discuss this now" this can be distilled down to a phrase, maybe just "pause" or a gesture followed by some kind of display of affection.
It's also critical that the other partner respects it. There's very little that's more damaging and less productive than continuing to argue with someone who has mentally checked out.
My ex would yell at me (red flag) until i just couldn't anymore, not listen to any requests for breaks (another red flag) then physically prevent anyone from leaving the room until she was satisfied (huge red flag) - even if you had to go to work.
The problem being, if they were already prone to spending concerted, honest effort in facing and talking about their problems, they would be a lot less likely to be in that place.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
If your behavior is outside of the social norms (eg. you leave dishes out for others to clean) then admit fault and move on. If they bring something else up maybe you are correct in your thesis but why are you defending yourself when you are being a slob?
This is usually the result of the argument never happening otherwise.
I’ve been on the other end, trying to bring a subject for 10, 20 times. But it’s a big enough issue that when it’s brought up the other party feels they “need more head space”, “not ready now”, “need to get rid of some other stuff first”.
This probably means I’m not reading the room well enough, but thing is, the other party doesn’t come back to the discussion table when they’re ready to talk it out.
So at some point you come to the conclusion that timing doesn’t really matter, and except if their parents are literally on their dying bed, you’ll have to plow through their circumstances if you ever want that discussion to happen. So we ended up with a 3h hour cry and sob discussion in a parking lot after buying toilet paper in the middle of the night.
I had a similar experience: when my partner said she wasn't ready to talk now, I asked her to let me know whenever she's ready to talk it over, yet couple days later it's me bringing up the subject again, to similar effect. I guess some people just like to sweep things under the rug forever...
We went to couples therapy and the communication strategies we learned really and while we still have arguments they tend to be much more productive, but it requires work.
