constant fighting about the same thing

insecurity?
Sounds to me as if she might have a small case of insecurity, maybe she just wants attention.

[quote]What could she possibly need or want to gain about an argument or fight? [/quote] ...
maybe she feels as if you love her or it could quite possibly be that she is just wanting to push you to the limit.

I was with a guy like this once (from what you describe) ...not anymore, I couldn't handle it.

How long have you been married?

I have said this before on A2K but I really feel it is one of the most important things a married couple can do... learn how to argue with each other.

My wife and I argue in different ways. I tend to need closure on an argument and she tends to just forget and forgive (in that order). When we were first married we didn't understand that dfference and it caused small arguments to grow into large ones. I couldn't understand why she didn't want to talk about it and I couldn't understand why she wouldn't talk about it.

Now that we understand our differences, we are more apt to sit down and talk in a level headed manner as oppsed to arguing about the issue.

Staying level headed in an argument is equally important. I know exactly what to say in order to "hurt" my wife... but that doesn't win an argument, it only hurts my wife. I instead focus on what we are trying to solve/discuss and stay away from personal attacks or insults.

It sounds to me like you and your wife are in a similar situation. You argue in different ways and therefore reach the end of the argument at different times. Sit down and talk about what each others boundaries are and try respect them. If things get to heated, just decide to take a break and talk about it some more later when cooler heads can prevail.

ps. Welcome to A2K.

Yes, welcome to A2K, and welcome to the wonderful world of men and women arguing with one another.

Sorry if that's flip, but the bottom line is, men and women have different goals when they argue and complain. Men tend to feel the need to look for a solution. Women tend to want their feelings validated and to know that they're right or at least not nuts.

I suspect that some of this comes out of how we're usually raised. Boys get a lot of validation for problem-solving -- build the model airplane, solve the math problem, figure out how to get to Charlestown if the Pike is closed, that sort of thing, whereas girls are often (not always) shunted away from hard science and the like and into things that are less definitive in answer, e. g. comfort the doll, write the paper, cook the meal. While things are changing quite a bit, they are far from ideally equal between the genders. We still treat male and female children differently.

Yes, they are different, but some of that is cultural and not inbred. I don't really care for the Mars and Venus books as I feel they tend to promote the stereotype rather than try to smash it.

And, of course, not everyone is exactly this way, please keep in mind I'm using generalizations but they seem to fit in your case.

Your wife seems to want her needs to be validated. She wants to talk about them, get things out into the open and work through them. You seem to want solutions. Solutions are great, but it seems that her need is to be validated rather than find the answer. And sometimes that's enough.

It also seems that there might be something you are not telling us. Perhaps there have been attempts at communication on her part that have been ignored or dismissed by you, and she has felt the need to escalate to the argument stage. If she plays the fight card all the time, then I'm wrong, but look back and try to figure out if that is happening at all, as it might be. If it is, then all the solution-creating isn't going to do any good as the root of the problem is not listening to the lower level rumblings and only paying attention when the volcano blows.

I'm a woman and I have been through the emotional validation argument era but for the most part I am more of a solution arguer now. This is mainly because my best friend is my husband and he's a solution arguer. Plus I've found that my needs and feelings are validated, not just by him and by myself, but by others, so I feel less of a need to get validations through arguing. So I am more interested, these days, in getting the directions to Somerville than in talking about why it bothers me that we can't get to Somerville.

This doesn't mean that I never argue from emotion -- I still do and I always will, I just don't do it as much. And, as I've gotten older, I play the fight card (the nuclear option) less and less because it's just kinda silly at this point. How old is your wife? And, what does she get out of the nuclear option that she doesn't get out of the lower levels of disagreement? Consider those things.

Well, jespah and Milwaukee, I found both your posts very insightful.

Welcome.

My take on this: it's not so much about the present, but more about ways you have wronged her in the past.

When we mess up, it creates an emotional reaction in a woman, and aside from being affected by the current situation, that emotion feels familiar and they relive all the things from the past that made them feel that way, conciously or unconciously. So, working out the current situation just isn't good enough.

Advice...I'm not sure. Maybe sit down sometime when you're both calm and just bring up some of your history, letting her know that you haven't forgotten certain events, either, and that you regret those things.

Women, have at me if I'm generalizing, but in the very few relationships I've had, this is something I have gotten out of them.

I, too, found jespah and Milwuakee helpful on this issue.

Hey thanks.

Hey, double thanks.