Having a fight with your spouse is a stressful, upsetting experience that can leave you bewildered, frustrated and feeling stuck. In this episode, we want to give you a straightforward strategy that you can use to help break yourselves out of a downward spiral of increasing conflict and unhappiness.

The Issue: Rumination and Negative Cycles

A single argument is unlikely to have huge negative effects on amarriage. The problem is that after an argument couples tend to ruminate overit for a long time. You might keep going over and reliving the arguments inyour minds, causing you to feel upset and angry with your spouse all overagain.

Sometimes you will get "stuck" in this rumination to the pointwhere a single fight can continue to affect you for a long time afterwards[i].

That’s an issue because this leads to negative reciprocity. Meaning,next time there is the possibility of conflict, one or both of you are stillfeeling angry about the previous fight. You therefore react more strongly to thecurrent issue and you may bring up past hurts as well, causing the conflict toescalate. Perhaps your spouse says something hurtful or brings up a pastannoyance, and you retaliate in kind. This happens more and more as time goeson[ii].

Don’t miss this point: this pattern of negative rumination andreciprocity has been identified as the biggest reason that marital qualitydeclines over time as a result of conflict[iii].It’s not the fight itself that damages your marriage: it’sthe way you hold onto the hurt and keep bringing it up again and again. Ruminationand holding on to past hurts also has negative personal consequences such aslow mood, higher stress levels, higher blood pressure and reduced physicalhealth[iv].So it has cascading effects to other parts of your wellbeing.

The Best Thing To Do After a Fight: Break This Negative Cycle

Stopping this cycle of rumination and reciprocity lets the negativefeelings end when the fight ends.

This means that the negativity and upset stop affecting your mood andwill not influence how you react next time a potential conflict situationarises. Letting go of rumination also makes it much easier to make up with yourspouse and resolve the conflict issue[v].

You will not always be able to prevent conflict from happening, but bybreaking this cycle you can "draw a line" after it happens to ensureit does not keep affecting you.

Ok, you’re sold: now, how do you do this?

How To Break The Negative Cycle

1) Cool Off

Immediately after a fight our brains tend to be in self defense"fight or flight" mode, which makes thinking calmly and rationallyvery difficult. That’s the normal physiological response to a distressingevent. To compensate for that, give yourselves time to cool off before you comeback together to resolve the issue[vi].

For Christian couples, prayer can be a good way to help cool off from anargument as well. Research has shown that this can also make conflictresolution easier[vii].

Praying Through ConflictOnce again we’ve created a bonus guide for our much-appreciated supporters. This one looks more closely at how you can use prayer to strategically intervene in the conflict you’re experiencing by bringing you a healthier mindset, calming yourself down, and finding the wisdom you need in order to reconcile. You can get this by becoming a patron of The Marriage Podcast for Smart People.

Get the Guide!

2) Reappraise The Conflict

The best way to stop yourself getting stuck in rumination and bitternessis to think back over the argument from a different perspective and reappraisewhat happened. A research study from 2013[viii]tested this by training couples to imagine what their argument would havelooked like if a neutral friend was watching them.

Here’s what they taught their study participants: "Think about thisdisagreement with your partner from the perspective of a neutral third party