Very un-Valentines, I know. How often do you fight with your SO and how long does it last.
My wife and I don’t fight often. About 4 times a year, but when we do it starts with a short burst of yelling followed by days of cold shoulder. Sometimes its goes for longer than a week, because we’re both stubborn.
We don’t always apologizes. Sometimes we both relax, start talking to each other, and don’t bring up the fight.
We have a hour-long, yelling fight maybe twice a year. I dunno if it’s actually an hour. Feels much longer. Sometimes there is a long, icy silence (often overnight) between two bouts, but usually we can get things hashed out in one session, and I don’t think we’ve ever gone to round three.
Much more frequently (every couple of months) somebody says something rude and snippy, and the other person either gives the wounded puppy-dog look or says something rude and snippy back. Then the silent treatment. After a half an hour the aggressor always comes slinking along to offer apologies.
We never used to shout. Very rarely fought, really - yet, somehow, I was perpetually appologizing, often just to appease her. Voices would rise but not to screaming volumes. She’d swear at me when she was clearly losing the argument or her patience. I never swear in an argument because I find name calling really takes away from the line of reason I try to establish. Which, of course, would drive my ex even more nuts. Which, I suppose, was the desired effect.
I could never go to sleep angry and I never would let her storm off to sleep on a couch. I’d always try to come to some sort of agreement or truce and talk her back into bed. Towards the end, that didn’t always work and I made much less of an effort to do that.
Her favourite trick was the passive aggressive thing. Made me crazy but I never could figure out how to fight that effectively.
We’ll go for a long time without a fight, and then we are under each other’s skin for weeks at a time. In fact, we’re currently residing under each other’s skin. Boy does it suck.
Much less since I learned the art of apologizing even when I don’t mean it. And since my wife lives on the other side of the country, and I can leave my underpants wherever I please. And I stopped using utensils several months ago.
Thankfully, my Lady and I seldom disagree, let alone let grievences elevate to the level of ‘fighting.’ But when we do, we’ve got one policy- don’t leave the house, and don’t go to bed, angry at each other. The hurt takes time to go away, but we’re always cognizant of the fact that we’d never want our last words said to each other be in anger.
So, usually a blow-up, a few minutes apart, and then reconciliation. It’s worked pretty well for the last 8 years.
About once a month or so, we’ll have a snippy back and forth. These are normally one person taking the normal everyday problems to new heights of bitchiness. Nine out of tens times, the issue has nothing to do with us. These types of fights are brief, less than 5 minutes with an hour or so of silence.
Maybe twice a year we get into what I call an “Intrinsic” fight. These are those times when certain character traits (me: procrastinating cheap-skate, she: anal neat-freak) just piss you off that day. These last longer, probably because they’re more like personal attacks and are generally like the first but with longer exchanges, and with the addition of bringing up past issues and the occasional swear. The silent treatment after these has a typical duration of 4-8 hours.
We rarely get into fights, and when they do, they’re small, and only include a few of small snips at each other such as “Shut up, you’re wrong.” and “NO I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE.” Our fights are over small stuff, such as when I won’t let him watch what he wants on my dorm tv when the people who live there want to watch something else. Then again, we’ve only been together for about a year and a half.
We really don’t. We will disagree, but we don’t argue or fight.
The ex-wife: Combination Little Princess+Passive/Aggressive Ankle-Nipper. The more I didn’t want to fight, the louder she got. Usually, a few good shouts was enough to satisfy her, but eventually I grew tired of it, along with the screaming phone calls to my office and general low-level castigation, so I just stopped responding. Then she got her shouting, among other things, from other sources, hence the “ex-” prefix. I should have known better.
The ex-girlfriend: We never argued. Ever. On the rare occasions that she’d get snippy at a certain time of the month, she’d almost immediately apologize. On the still-unusual-but-not-quite-so-rare occasions when I’d be less than thoughtful, I’d turn around and immediately apologize. It was a fantastic change from every relationship I’d ever had or seen.
And then, one day, she came in and said, “I think we need to talk about this relationship.” And that was it. 
There really wasn’t much talking to be done, actually. She didn’t have much of an explaination–“You’re, great, but you’re just not The One,”–and…so it goes.
One of the reasons I haven’t seriously dated in the last three years is because I can’t handle this stupid need for pointless conflict that most people seem to enjoy on a regular basis. I had one girl–who I’d just met for a “coffee date”–tell me that yelling, screaming, and throwing things (along with the occasional visit to the ER?) is just a healthy way of communicating in a relationship, and if I couldn’t do that I shouldn’t even think about dating her. I thought about it for about 10 milliseconds, agreed with her, and paid the cheque. That didn’t stop her from berating me all the way back to my car.
Jeez, I’m glad I didn’t ask her to dinner.
Where’s my Grace Kelly?
Stranger
Except under another woman’s bed
My husband and I don’t fight much, either. In the five years we’ve been together, we’ve fought probably about five times. It usually lasts for a couple of hours between original blow-up and getting back to normal.
We have a way of getting our frustrations out in the open by kinda joking about them that alleviates a lot of the tension, I believe (you’d have to ask him if he thinks the same. I hope he does.)
We argue like 10 year olds, too, and that seems to help. It’s hard to get seriously angry at someone who responds to you with, “Oh yeah? Well, so’s your face.” and sticks their tongue out at you. 
Stranger, I don’t think conflict is necessary for a healthy relationship (unless you’re in high school, maybe). I don’t think mature people need to communicate like that. Here’s hoping your find your Grace Kelly.
We bicker constantly. We have been together 8 years and have ironed out a lot of the major kinks. These are over little things but don’t cause trouble.
Our major fights never last long, either, and they’re probably twice a year. Cold shoulder *kills * me, it’s what my mother did to me, so we have more or less agreed to try to avoid that as much as possible.
I agree, but I’m shocked by the number of women who bring it up in The Interview. Well, not that I’ve even gotten to The Interview stage very frequently in the past few years, but when I have, it seems to be a real hot-button, along there with The Occupation, The Family, and the always nebulous Chemistry. (Just to prove I know chemistry, I made the “Top Five Things You Can’t Live Without” on my online profile the five most common elements in organic chemistry, but thus far no one has either a) gotten the joke, or; b) thought it was very amusing.)
According to the Bureau of Artifically Manufactured Surveys, 7 out of 10 mature adults enjoy insulting each other more than they like a good Pinot Noir. And the other three are too shell-shocked to leave their homes after dark.
Stranger
The Mrs. and I fight about every 2-3 months. I usually pick the fight :smack: , mostly over small things like cleanliness or putting laundry away. My darling wife is much more laid back than I am.
It’s usually about 1/2 hour long, and takes about an hour for me to calm down enough to think rationally again.
The interesting thing is that we’ve NEVER fought over money, raising kids, family, or any of the important things. It’s always about some little thing that sets me off.
I have taught my wife to bicker, though. When we fist started dating, she took everything I said as gospel. Now, she argues over the color of the wall in the house, when we bought the car, and everything else. She’s much more interesting this way.
We never get in real fights. I will get bitchy occasionally–though in the past few months that has been reduced considerably for various reasons. At the first sign of conflict, he becomes a turtle and just won’t respond. Which gives me time to think about what the hell I’m angry about and realize I’m being an idiot, nine times out of ten. Then I’ll be ashamed of myself and quiet. So we’ll both be quiet for hours until one says “So, are you still mad at me?”
And that’s that.
Great stories. I thought we fought rarely, but apparently 4 times a year is not all that unusual.
We use to yell it out, but now she turtles as well. This actually pisses me off more, so I wonder if she does it on purpose.
That seems really weird to me (not doubting you, it just sounds weird that people would want to live that way). I love a good debate, but I don’t care for fighting at all.
And I’m sure your organic chemistry quotes are very amusing.
Are you my SO? I was that way. My current also taught me to bicker. he says almost the same thing!
It might just be a regional thing. What I’ve found in SoCal (and mind you, this is mostly online profiles, so people with a little more social verve might be different) is that women want:
[ul]
[li]Tall–minimum of 6’. It doesn’t matter whether the woman is 4’10’, she wants 6’.[/li][li]If not actually wealthy, well-off, and with the apperance to match. If you don’t drive a BMW or a Porsche, it’s an immediate turn-off for some.[/li][li]Into the current “scene”; music, clubs, whatever. There seem to be very few (in my age range) who are up for hiking, sailing, or just generally being out-of-doors.[/li][li]Non-literate; reading is a big turn-off for some reason. People in LA just don’t seem to read much. (How’s that for painting with a broad brush?)[/li][li]And finally, argumentative. I’ve seen several on-line profiles that literally demand that you be willing to argue, e.g. “I want a hot man with a hot temper.” (Real quote) I don’t want to say it’s a Latino thing, and in fact most of the women saying something like this look pretty pale-faced to me, but it’s definitely a common attitude that comes from somewhere.[/li][/ul]
I don’t know why; it wasn’t like this in Milwaukee or Chicago, and from what little I know it’s not true as you go up the coast, but here it is the thing. Gawd, I know my neighbors upstairs and in front have some wicked arguments on a regular basis, and this is through two cycles of renters.
Every coffee date I’ve been on in the last three years has had one or more of these kind of weird deal-breakers come up; either I’m not willing to play along with this kind of thing, or I don’t have enough family, or I don’t make enough money/drive the right car/dress in the right style. For how laid back SunSoCalians are supposed to be, I find them to be a pretty uptight bunch. But then, I’m not working from a large sample size here, and I haven’t really gotten past the initial barricades to know how entrenched this attitude really is, or if it’s just an excuse for some other off-putting thing I’m doing (which could definitely be the case.)
But it’s rather discouraging, all the same. I just want to find a nice university somewhere, submerge myself into some academic program/research, and buy a dog. (Cue violin.)
We now return you to your regularly scheduled OP.
Stranger