Does anyone else have to go through this nonsense? How do you handle it?
My parents (deceased) never fought. That is, I don’t remember a time when both of them were fighting. It was always my father fighting and my mother trying to talk sense to him, and always failing. Not just my mother, but just about anyone else. I imagine he’s still fighting . . . from six feet below.
My parents argued quite a lot when I was a kid. It got better late into my teen. I voted “head for the nearest exit” because I generally got up and went into my room if they started fighting in front of me.
My parents haven’t had a fight in about seven years, so I voted that ‘My parents never fight.’ Before that, they used to have about one annually, which would stress me out immensely; I’d always move quickly to some part of the house where I couldn’t hear them. They’d apologize to me afterwards, knowing that I took it much worse than my younger siblings did. I think they’re probably the most happily married people I know.
My parents (both deceased) fought constantly. Then they separated, so I haven’t had to deal with this in a long time. When I was younger, I’d go to my room.
My parents had the good manners to get divorced before we children were forced to intervene in their fights.
My parents rarely fight but when they do I try to offer a solution (if it’s an issue where I could offer any help or perspective) or pipe in to ask something distracting (if it’s something I can’t help with). But their fights are extremely infrequent, at least in front of me, and are usually about relatively minor things that just need some calm discussion.
Once when I was about 12, though, they did have a really bad fight. Yelling, throwing things, etc. There was nothing to do then but get the hell out of the way and pretend we didn’t exist. I just grabbed my 10-year-old brother and got us both into my room and locked the door. Dad eventually stormed out of the house and drove off. My brother slept on my floor that night. The next day, my parents made up and my dad apologized for scaring us. But it was awful. I hear about kids whose parents fight like that all the time and I can’t imagine how to live with it.
My parents have been divorced for years. I was young when they fought but my older brother tells me I’d just go to my happy place in my head. Which explains why when my wife and I argue I make things worse because I stop laying attention.
i grab the tv remote.
I usually just got the hell out if I could.
Once when I was a teenager, I was cooking something in the kitchen and I yelled a question to my mom at the other end of the house. My dad was in between and started yelling at me for yelling. Then my mom started yelling at him for yelling at me. I just turned off the burner and left the house for several hours. When I got back my dad was gone. Unfortunately he was back about six months later.
After I moved out, I just did my best to get my mom to another subject when she started bitching about my dad. (I never talked to him unless I had to, e.g., “Is Mom there?” on the phone).
Now he’s dead. No more fighting. Problem solved. (Forty years later.)
I usually ignore them. Their arguments always follow the same pattern - dad does something silly/wrong/stupid, mom overreacts and snaps at him, and it all goes downhill from there. They don’t argue often, and it usually blows over quickly (unless dad is drunk, which doesn’t happen very often either).
I just went to my room. No one, NO ONE, ever got between my parents when they were fighting.
That said, they had some hilarious fights. Generally, my mother would make some sarcastic joke, my father would crack up, and that would be the end of the argument.
My favorite: in the middle of a huge argument my father shouted “Do you want a divorce?” My mother shot back, “NO! I’m going to stay right here and make life hell for you.”
In later years, both of them had lost much of their hearing, and their fights often started because they were misunderstanding each other. Only then did my sisters and I step in to explain what one had actually said, and the other misheard.
I laugh and make fun of them. It’s very much like Buttercup’s parents in The Princess Bride; good-natured bickering is a major part of how they interact. They are such an old married couple.
Bolding mine - that was my childhood.
Constant fighting that included punching walls, breaking objects and saying things that couldn’t be taken back. Sometimes in front of me before I could flee to my room.These are my strongest childhood memories. While it never became actually violent against people, and my parents were otherwise intelligent people, it was bad. Even now, in hindsight it was really bad.
It continued up to my teens, but by then I had changed some of my coping strategies. One day as I watched them fight (on a family vacation) it occurred to me that they were just like two little kids. This was both disturbing and enlightening to me. So I started treating them like children when they fought. Or pretending it wasn’t happening, and going about my business in the midst of their chaos. But when pushed, I’d remove myself. I actually got out of the car one day when they were going at it, baled on the dinner we were going to and walked to a friend’s house.
Later in life, my strategy of removing myself when a fight gets bad has both helped and hindered me. Usually it’s a good thing, and I rarely lose my temper. But I had a relationship end because my girlfriend took it as me trying to ignore her.
I make fun of them, but in that way they know I’m not entirely kidding. Mostly it’s rolling my eyes (especially if my little brother is there) and saying “Well, let’s turn this car around, mom and dad are fighting!” or “Feels like time travel, doesn’t it?” Basically just little remarks to let them know no one wants to be in the middle of their sniping.
By the by, my brother and I are both in our 30s, and have left the house/restaurant rather than listen to them pick at each other. We had to put up with that our entire childhoods, now we don’t have to anymore!
If my parents fought, I never knew (Mom died in '90 after 32 years of marriage). They were big on discussing things though, and I learned a lot from those discussions about listening, making valid points and compromising.
I was in high school before I realized that not everybody had good parents like mine. 
My parents never fought in front of the kids, and if they fought in private they did so quietly.
As a kid I would go to my room and read; later they divorced and avoided each other, so there was no fighting when I was older.
My dad is dumb but very patient, and my mom is a control-freak but doesn’t hold grudges. Their fights were along the lines of dad doing something boneheaded, mom making a nasty comment, and dad usually not getting it. On some occasions, she would completely overwhelm herself with stress and start snapping at people because nobody was doing it right (whatever “it” happened to be at the moment, like cleaning or preparing for a party or writing a letter or changing the channels on the tv). Dad could usually bring her back to her senses by just listening patiently.
My family was pretty well functional, and my parents were pretty much the best either could have hoped for each other, considering their personality.
My parents didn’t fight, they wouldn’t even discuss anything in front of us; until I was 23 I thought of them as an inverted hydra, with two bodies and one head.
The reason for the above is this:
My maternal grandparents were the kind who have fights in order to create an excuse to make up. Mom reacted to this by never, ever contradicting Dad in front of us or giving any hints that they were in anything but perfect agreement, which if you ask me was going a few miles too far: unlike 90WT, we never got to see our parents negotiate.
Even though the make-up sex eventually dried down, the fights continued, as they had simply never learned a better way to communicate (plus both are/were nutin’ fucks). Steps when the grandparental units started yelling were:
- Ignore it, so long as the volume wasn’t too bad and/or they weren’t in the same room as the rest of us
- Tell them to go yell at each other someplace else, we’re trying to eat/watch TV/have a walk like civilized human beings here.
A few times the second level took the form of “you two shut the fuck up now or I’m stopping the car and kicking you out” “yelling” “slows down the car” “shut the fuck up”