It’s the same with my wife and I (8 years). We’ve never had an outright yelling argument, a few times a year we get a little pissy with each other.
I think that for most people, a disagreement is not the same thing as an argument or a fight. I haven’t ever had a fight or an argument with my spouse, but we disagree all the time about lots of things. We never argue about the kind of stuff you mention – the little things the other does that make us crazy – but that doesn’t mean those things don’t exist.
My MIL said it was because we are both extremely competitive and are both vicious power mongers by nature, so we avoid a head to head in the interest of the public good and order. 
Gay guy checking in…and we just celebrated our 27th anniversary together on February 28th.
People find it hard to believe, but we have never once had a fight in all those years…yes, the occasional snit-fit…not speaking tp each other for half an hour or so regarding some nonsense, but we have never had an argument with slamming doors or screaming or anything even resembling physical violence.
My ex husband?-- 2-3 x a week, usually after he was drunk.
My current SO? Maybe 2-3 x in the past 5 years. And only ONE of those was what I consider a true fight. We don’t always agree but are able to discuss stuff without the arguing.
He’s very laid back and that helps.
My husband and I didn’t fight at all until about two years into our relationship. When he did start fighting, it required professional intervention to stop. Since then, our fighting goes in spurts. For example, we might not fight for two months straight, and then fight and make up every day for a week. Then we realize we’re falling into a contentious pattern, which indicates we are stressed out about something, and we make the commitment to address it as a team, not adversaries. For us, it’s all about vigilance. The moment we stop paying attention, we start to run into conflict.
To answer Phlosphr’s question back in post 10:
No kids, no pets, live well within our means, and (until very recently) no relatives living within 500 miles. Those facts alone remove the majority of the trigger things most people use to launch arguments.
Overall, I think Queen Tonya said it best:
Note much of the difference is in the hearing, not the asking.
We’re both hyper-rational people of low emotional tone. We also met in our late mid 20s and were about 30 when we got married. By then we both had responsible jobs, adequate incomes, and stable personalities. All those things contribute to an easy start to the marriage & to its staying power.
You mentioned magazines on the couch or dishes in the sink; we do have our foibles which would grate if we allowed them to. Early on we came to an understanding that I suggest is the centerpeice of happiness, not only in marriage but in life:
In most cases the outcome is a little of each. She still leaves piles of stuff here & there which in my magical perfect world would not happen. But she does half as much of it than in the beginning, and I’ve forced myself to decide that I don’t mind the remaining ones. I really don’t. I now see them as evidence of a house with lived-in comfort, rather than an affront to engineered a-place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place uptightness.
Meanwhile, I spend too much time on the Dope for her taste, but much less than I did before she first mentioned it. In fact, I need to get going …
And so it goes.
My husband I and I also fight about every 2 to 4 weeks. The main source of our fights is our different personalities: I am an extrovert and he is an introvert. He likes to spend time by himself, while I like to be around people. For this reason, it tends to be me that “starts” the fight, usually because I’m upset that we’re not spending enough time together. I’ll get upset about something in particular, like him spending too much time on WoW, and I’ll basically sulk for awhile before I figure out how to tell him what I’m upset about or how we can fix it. Meanwhile, he’ll figure out that I’m upset and start asking me what’s wrong. We’ll talk about whatever the issue is, and then we’ll make up (I love that part).
It’s funny how we fight, though. I will yell with my sister if I’m mad, because things escalate so quickly, but I never yell with my husband, nor does he with me. Our fights tend to be very quiet because we spend more time thinking about how to say what we need rather than actually talking. I hate being mad at him, it feels awful. I don’t like to say anything that will hurt him, and vice versa, so name-calling or raised voices are just not done in our relationship.
This is the way that my boyfriend and I try to approach things too. We know we care about each other and so when one of us says something that sounds bad we give each other the benefit of the doubt before getting angry over it.
So far, in three years of knowing each other (though we only recently became an Official Couple) that has saved us from getting into any genuine arguments. We never yell at each other or call each other names.
We disagree about lots of stuff - we have some pretty major differences on politics, religion, etc. But we don’t argue over them. We can talk calmly about our different views and still like/respect each other regardless of the differences. 
After 6 years my wife and I found ourselves arguing and fighting more than we were comfortable with. We took the step of seeking counseling, and found it helpful but expensive. After we stopped seeing the counsellor we found ourselves starting up with the disputes again, and I noticed it usually happened when no one had had time for cleaning the house. So I hired a housekeeper to cover the basics once a week- it’s a LOT cheaper than therapy and has pretty much eliminated the fighting from our relationship.
My relationship is a lot like Ferret Herder’s.
Sure, my spouse irritates me sometimes, but there’s a lot of vice versa. Before I fly off the handle and start in on him about something I wish he’d do differently, I think about all the things he could jump on me for. I try to respect his individuality and why he does things the way he does. If something’s really causing problems, then I try to wait and talk about it when I’m not mad.
We went through a period where we were having a lot of petty arguments and we pledged to “put the pin back in the grenade” more often. That is, we recognized how we both were exacerbating things and letting one person’s bad mood escalate into an argument (i.e. responding to a question with “What’s THAT tone supposed to mean…”). We got better about that. So we can get snippy, but we generally don’t let the snippiness disintegrate into a full-blown argument where we unproductively hurt each other’s feelings.
Another thing that helped our relationship, oddly, was spending time with (and being completely appalled by) a couple who ran each other down all the time. Yikes. I don’t miss their company but they made me appreciate my spouse, and our interactions, a lot more.
Oh, and hiring a housekeeper also helped. Heh.
Sorry - I should have qualified. We don’t yell or scream or try to hurt each other with words, just have misunderstandings that result in over-long conversations about what happened. Said conversations include a lot of “Well, you said…,” “Yeah, but this is what I meant.” “Oh. Well you didn’t sound that way at all.” “Well what do you expect me to do? How can I say it different?” “Don’t make it sound like I want to censure you.” Blah, blah blah…
We have yelled at each other exactly twice since we’ve been together and we’ve been together for seven years. I was just thinking about the “discussions” that we have where one person’s already upset/stressed and the way it turns into something greater (and far longer) than it ever should have.
I think most of it is caused by our different styles. For example, I’m more likely to make a wisecrack - not about him but about the argument or how silly the whole situation is - at an inappropriate time to try to lighten the mood and move back toward a calmer, more lighthearted discussion. I’ve just about managed to nip that habit, but it still happens every once in a while and does NOT go over well.
On the other hand, my husband tends to repeat what he thinks I did “wrong” again and again and again, which makes me feel like I have to explain myself a dozen different ways, even though in his head, he’s just trying to confirm that I understand him. Then eventually I say, “Please stop repeating it - I get it. This is why you’re mad, right?” Then I tell him, inevitably miss some nuance he was thinking of, he repeats yet again and when I tell him to stop again, he gets sulky and I get annoyed.
Tues was our first one - day after my surgery. I was hurtin, medicated (but not enough to have that happy-g0-lucky-i have the answer to world peace-feeling), and my temper was ready to leap out like a cat hunting its prey. One simple misunderstanding was easily blown into the proportional size of a nuclear bomb, and the awe of a mushroom cloud as it rises. Fully aware of its devastating affects, he suited up to “come and get me”.
Luckily he understood I was medicated and not thinking clearly. He mad a mistake, I launched the missiles. Thank goodness my military funding sucks and the bombs were short lived and fizzled out, no harm to anyone.
My SO is such a great guy
Interesting thread responses. We’ve been married 15 years and no, we don’t fight. Ever. We may have differences of opinion about politics or people or whatever, but we don’t “fight” over it. No shouting, no throwing things, no pouting or stomping around, no nights on the sofa, no drunken binges. We respect each other and are completely truthful with each other and it works.
My g/f tells me that we don’t fight at all, she gets angry and I refuse to take part in any argument. She reckons its bad for my health.
The only time we do anything that approaches “fighting” is when it is something that we don’t have a personal stake in–like linguistic theory or the significance some minor politician’s past career. When we both really don’t care we will get a little histronic just for fun.
When it’s stuff that’s personal–and personal can be “do we want children?” but also “why do you dirty so many dishes when you boil water”, we don’t fight. We maybe mildly tease, and at time we have a Long Boring Talk, but we don’t fight. We don’t like to hurt each other.
Almost never. Both of us had been in relationships that involved constant fights before we met and both of us hated it. Pretty much from the get-go we decided we had to start and maintain clear communication. We put a lot of work into it in the early years and it paid off - the fights have been so rare I could count them on two hands after almost 20 years together. When we do have a bit of tension, it’s usually something along the lines of “I know you aren’t happy and you are raining on my parade, so tell my what I can do to help so I can be happy again”.
We have our mechanisms - he knows that if it starts to get too close to a fight I’ll go take a walk or do housework or something. It’s sort of my way of counting to ten. When I feel I have my thoughts together and can talk without getting angry we sit down and discuss things. Since he’s the one in the relationship who wants to talk everything out, I’m the one who gets to take time-outs most of the time.
That’s me and my husband, too. Together 3 years.
Us too. 12 years.
The Bloke and I have been together for a few years now, and have actually lived together for nearly 12 months…and we haven’t had a real fight yet. We have had the odd grouchy moments as mentioned above, but in terms of a seriously inflamed disagreement, nada.
It’s not that we are super-compatible…shit, we are as unalike as two people can possibly be: he’s a prim and proper person who rarely swears, never drinks and watches the cricket. Me? The fucken opposite, AND I smoke as well just to add insult to injury! 
But being now in our senior years, we have come to appreciate that others’ have their ‘thing’ and that getting into a hissy fit each and every time something pisses you off is really a waste of time. It’s about not sweating the small stuff I guess. I remember relationships I had in my youth, and I would get seriously disturbed when even the slightest hiccup occured. Now I just breathe and assure myself the angst will pass…and it DOES!
IOW, we have never had a fight.
Almost every fight I’ve ever had with my wife have been about money, or the stress from not having enough money. We fought more when we were poor, and now we are comfortable we fight way less. We had a disagreement last week stemming from an approaching stressful situation (with financial repercussions) and when discussing it with a neighbor he mentioned that they didn’t think my wife and I ever fought. I assured him that we do indeed fight, as I’m sure almost every couple in the history of the universe do.