If you and your wife keep having the same argument, you can probably say what it’s about in a few words, like money, your phone, her mother, or the housework. What keeps it coming back is often a pattern. Knowing whether you’re facing a problem or a pattern changes what you do about it.
The difference between a problem and a pattern
A problem is a specific thing you disagree about, like which school to choose, whether to take a job in Orlando, or how much to spend on a truck. Once you solve a problem, it stays solved.
A pattern is what the two of you do each time a problem comes up. For example, one of you wants to settle it now, and the other feels the tension and pulls back. The first takes that as not caring and pushes harder. The second takes the pushing as an attack and goes quieter. Each reaction makes sense on its own, but together they can keep the same argument going for years.
In 1990, researchers Andrew Christensen and Christopher Heavey published a study of what they called the demand-withdraw pattern. In that study, who pushed and who pulled back depended partly on whose issue was being discussed. Husbands and wives both pushed harder when they wanted the change and pulled back more when their partner wanted it.
When the topic was something the wife wanted changed, the pattern more often ran wife-demand, husband-withdraw than the other way around. When it was something the husband wanted changed, that difference evened out. Men did withdraw more overall, but the topic mattered too. So if you’ve been told you avoid hard conversations, part of the reason may be that you have less to ask for in them.
How to tell whether it’s a problem or a pattern
Ask yourself three questions. Has the issue come back within a month after you settled it? Does the same fight start over different subjects, like the dishes, a text message, or something your brother said at Thanksgiving? Can you predict what each of you will say next? If you answer yes to any of these, you’re probably dealing with a pattern.
Why it doesn’t help to ask who started it
When the same fight keeps coming back, it’s natural to look for whose fault it is. In a pattern, though, each person’s reaction is both a cause and an effect. You may pull back because she pushes, and she may push because you pull back. You can’t point to one place where it started.
A more useful question is “What’s happening between us?” Asking whose fault it is means one of you has to lose, while asking what’s happening lets you look at the pattern together. It’s also the harder question, because it asks each of you to describe your own part.
How to interrupt a pattern
Talk about the pattern when you aren’t arguing. You might say, “I think when you bring something up, I go quiet, and when I go quiet, you push harder.” If you can both describe the pattern without blaming each other, you’ve already started to change it.
Agree on how you’ll take a break. If a break means leaving the room and never coming back to the subject, it’s still pulling away. A useful break includes a time to come back, like “Give me 20 minutes, and then let’s finish this.”
Be careful how you start, because the way a hard conversation begins often shapes how it ends. A complaint about something your wife did is workable, but a verdict on her character usually isn’t.
Change your own part first. It can feel unfair, but it’s the only part you control. A pattern can start to change when one person responds differently, even if the other doesn’t change right away. That takes the kind of patience the Bible describes: “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2, ESV).
When to get help
Patterns are hard to change from the inside, because you’ve both done your part so many times that it happens without thinking. In counseling, I help couples slow the conversation down so both people can see the pattern while it’s happening, without deciding who’s to blame.