(You can read more details explaining how we are doing the dare here:  The Love Dare with FirefighterWife)

Love Fights Fair

If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

Mark 3:25

Excerpt from The Love Dare Book:

“…Pretty soon your mate started to slip off your lofty pedestal, and you off of theirs.  The closeness of marriage began stripping away your public facades, exposing your private problems and secret habits.  Welcome to fallen humanity.

At the same time, the storms of life began testing and revealing what you’re really made of. Work demands, health issues, in-law arguments, and financial needs flared up in varying degrees, adding pressure and heat to the relationship.  This sets the stage for disagreements to break out between the two of you.  You argued and fought. You hurt.  You experienced conflict.  But you are not alone. 

Every couple goes through it.  It’s par for the course.  But not every couple survives it.

…

Married couples who learn to work through conflict tend to be closer, more trusting, more intimate, and enjoy a much deeper connection afterwards.

But how?  The wisest way is to learn to fight clean by establishing healthy rules of engagement.  If you don’t have guidelines for how you’ll approach hot topics, you won’t stay in bounds when the action heats up.

Basically there are two types of boundaries for dealing with conflict: “we” boundaries and “me” boundaries.“

Last fall we had one of our biggest fights ever.  I think we broke like 6 of the 7 “we” boundaries during that fight.  It was awful and hurtful and terrible.    The only “we” boundary we did not break was this one:

Failure is not an option.  Whatever it takes, we will work this out.

And so we did.  After a few more days of hurt and long emails and texts and finally realizing it was stupid.  And dumb.  And petty.  And we both softened, hugged, and made up.  But what a waste of a few days!  We spent them angry at each other.    I can remember earlier times when he wasn’t so ready to learn to “fight fair” and thought it would be ridiculous to have to learn that.  Honestly, I’m not sure either of us wants to spend time writing out together the rules.  Since we’re too familiar with breaking them with each other, it’s at the top of our minds and something we strive to avoid naturally.   But it’s taken 10 years to get here.

If you are only a few years into your marriage, don’t waste the days we did in arguments.  Try today’s dare.

“ Be of the same mind toward one another.  (Romans 12:16)”

Today’s Dare

Talk with your spouse about establishing healthy rules of engagement.  If your mate is not ready for this, then write out your own personal rules to “fight” by.  Resolve to abide by them when the next disagreement occurs.

Big question for the fire wives…..what’s a firehouse related “we” or “me” rule?