Show me a couple who claims to never fight and I’ll show you a couple that is seriously suppressing some emotions and thoughts. Disagreements and conflict are normal and inevitable. When handled productively, they can provide valuable lessons.

If not handled in a healthy manner, well, consider that respected marriage Dr. John Gottman found that 69 percent of marital fights are never resolved. This means that couples often have the same fights over and over. A good starting point in addressing these trends is to identify the most common issues and triggers that create conflict within a marriage.

What Are Common Things Couples Fight About?

Money

No one wants something as material as money to negatively some as ethereal as love. But it happens — a lot. Think about the possibilities:

• Spending

• Earning

• Saving

• Credit cards

• Dividing bills

• Debt

• Budgeting

There is also the very common occurrence of financial infidelity. In this scenario, one partner is not transparent about their handling of money. Such secrecy is a form of betrayal and can result in a wide range of problems.

Sex and Intimacy

This is a topic fraught with emotional landmines. We all have insecurities and we all have expectations. Inevitably, these concepts intersect and trouble starts to brew. Without healthy, frequent communication, any couple can get caught in a cycle of resentment and shame related to areas like:

• Individual needs

• Frequency of sex

• Feeling bullied or pressured

• Feeling inadequate

• Jealousy

• Differences in sex drive and libido

• Differences in preferences and styles

Raising Children

It could begin with a conflict about whether or not to have children and, if so, when. Even after making those huge decisions, the arguments multiply. You can wage war over choosing your child’s name, whether to involve religion, and how involved the extended families are.

Over time, partners will recognize that their parenting styles will sometimes clash. What do the kids wear and what do they eat? Are they allowed to watch TV and how old must they be to have a cell phone? Speaking of cell phones…

Digital Life

A relatively new common fight issue revolves around all of those devices. You go out to dinner together, but you’re on your phones. And who is that person your partner is chatting with on Facebook? Why does he always text instead of call? Is she really paying attention to me? Married life already had its share of obstacles. Thanks to the digital age, we keep adding more.

Besides the board topics discussed above, here are a few other common things that couples fight about:

• Not enough quality alone time together

• Household chores

• Working too much or too little

• Politics, social issues, etc.

• Who do we socialize with?

• In-laws

• Personal pet peeves

Is This What Couples Really Fight About?

In some cases, yes. But remember the stat up top. John Gottman, the grandfather of modern marriage counseling says that almost 7 out of 10 fights do not get resolved. This often means that the ostensible reason for the fight is really a stand-in for something one of both of you does not want to address. This is where couples therapy can be so valuable.

Working in the presence of a skilled, unbiased guide, couples can do the work to explore underlying motivations and triggers. Such work affords them powerful awareness of what creates schisms and lingering feuds.

Couples often tell me about the patterns they experience. I call them cycles. Identifying these cycles is a giant step toward shifting how you handle disagreements. It places you in the position of recognizing patterns in real-time and hence nipping things in the bud. Let’s get you off the argument treadmill and onto the path of healthy conflict resolution.

If you want to learn more about how I think of couples counseling, stop by my marriage and couples counseling page. If you are in Minnesota and want to learn skills to reach these types of goals, let’s talk soon. I’m in Edina and serve the greater Minneapolis area. You can reach me by phone: 612-230-7171 or email through my contact page. Or you can click on the button below and self-schedule a time to talk by phone or video.