If you've ever been in a relationship, it's safe to say you've had a fight or an argument with your partner at one time or another.
And while it's totally expected that you bicker or disagree with your partner at times, the frequencies of fights or conflicts can vary significantly from couple to couple.
When it comes to relationships, conflict frequency — similar to sex frequency — is also something that, for one reason or another, we don't always discuss openly outside of our parternership, even though conflict (and conflict resolution) is a completely normal aspect of any relationship.
So we wanted to shed a bit more light on this topic. To figure out exactly how often couples are arguing, Reddit user u/timetowhineanddine asked: "How often do you and your partner fight, and how intense does it get?" Here are some of the answers.
1. "At the beginning of our relationship, my husband and I never argued and rarely disagreed with one another. Fast-forward 20 years, and now it’s all day, every day — and I’m losing my mind."
2. "Very rarely, almost never. Most of our 'fights' look like one of us getting upset about something and asking for space to be grumpy for a bit, then regrouping later to discuss it and reach a resolution."
3. "We don't fight. We both grew up in 'yelly' houses, and we hated it and refuse to engage like that. If we disagree on something, we talk it out. But, it's very rare that we disagree on things. We've maybe had five major disagreements in 21 years, and I honestly wouldn't be able to even tell you what they were about because it's been so long since we've 'fought.' I wouldn't be in a relationship with someone I'm arguing with on a regular basis; that sounds exhausting."
4. "If we do actually get mad enough to both raise our voice, we walk away and get space before it gets too heated. No yelling matches around here. Having a therapist helps, too. If we can't see eye-to-eye after talking, we will go to our therapist for perspective and to help us rationalize each other's point of view."
5. "My ex and I fought about once a month. I would get upset and want to leave the house, and he would get more angry and say that I was avoiding the problem instead of talking it out with him. Turns out, we were the problem. I didn't love him, and he felt like he needed me. My new boyfriend and I never fight, and I feel truly in love for the first time in my life."
6. "We literally just agree to disagree. And if one of us tries to start up the same topic, the other will say, 'We agreed to disagree,' which usually makes us both laugh for some reason."
7. "We've been together for 12 years, married for 5. We have one toddler and are currently expecting a new baby. We have a bad fight about twice a year. We have a discussion about frustration about every other month. Life is hard. Two individuals trying to build one life and family together requires compromise. He and I are both strong-willed, independent, and generally confident in our own correctness (because our intentions are good). So conflict is inevitable. We fight well when we remember that we are on the same team. It gets closer to ugly when we are so opposed that being on a team seems impossible. We've recovered from all the fights so far, and I think we have what it takes to keep it together."
I try to remind him that I love him even when I wish his behavior was different. He does his best to meet my needs even though he can become short-sighted when stressed. We do our best, and it's usually enough."
8. "My partner and I don’t fight often, and most of the time they aren’t bad. When they are bad, though, he yells and says hurtful things while threatening to divorce. I always end up crying. It’s always over something stupid, and he gets even angrier when I defend myself. Like when we both misunderstand each other, he thinks it’s my fault. Or when something doesn’t happen the way it should, he finds a way to blame me. I don’t understand why he does this, but it’s exhausting, annoying, and hurtful. It’s getting better, but I really wish he could react logically rather than explosively to menial matters. He’s perfect in every way, and I love him dearly, but these fights have also made me contemplate leaving him."
9. "Right now we live apart, so not all that often (I'm living at home as I put myself through college). He was raised where yelling was a perfectly acceptable argumentative tool, where I was raised in a hateful passive-aggressive way. I still do not react well to men that I am close to yelling at or near me in a hostile manner. I have anxiety, and I just kinda shut down while my partner gets confused and shocked when I start to cry if it was really bad. He basically says that I need to learn to do it too, and I tell him that I refuse to irrationally yell at my partner unless it's out of urgency when I can get my point across some other way. Sometimes it feels like he wants me to verbally abuse him in some way. I refuse to do it because I hate it when it happens to me."
10. "It depends what’s going on in our lives. If there’s a lot of stress from work or family stuff, then it’s probably more often. We bicker a decent amount, but usually doesn’t blow up or anything like that. We probably fight maybe once a week or so — but we normally don't have yelling matches. We are both headstrong."
11. "We get annoyed and make a rude comment or two, but once it hits us we are mad, we split up and clean aggressively until we calm down. Then we work it out, hug, and apologize. It happens less and less often the longer we are together."
12. "When we first started living together, I would pick fights about almost anything. Usually, I would just be having a stressful day or week, and one little thing he did would just put me over the edge, and I would start a fight about it. I never even realized I did this until my partner stopped putting up with it — and made me talk through my feelings. This went on for a couple years, and he would tell me it’s not fair to him that I yell and say mean things. I would tell him to get over it in the heat of the moment, or I would just get carried away. Eventually, I realized how hurtful I was being, and that the fights I was picking were more about my internalized stress than whatever the fight was about."
13. "We bicker a lot, but that is more sport than anything serious. We argue occasionally, but I don't recall us ever fighting. We've never yelled at each other, or stormed out or lost our tempers."
14. "In our early years of marriage, we used to fight like a snake and a mongoose; neither ready to back off! Then I started keeping quiet when the fight began, but that doesn't sit well with my husband. He used to go on and on on that topic until he was tired of it, or I was provoked enough to lash back at him. These fights stopped with the demise of his father and my mother, which shocked us both in changing our perspective toward life: that it's too short and unpredictable to waste time fighting. Interestingly enough, we didn't have any serious disagreements — ones about finances, household affairs, or in bringing up our daughter. We fully trusted each other. Maybe the timing of discussing things was wrong. Or maybe we were immature."
15. "It feels like it’s becoming more often than not. It always makes me anxious whenever we do, and I cry out of stress. He always calls me stupid and sometimes cusses at me, and I always have to spend time apart from him to recover. Whenever I’m anxious, I always think about breaking up with him and moving on. I’ll calm down in a few days and try to talk with him, but it always seems to happen again. And again. He has anger issues, and he claims he’s gotten better, but honestly, he’s not at his best and has a lot to improve on."
16. "I seem to get grumpy and snippy about, oh, once every 28–31 days or so. This usually leads to some tension, but we have learned to channel it into factors that aren't our marriage. COVID has definitely led to some tension and boredom. I am just so underwhelmed and overworked, and there is no reprieve from home to work to game to walk to sleep. It's been trying on me for various reasons, and it's affected our marriage. Intensity-wise, we are both pretty intense, overbearing people. The WORST thing I can think of is to be ignored — and the same is true for him, too."
17. "When we first started dating, we’d essentially have yelling matches over the dumbest shit. I would even be embarrassed about it the next day. Eventually, it just stopped. I think for me, it was more of a maturity thing. We rarely fight now, and if we do, I’m usually PMSing or overworked/stressed, which can trigger it. Thankfully, we never disagreed on big topics."
18. "We married young and used to fight a lot. Then we went to counseling and learned how to disagree fairly. It’s boring. I miss fighting. But it’s much healthier."
19. "Occasionally, we have to have conversations when we have differences in our needs and have to let the other know (for example, "I need space; work is draining me; please don’t do that'). However, we’ve never raised our voices, and our fights aren’t heated. The worst it’s been is when I’ve cried a bit, and I wasn’t ready to go back to being 'normal' immediately because I was sad."
20. "Rarely. It's been a bit more this year because, unfortunately, his mother passed away during the pandemic, and he's struggling. But I know he's hurting, and it's not intentionally hurt toward me."
21. "We argue sometimes, but most of the time, it comes from unclear communication or mismatched expectations (i.e., my definition of 'clean' being different than his, or one of us expecting more one-on-one time when we never communicated about it, etc.). We’ve never raised our voices at each other, ever. We've talked louder, but never yelled. I’ve found that when two people’s core values align, they have a better time. My partner and my values are nearly the same, with a few little differences that don’t matter much. A core value could be like: 'I want biological children,' or, 'I want to live near my extended family,' or, 'I want to be rich.' Never disagreeing on literally anything ever isn’t super healthy sometimes. Being afraid to disagree and not disagreeing are very different."
22. "It's rare, maybe...once a month? Or less? And if someone starts getting heated, we take a break and go do something else. After a bit of time, the anger dies down, and we can talk normally again. We often discuss things while snuggling, too, which has a calming effect. We never yell. We don't slam doors, drive away, call names, etc. We both hate that kind of conflict, so we don't do it. And we do definitely have disagreements about big things at times, but we have the mindset that our marriage is more important than anything else, so we don't do anything that could jeopardize it. Sometimes we just agree to disagree."
23. "We don't fight. We only sometimes argue, which doesn't get intense at all. Only once I was so angry at him that I didn't want to sleep together and slept on the couch for one night. But there was no screaming or anything like that."
24. "We had two major yelling fights at the beginning of our marriage — and honestly, it was because of me. I grew up in a 'yelly' house, and it was affecting the way I dealt with problems. Once I realized that about myself, I took specific action to stop that habit. Now whenever we have a disagreement, we discuss it relatively calmly. We've never called each other names. As time went on, we've had fewer, real disagreements (like MAYBE once every two years). We are both learning how to address problems as they come up and not let it build."
25. "Rarely, and if we do, it's a disagreement about something menial or just something unimportant that we laugh about. We both have our emotions in check and communicate well. We don't bring conflict into our relationship. It's refreshing and took lots of self-improvement on my part to not be consumed by anxiety, which used to lead me to argue more frequently in past relationships. It's that idea that when arguing or pissed off, it's rarely the other person or the subject that's the cause. It's usually something within ourselves that causes us to be angry, so I look within myself before acting and choose my responses to things wisely. Life is too short for arguing."
26. "I've been dating my boyfriend for six months now. No fights as of yet. We did have a small hiccup of an issue due to miscommunication, but we just talked it out."
27. "We disagree like one or two times a month. We fight once every six months or so, and it doesn’t get to the point of yelling, but it does get to us talking over each other and cutting each other off with raised voices. It’s usually something that we have disagreed about before but with the added bonus of us being really stressed out about other things this time. It used to be a lot more frequently, years ago, before I realized that it was just me PMSing. Now, if I am really uncharacteristically angry with him, I think about what time of the month it is, and it’s often one or two days before my period, after I’ve stopped my birth control pill."
"The tell-tale signs are if I’m thinking: 'Usually this doesn’t bother me, but this is The Last Straw!' or if we’re arguing, and it’s just going in circles, and nothing he says makes it better, even when he’s saying everything right.
Once I realized this, there had to be a lot of pride swallowing and apologizing. Now I just have a good cry and get snuggles."
28. "My boyfriend and I don't really 'fight' so much as one of us (usually me) will feel upset about something — and next time we're alone together, we talk it out. It's usually something stupid and honestly, it has more to do with one of us being in a bad mood than something the other person did. We've never even raised our voices at each other. If we're going to bed and it's still not resolved, he'll want to sleep away from me, which happens occasionally. Usually the most intense part is frustration tears on my end."
29. "My husband is quick to explode. The worst part is he usually explodes after only hearing part of another conversation, or he didn't understand the conversation. We have been together for 15 years. But I have loved him for 30 years. We met as teenagers; we both moved away and reunited 14 years later. I was recently divorced with two young boys, and he was in Iraq. He had never been married or had children. He has a very intense personality. He is wonderfully hilarious and my best friend. But he is a terrible arguer. I can say something that pissed him off, and he will accuse me of screaming at him when I did no such thing. He yells at me at least two or three times a week. I used to ignore it. He knows he is being a jerk without me telling him. But now I yell back. After all these years, I enjoy standing up for myself and making him a little crazy."
