What Married Couples Fight About The Most (And How You Can Beat The Odds)

Popular social media reels and the experts agree. What people fight about the most is...nothing.  

Nothing? According to the statistics, the most common cause of divorce is irreconcilable differences. It’s not financial disagreements, unsatisfactory sex lives, difficult in-laws, or lack of common interests. All the above may be topics of tension, but none are fought about the most. The most common fights are about the little and seemingly insignificant things that lead you to feel unloved, unwanted, and misunderstood.

Fights about nothing start to happen when we negatively overemphasize all the potentially disappointing interactions. This is what relationship expert Dr. John Gottman calls Negative Sentiment Override. It’s the disposition to respond to whatever your spouse is saying or doing with negative emotions. For example, in the below TikTok, a divorce lawyer discusses how it's the little things regarding responsibilities around children that lead people to her office.

What Fighting Over Nothing Really Means

How do you even start fighting about nothing? Dr. Gottman, the world's leading expert in long-term marital success, has proposed multiple solutions to ensure that you and your husband won’t engage in days-long fights over who turns off the house lights before bed. Gottman’s research points out that fighting over nothing is an indicator that the most important things are in peril, or perhaps, they are simply gone. At the core, such things are:

Lack of Attunement

Attunement comes from knowing your spouse’s inner world as well as your own. And as with all positive changes, it starts with you. Reflect on what triggers you and establish reasonable expectations for yourself and your husband. Let's say, for example, you like to place your fruit in the lovely bowl your grandma gifted you, but your husband subscribes to the idea that fruit should be kept in the fridge since he prefers it cold and his family always keeps fruit in the fridge. This has the potential for a fight over nothing. You can always talk and compromise on where you should place the fruit, but you can also reflect on whether this is unnecessary control on your part and perhaps you can simply let your spouse place the fruit where he pleases. 

Always start with self-reflection and consider if this is a reasonable expectation of your spouse or simply a preference on your end. Keep in mind that trying to change someone due to our preferences is a significant red flag and a lose-lose situation. 

Solution: At its core, being emotionally attuned means that we feel seen, heard, and understood. While it may be hard to feel this way all the time, what matters is that we feel this way most of the time. The good news is that if we are constantly communicating our feelings, moods, and reflections, we are consequently reaching attunement. It's when we stop doing this that the fights about nothing can easily take over. 

Lack of Trust

By lack of trust, I don’t mean big betrayals but the small betrayals that make you feel unimportant. For example, your spouse leaves a dirty dish in the sink. The lack of consideration and the unspoken expectation that now you have to clean it can be hurtful at a microlevel and may explode into an argument like “I am not your maid!” But, if we trust that our husband does not see us as a maid and that he was simply in a rush, suddenly that dirty plate does not enter into the fight-over-nothing-arena. 

Solution: Give each other the benefit of the doubt and talk about it without accusatory language. Think more in terms of “He must have been in a rush,” or even simpler, “He is forgetful, so he must have forgotten his plate.” These aren’t excuses for the behavior, but a more honest context to what happened. Yes, we all do small, annoying things from time to time, and unfortunately, there is no cure for that, but we can certainly disarm the tension they may cause, instead of weaponizing it against the person we’ve vowed to love. 

Avoid phrases such as “You always expect me to do everything” and “You never help with the kids.” These are very rarely true and easily lead to what Dr. Gottman calls gridlock. Picture a pair of elks butt-heading until their antlers are locked together. Not a pretty or comfortable position, but that’s what fighting over nothing leads to.

How To Protect Your Marriage from Fights About Nothing

Here is a brief list of science-backed habits that can keep the fights about nothing out of your relationship:  

• Kiss every morning and every night for at least six seconds. Ideally when you greet each other before leaving home and when you arrive back home. 

• Be constantly curious about the goals and interests of the other. We all change and grow, and we must keep up with each other’s evolution! 

• Also keep up with each other’s friends. You don’t have to have the exact same friends, but certainly show interest in getting to know everyone your spouse cares about. 

• Pay attention to each other’s bids for connection. I.e. If your husband wants to show you something you know you don’t have much interest in, pay attention to it simply for the fact that he desires to share it with you.

• Find little moments during the day to reflect on what you love, respect, and honor about each other. You should both be constantly aware of these things. 

• Develop your own rituals for connection. Maybe Tuesday night walks to the ice cream shop or tea together before bed. Whatever it is, find a ritual you can both look forward to. 

No matter how fairly and diligently you may have divided your responsibilities, the small gestures and a loving disposition are what counts when it comes to long-term satisfaction. Rarely a relationship erupts over one bad move. More often, relationships thrive over many small but good moves. 

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