I do not come across them often but on occasion I have met couples (in my case always male/female but could be any combo) who claim they never, ever argue.
In each case I sat there in disbelief and questioned them on what “argued” meant to them.
They were quite clear, they never, ever argued.
There is a part of me thinking “lucky them” and another part of me thinking “you two have a seriously dysfunctional relationship”.
Obviously arguing with your SO is not fun or desirable. However, I think it is a normal and even healthy part of a relationship. Of course the details matter; how you argue is all important. There are good ways and bad ways to do it (and I suspect most people fall into the bad ways).
But that’s the thing. A good relationship has decent conflict resolution built in to it. A couple who never argues, to my mind, suggests one or the other capitulates too easily. It is nearly unbelievable that two people are so much of the same mind as to never have an opposing position.
I never heard my parents argue, ever. I asked my dad about this in later years, and he said, “There was never any need to argue. She was always right.”
The up side of this was that as children we never had the opportunity to play one against the other. Also we had a stable environment and knew it.
The down side is that I thought that this was standard – a married couple fighting surely meant they were headed inexorably toward divorce and didn’t love each other any more. The first time I had a serious argument with my fiance, I was devastated and thought it was all over, not realizing that you can be very, very angry with someone and still love them dearly.
I know a couple like that! They’re friends of friends, though my husband and I socialized with them a few times.
They used to live in the basement of the mutual friends’ house (garden level apartment) and helped work on that house while living there, until they got their own house. One night they had an argument so loud that the neighbors threatened to call the cops.
I even saw it happen - they picked a fight over something stupid (I don’t even remember what, it was years ago) while hosting friends in their backyard for a cookout, went into the house to finish the argument, and then things got quiet and they came out all flushed and happy maybe 15-20 minutes later.
Besides it being really fucking annoying and awkward for friends, I was worried about what they were teaching their toddler daughter about healthy ways to relate to a partner. Sure, it apparently works for their mutual kinks, but disturbing the peace, yelling in front of your kid, annoying your neighbors and friends, and the chance of the cops busting down your door in front of your startled child, only to have them find you making the beast with two backs? So not cool. I’m glad they moved far, far away so I didn’t have to deal with that.
I can’t figure out the “no real disagreements” people. Extreme passivity, not moving outside their mutual comfort zone, someone repressing their opinions? How would you manage to find someone who never disagreed with you on any issues of substance, ever?
I was raised with a person who was very argumentative, loved to yell, and had no idea how comical and ineffectual his yelling made him look. I’m sure he felt better after blowing up, but it served no purpose to fixing whatever situation he was in. I learned from an early age to control my anger and keep it in check simply because there are better ways to handle the situation than through looking ridiculous by yelling.
I’ve never argued in any of my relationships because I find that if I have to raise my voice it means I’m not expressing myself well. So, if something is bothering me I just try a different angle until I can make my point without making a scene. Likewise, if she starts to get exasperated and raise her voice I just listen more and ask questions to understand what she’s saying before things escalate to a fight.
Some people love conflict and that’s fine, but I don’t and the relationships that work best for me are the ones where we seek consensus and understanding from the beginning instead of escalating to a fight.
The OP clarified that these “no arguments” people claimed they never disagreed on anything more substantial than where to go out to eat. I’ll say my husband and I don’t argue, but I mean that we don’t raise our voices at each other, insult each other, etc. At worst we’ll exchange a few bickering comments with a little harsher tone, then calm down, get quiet for a while, then start over on talking again.
My ex and I used to be somewhat proud of the fact that we never argued. But, as the OP states, it was usually one or the other of us (or, often, both of us) trying to avoid confrontation and conflict. So we gave in instead of working through disagreements. We were nowhere near as good at communicating as we once imagined we were.
I’m not going to claim that any couple who doesn’t argue is clearly flawed, but that certainly didn’t work in my case.
Gay couple checking in - we have been together over 31 years and are probably in what you would consider a “no arguments” relationship. Sure, we will be slightly pissed off at each other for various little things, but it never turns into a screaming match.
Neither one of us is a drama queen, so we don’t go for hysterics - we talk.
We know what each other likes and dislikes - so that helps when deciding which film, which restaurant, which activity to do together. This doesn’t mean we might not go alone, or with other friends, to do something the other doesn’t like - but we don’t begrudge each other for doing so.
I have convinced him to try things he didn’t used to like but now does, and he has done the same for me. We actually have the same tastes in many things - films, travel, style - but there are some things he will never do (eat peanut butter) or I will never do (eat prosciutto).
But no - not once in 31 years have we ever had a screaming, throwing things, punching, storm-out-of-the-house fight. Maybe we are weird, but it works for us.
Weird. Or broken. My husband and I have a complicated history. We dated for years, broke up (and married other people, then divorced them), moved in together, broke up again for a year, got married, and around we go…
In the first five years of dating (not living together, not married) it was a point of pride for us that we never argued. We truly never did.
After living together and being married we still never argued,but I realized that in the dating time we never had to accomplish anything serious or important. We didn’t have any joint accounts or ventures that we needed to sort out. It’s probably more accurate to say we avoided any circumstance that might allow arguing than that we were impervious to arguing.
Years later when we WERE trying to achieve things together as a couple our communication style didn’t allow for the possibility of arguing. When things came up about which healthy couples would argue we were both so conflict averse that we’d simply retreat to opposite ends of the house and avoid eachother until it was time to pretend nothing had happened.
We both were raised by fairly messed up parents (actually our individual parents are fine people, but none of them knew how to parent or communicate with eachother) if that matters.
We’re currently separated and trying to see if we can learn to communicate well enough to fix things. I’m skeptical. I’ve been broken for a long time.
I guess it depends on what is meant by “argue”. I think you can have a perfectly healthy relationship that includes disagreements worked out through calm, kind discussion.
I was in a “no argument” relationship for over 7 years. It’s true that we were both really averse to conflict, and sometimes one or the other of us would not get what we wanted. But it’s even more true that we agreed on almost everything. And if there was a problem, we’d quietly talk it out. That’s when we went into Total Logic Mode.
OK, maybe a little weird. But it worked for us.
I have never ever been in a shouting match with a woman. At least not in my adult years.
I’ve been living with and/or married to my wife for about 12 years and we don’t really argue. We have disagreements, or course, but we usually just talk it through. Usually, whatever the issue is, one of us is more invested in the outcome of the disagreement and that person gets his/her way.
I’m in this sort of a relationship now. We do, in fact, agree on most things, and when there’s a disagreement, it’s usually a matter of who can agree to the other person’s position faster or more insistently. Both of us would rather go along with the other person’s plan than have an argument, so we end up giving in to each other pretty quickly. It balances out, too; I end up getting my own way about half the time anyway, simply because she’s arguing that she had her way last time and I don’t want to argue with her.
Never had it in the current relationship. It’s kind of a shame, but never fighting is worth it.
We’re both quite agreeable people who are happiest in making other people happy. Were we with more dominant types, we might be unhappy because we’d be forced to argue to get what we want, which is very stressful. No one is repressing their opinions; we both talk about what we want, then make a decision. But because we both dislike arguing so much, we do what it takes to avoid arguments.
As to finding such a person: Dumb frickin’ luck. I’ve been in more combative relationships, and those were fine too. However, this relationship has almost zero stress, and it’s really comfortable because of that.
I wouldn’t assume weird and/or dysfunctional; it takes all kinds of people to make a world, and all kinds of relationships for those people. I don’t like conflict, and neither does my husband; we’ve both had relationships with lots of conflict and fighting, and neither of us enjoyed it. I’d rather bite my tongue and give him space to cool off and come back later to figure out what do do instead of arguing and shouting at each other.
My wife and I are non-arguers. There are multiple reasons for this:
-I am generally conflict-averse. I would rather accede to my wife’s demands than get into a huge fight about something trivial.
-We are both logical. She posted on the SDMB long before I did, for example. She was also a card-carrying member of American Atheists (literally). As a result we would rather discuss something and come to a mutually beneficial conclusion (or determine the “correct” course of action) than have a pointless screaming match.
-At the risk of generalizing, my wife is not highly emotional (like many women) and I am not very stubborn or hotheaded (like many men), qualities which can tend to inflame situations and create arguments where none need exist.
-Most importantly, we don’t do dumb shit that pisses of the other person. We try to be considerate and thoughtful in our words and actions, which is like 95% of the battle.
Never arguing? I’ve never heard of that. Seriously, how can you never disagree about anything? Yes, it’s weird. By the way, there are healthy ways to argue.
