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A family therapist offers two amazingly effective techniques for getting past long-standing disputes within your marriage.

All the problems with Jim and Carrie’s* 14-year marriage were distilled into their daily dispute: They fought about how to get their three children out the door. First, they’d argue about how to rouse the kids. Jim felt they should learn responsibility by setting their own alarm clocks; Carrie insisted on waking each child herself. Then came the battle over breakfast: Jim thought grabbing fruit to eat on the way to school was fine; Carrie wanted a sit-down meal.

Rattled by their parents’ bickering, the kids — two girls, 12 and 10, and an 8-year-old boy — would create distractions, refuse to listen, dawdle, and nearly always miss the school bus. Then Jim would shout that they needed to understand consequences and should walk. Carrie would overrule him and drive the kids so they wouldn’t be late for class. What might have been just an ordinary set of complications in other households became an intractable conflict.

When Carrie and Jim first consulted me about the chronic unhappiness in their marriage, I saw something familiar from my 35 years as a family therapist — a couple whose relationship careened from explosive, recurring arguments to silence and distance. Jim thought things never went his way; Carrie felt her husband always prevailed. Problems went unsolved, sometimes for years. The children suffered because of their parents’ frequent arguments over seemingly petty matters — not just the morning routine, but also homework, chores, bedtime, and more.

Toward the end of our first session, I asked Jim and Carrie, “Have you ever taken turns on an issue?” Both looked interested but confused. “How would we do that?” Jim asked.

I explained Turn-Taking, one of two relatively simple and remarkably effective methods that any couple can use at home to resolve stubborn, repetitious conflicts. It involves, I told them, allowing your spouse to be temporarily in charge of handling a contentious matter in whatever way he or she sees fit. The job of the other spouse would be to observe without comment, saving discussion for our next meeting.

We set up a two-week experiment — but the couple was so locked in conflict, we had to flip a coin to see who would go first. Jim won. For the first week, he was to decide how to wake the children, what they ate for breakfast, and what to do if they missed the bus. Carrie was to watch and not criticize. During the second week, Carrie would handle the children in her way, while Jim observed without criticism. “You’ll each have a new opportunity to learn more about what makes the other one tick,” I said.

When they returned two weeks later, they began by telling me how astounded the children had been. “They kept trying to get us to fight,” Jim said. He laughed. “When that didn’t work, they actually got ready for school!” The number of missed-bus days diminished rapidly, and if the kids did run late, the parent whose week it was implemented his or her preferred solution.

Both had trouble at first with the observer role. “I had to bite my tongue in the beginning,” Jim said, “but, honestly, I realized that Carrie’s method of getting them out of bed does move them along more easily.” Carrie told me, “I got it that on my days, when they knew I would drive them, they behaved in ways that made them miss the bus. It’s hard for me to say this, but Jim is right on this one.” She added, “We have a lot of other areas we need to address now.” Jim agreed — and both felt hopeful for the first time in ages.

The Turn-Taking experiment broke years of deadlock for Jim and Carrie, offering a clear, fair, and mutually satisfying way to negotiate the differences that pop up in the lives of every couple.

In my experience, marriages work well when partners negotiate so that each person gets some, but not all, of what he or she wants. Too many couples habitually choose the “meet-in-the-middle” method of problem- solving, thinking that it’s less messy and somehow more just. But it isn’t: If he loves the mountains and she loves the shore and they spend every vacation in a big city, they may not argue, but each will feel secretly unfulfilled. Meet-in-the-middle solutions lead to less and less genuine conversation about what each one truly wants. Each time spouses fail to express a clear position or listen to the desires of their mate, the invisible pile of unspoken yearnings separating them grows higher and wider.

Happy couples know how to negotiate — out loud. Learning to do that requires that people dig deep and figure out what’s truly important to them, convey it fully to their spouse, and listen carefully when he or she does the same. The Turn-Taking technique allows that to happen.

For Dena and Henry, a couple who fought over when to have dinner, the starting point in their Turn-Taking experiment was looking closely at the meaning of their preferences. Dena realized that dinner at 6 was the way things had been done in her parents’ home; eating early felt cozy to her. Dinner at 8, Henry’s choice, seemed exhaustingly late to Dena — but to Henry, it was a way of assuring private time with her after the children were in bed. Once Henry understood that early dinner meant comfort to Dena, and Dena understood that late dinner reflected Henry’s desire to be alone with her, they saw that turn-taking would allow them to meet these needs — and definitely beat dining at 7 with cranky kids, which made neither of them happy.

There were other areas of disagreement in their marriage, but turn-taking worked for those, too, providing crucial space for different preferences in the relationship. Negotiated solutions gave each partner some of what he or she wanted — and a lot of unexpected intimacy.

* The names and identifying details of this couple, and of the other couples in this article, have been changed toprotect their privacy.

All the problems with Jim and Carrie’s* 14-year marriage were distilled into their daily dispute: They fought about how to get their three children out the door. First, they’d argue about how to rouse the kids. Jim felt they should learn responsibility by setting their own alarm clocks; Carrie insisted on waking each child herself. Then came the battle over breakfast: Jim thought grabbing fruit to eat on the way to school was fine; Carrie wanted a sit-down meal.

Rattled by their parents’ bickering, the kids — two girls, 12 and 10, and an 8-year-old boy — would create distractions, refuse to listen, dawdle, and nearly always miss the school bus. Then Jim would shout that they needed to understand consequences and should walk. Carrie would overrule him and drive the kids so they wouldn’t be late for class. What might have been just an ordinary set of complications in other households became an intractable conflict.

When Carrie and Jim first consulted me about the chronic unhappiness in their marriage, I saw something familiar from my 35 years as a family therapist — a couple whose relationship careened from explosive, recurring arguments to silence and distance. Jim thought things never went his way; Carrie felt her husband always prevailed. Problems went unsolved, sometimes for years. The children suffered because of their parents’ frequent arguments over seemingly petty matters — not just the morning routine, but also homework, chores, bedtime, and more.

Toward the end of our first session, I asked Jim and Carrie, “Have you ever taken turns on an issue?” Both looked interested but confused. “How would we do that?” Jim asked.

I explained Turn-Taking, one of two relatively simple and remarkably effective methods that any couple can use at home to resolve stubborn, repetitious conflicts. It involves, I told them, allowing your spouse to be temporarily in charge of handling a contentious matter in whatever way he or she sees fit. The job of the other spouse would be to observe without comment, saving discussion for our next meeting.

We set up a two-week experiment — but the couple was so locked in conflict, we had to flip a coin to see who would go first. Jim won. For the first week, he was to decide how to wake the children, what they ate for breakfast, and what to do if they missed the bus. Carrie was to watch and not criticize. During the second week, Carrie would handle the children in her way, while Jim observed without criticism. “You’ll each have a new opportunity to learn more about what makes the other one tick,” I said.

When they returned two weeks later, they began by telling me how astounded the children had been. “They kept trying to get us to fight,” Jim said. He laughed. “When that didn’t work, they actually got ready for school!” The number of missed-bus days diminished rapidly, and if the kids did run late, the parent whose week it was implemented his or her preferred solution.

Both had trouble at first with the observer role. “I had to bite my tongue in the beginning,” Jim said, “but, honestly, I realized that Carrie’s method of getting them out of bed does move them along more easily.” Carrie told me, “I got it that on my days, when they knew I would drive them, they behaved in ways that made them miss the bus. It’s hard for me to say this, but Jim is right on this one.” She added, “We have a lot of other areas we need to address now.” Jim agreed — and both felt hopeful for the first time in ages.

The Turn-Taking experiment broke years of deadlock for Jim and Carrie, offering a clear, fair, and mutually satisfying way to negotiate the differences that pop up in the lives of every couple.

In my experience, marriages work well when partners negotiate so that each person gets some, but not all, of what he or she wants. Too many couples habitually choose the “meet-in-the-middle” method of problem- solving, thinking that it’s less messy and somehow more just. But it isn’t: If he loves the mountains and she loves the shore and they spend every vacation in a big city, they may not argue, but each will feel secretly unfulfilled. Meet-in-the-middle solutions lead to less and less genuine conversation about what each one truly wants. Each time spouses fail to express a clear position or listen to the desires of their mate, the invisible pile of unspoken yearnings separating them grows higher and wider.

Happy couples know how to negotiate — out loud. Learning to do that requires that people dig deep and figure out what’s truly important to them, convey it fully to their spouse, and listen carefully when he or she does the same. The Turn-Taking technique allows that to happen.

For Dena and Henry, a couple who fought over when to have dinner, the starting point in their Turn-Taking experiment was looking closely at the meaning of their preferences. Dena realized that dinner at 6 was the way things had been done in her parents’ home; eating early felt cozy to her. Dinner at 8, Henry’s choice, seemed exhaustingly late to Dena — but to Henry, it was a way of assuring private time with her after the children were in bed. Once Henry understood that early dinner meant comfort to Dena, and Dena understood that late dinner reflected Henry’s desire to be alone with her, they saw that turn-taking would allow them to meet these needs — and definitely beat dining at 7 with cranky kids, which made neither of them happy.

There were other areas of disagreement in their marriage, but turn-taking worked for those, too, providing crucial space for different preferences in the relationship. Negotiated solutions gave each partner some of what he or she wanted — and a lot of unexpected intimacy.

* The names and identifying details of this couple, and of the other couples in this article, have been changed toprotect their privacy.

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