How To Have a Good Fight

by Brian Bill
Published October 2, 2007

Most married couples don’t really know how to have a good fight. That reminds me of a husband who said, that after 50 years of marriage, he and his wife had only one fight. When asked what his secret was he said, “The fight started on our honeymoon and I’m still waiting for it to end!”

In the fourth chapter of the Book of Ephesians, we’re given four skills to cultivate so we can have good fights, whether we’re married or not.

1. The first skill is to be honest. This is found in verse 25: “Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully…” In his book, “The Day America Told the Truth,” James Patterson reports that 91% of Americans lie routinely about matters they consider trivial, 86% lie on a regular basis to their parents, and 70% lie to their spouses.

2. The second skill is to be angry. This doesn’t sound quite right, does it? God gives us the right way to be angry in verse 26: “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” Don’t let it simmer and splash into the next day. And make sure you figure out the source of your rage. I like what Phyllis Diller once said: “Why go to bed mad when you can stay up and fight!” It’s much better to work it out before cashing out for the night. Don’t allow bitterness to get the best of you because bitterness is like swallowing a bottle of poison and then waiting for the other person to pass away.

3. The third skill is to be kind. Verse 32 says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another...” The quickest way to bury a marriage is by using a lot of little digs. Instead of looking to compliment, encourage and build up, many couples criticize and cut each other down. In a 20-year study of 2,000 married couples, researchers have uncovered one important predictive factor in determining which couples will stay married for the long haul. If you want to have a marathon marriage then you need to have a 5-to-1 ratio of positive to negative comments.

4. The fourth skill is to be forgiving. We see this in the second half of verse 32: “Forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” If you want to have a good fight, remember that the goal is not to see who wins, but to be reconciled and restored. When that happens, you both win.

An elephant and a crocodile were swimming in the Amazon, when the elephant spotted a turtle sunning himself on a rock. The elephant went over to the turtle, picked him up and hurled him far into the jungle. The crocodile turned to the elephant and said, “What did you do that for?” The elephant answered, “That turtle bit me almost 50 years ago.” The crocodile could hardly believe it and said, “And you remembered him after all these years? Boy, you sure have a good memory.” “Yep,” says the elephant. “Turtle recall.”

Do you suffer from total recall of every wrong that has ever been done to you? If you don’t develop the ability to forgive, you will not have a very good marriage, and you won’t experience growing friendships with others. The best way to learn this skill is to experience first-hand the forgiveness that comes from confessing your moral shortcomings and sins to God. Once you taste the freedom that comes from having your own sins forgiven, it will be far easier for you to give the gift of grace to those around you.

To say it another way, you will be unable to forgive as God wants you to until you’ve experienced the forgiveness that comes only as a result of Christ’s forgiving work on the cross. Then you can be honest, angry and kind…and instead of nonstop friction you can begin to fight fairly.

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