" Fighting for your love must be a conscious and intentional goal, because it’s frightening work and requires commitment to the relationship over and above your individual egos."
Dr. Jeffrey Title
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FIGHTING FOR YOUR LOVE MEANS FIGHTING FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIP. It is the key to surviving and triumphing
over the great threats to a happy pairing. This must be a conscious
and intentional goal, because it’s frightening work and requires
commitment to the relationship over and above your individual egos.
I tell couples that each partner has a sacred responsibility to guard the walls of their relationship from all perceived threats and bring up serious concerns so they can be resolved before they eat the relationship up alive. Anything that serious will be unpleasant and difficult to discuss. The timing will always be wrong. What’s worse and far more damaging is to put it off.
One of my goals in our longer, more intensive therapy sessions is to teach each partner how to fight fairly. The FIGHTING part of FIGHTING FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIP doesn’t mean having a drag out, knockdown screaming match. It means problem solving that focuses on the needs of the relationship as an entity which are separate from the needs of the individuals. Most couples, especially when they’re under stress, have difficulty sorting out all the tangled issues that are important to explore. Respect the inherent difficulty and give yourselves the kindness of sufficient time.
FIGHTING FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIP really means fighting for your happiness together, as well as fighting against threats to the relationship. Erecting and maintaining the solidity of this pillar requires conscious efforts to scrutinize it for signs of decay and pool your resources to take care of problems as they arise. This is not a win–lose or even a win–win resolution for either of the partners, but rather a win–win resolution for the relationship itself. It’s not what’s best for either you or your partner, but what’s best for your relationship. One or both of you may have to make some changes, shift some gears, make some compromises for the good of the relationship. Take an automobile that you invest a lot of money in and want to last a long time. I may like to speed, but that means too much wear and tear on the engine. You may prefer a red car to a white one, but red fades quicker and won’t hold up as well. If the car is important enough to us we’ll both make adjustments, because the car itself is worth more than color or speed.
The major issues couples fight over these days are fighting for enough time together, fighting for fidelity, fighting for independence that doesn’t destroy the whole relationship in the bargain. Whenever you notice these or any other issues you think threaten your relationship as a whole, you must take up the fight.
Your relationship needs you to go beyond fighting for survival to fighting to be happy together and proud of your union. Achieving the skill of FIGHTING FOR THE RELATIONSHIP is a key part of my therapy work with couples.
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In the therapy sessions couples learn how to FIGHT FOR LOVE. This means you both come to understand that you are really fighting for your happiness
as a couple. Whenever either you or your partner notice that
you’re not as happy as you used to be, you will gain the skills to stop and figure out
what’s wrong, what’s missing, and/or what you’ve let slide by the
wayside. In my own marriage and in advising other couples, I always
stress that being happy together is well worth fighting for. You
shouldn’t settle for anything less. Even in times of hardship and
tragedy, you can insist on being happy with how you, as a couple, are
handling the grief.
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