It’s been a while since I had a guest poster on here, but this one is well worth it! Dr. Corey Allan is a marriage and family therapist who’s worked with couples and addressed godly sex for a long time. You may recognize him from the Sexy Marriage Radio show/podcast where he’s been cohost for 16 years! Feel free to check my episodes with Corey on higher desire wives here and here later, but first here’s his wonderful post aimed at wives about how going along to get along may not be your best choice.

Take it way, Dr. Allan!

I want to talk to the woman who said “it’s fine” last night when it wasn’t.

Maybe it was about sex. Maybe it was about something else entirely — the plans he made without asking, the comment that landed wrong, the way he scrolled through his phone while you were mid-sentence. Whatever it was, you felt something rise in your chest. A flash of hurt. A flicker of anger. And then, almost instantly, you made a decision.

Let it go. Don’t make it a thing. Keep the peace.

You’ve made that decision a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. And every time, something small inside you goes quiet. Not peaceful. Just… quiet.

I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist. I’ve been counseling couples for over two decades. And I need to tell you something that might be hard to hear: that silence is costing you far more than the argument ever would.*

*Quick note from J that I know Corey would agree with: if you fear that you’ll experience abuse if you speak up, please get help. That isn’t the situation for most of you reading, but for those few, it’s important to mention.

The Deal You Didn’t Know You Made

In my practice, I see a pattern so common it could be its own diagnosis. I call it mutual toleration — the unspoken agreement between two spouses to tolerate what they don’t respect in each other so neither one has to confront what they don’t respect in themselves.

It looks like peace. It feels like maturity. From the outside, people might even say you have a great marriage because you never seem to fight.

But underneath the calm surface, something is slowly dying. Your vitality. Your desire. Your sense of self.

Mutual toleration is a trade: I won’t bring up how you hurt me if you don’t bring up how I hurt you. I’ll manage your weaknesses if you manage mine. We’ll both pretend this is working.

The result? Low conflict, low connection, and a bedroom that feels more like a business arrangement than an intimate space. Therapist Terry Real calls this “stable misery.” I’ve seen it in hundreds of marriages, and it almost always starts the same way — with a woman (or a man, but in my experience it’s often the wife) deciding that the cost of speaking up is higher than the cost of staying silent.

It’s not. The math just feels that way.

Why You Keep Quiet (And Why It’s Not What You Think)

Most of us don’t swallow our truth because we’re doormats. We do it because we’re scared.

Here’s what’s actually happening: when something occurs in your marriage that feels like a criticism, a dismissal, or a threat — even a small one — your nervous system kicks into gear. You get a surge of anxiety, and you have about three seconds to choose: stay present and deal with it, or find an exit.

Most of us take the exit. And we’ve gotten remarkably creative about it.

Maybe you smooth things over with a cheerful tone that doesn’t match what you’re feeling. Maybe you redirect the conversation so you don’t have to sit in the discomfort. Maybe you tell yourself you’re “choosing your battles wisely” when the truth is you’re just afraid of what happens if you actually engage.

These aren’t character flaws. They’re protection strategies. Your brain learned a long time ago — maybe in childhood, maybe in a previous relationship, maybe in the early years of your marriage — that certain emotions aren’t safe to express. So you developed ways to manage the people around you instead of managing yourself.

The problem is, every time you take that exit, you teach your spouse (and yourself) that your real feelings don’t have a place in this relationship. Over time, you stop feeling safe enough to want what you want, say what you mean, or show up as who you actually are.

And if you can’t show up as who you actually are, desire — the real, embodied, I-want-you kind — doesn’t stand a chance.

The Mirror You Don’t Want to Look In

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. I want you to try something.

Read the following paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 slowly. I’ve broken it into single lines for a reason.

Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love does not envy.
Love does not boast.
Love is not proud.
Love does not dishonor others.
Love is not self-seeking.
Love is not easily angered.
Love keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil. Love rejoices with the truth.
Love always protects.
Love always trusts.
Love always hopes.
Love always perseveres.
Love never fails.

Now replace “love” with your first name. Read it again.

How’d you score?

I take this test periodically. I land between six and ten out of sixteen, which tells me I’ve still got work to do. And I’m a professional who teaches this material for a living.

The point isn’t to shame you. The point is to show you what you already know: nobody aces this test but Jesus. And without him, the kind of love described here — the honest, enduring, truth-rejoicing kind — is beyond what we can manufacture on our own.

But here’s what matters for your marriage right now: several of those descriptors are impossible to live out if you’re keeping the peace instead of telling the truth. Love “rejoices with the truth.” Love “always protects” — including protecting your own integrity. Love “is not self-seeking” — but neither is it self-erasing.

Keeping the peace at the expense of your honesty isn’t love. It’s fear wearing love’s clothes.

What Courage Looks Like at 9 PM on a Tuesday

So what do you do instead? You go first.

Not first as in you escalate, attack, or deliver a lecture. First as in you tell one true thing. One honest sentence, said with warmth, that represents what you’re actually experiencing.

“I felt dismissed when you picked up your phone while I was talking.”

“I’m saying yes to you tonight, but I want you to know I need to feel pursued, not just available.”

“When you made that joke in front of our friends, it landed on something tender.”

“I’m not fine. I don’t know exactly what I need yet, but I wanted you to know that.”

That’s it. One sentence.

You don’t need to have the whole conversation figured out. You don’t need to present a case. You just need to stop pretending you don’t feel what you feel.

Will it be comfortable? No.

Your nervous system will scream at you to take it back, soften it, laugh it off. That scream is not the voice of wisdom. It’s the voice of a protection strategy that has outlived its usefulness.

Will your husband respond perfectly? Probably not.

He might get defensive. He might go quiet. He might not know what to do with what you just said. That’s okay. His reaction is his to manage. Yours is yours.

The goal isn’t a perfect conversation. The goal is staying real. Because every time you choose honesty over silence, you build a muscle — the muscle of showing up as your full self in your most important relationship. And that muscle is the foundation of everything: deeper trust, real connection, and the kind of desire that doesn’t have to be manufactured because it grows naturally in the presence of two honest people.

The Peace That’s Actually Worth Having

There’s a difference between the peace that comes from avoiding conflict and the peace that comes from resolving it. The first one feels easier. The second one costs more.

But the second one is the only kind that leads somewhere worth going.

Your marriage doesn’t need you to be quieter. It needs you to be braver. Not the dramatic, blow-up-the-relationship kind of brave. The Tuesday-night, one-honest-sentence, I’m-going-to-trust-that-this-marriage-can-hold-my-truth kind of brave.

Go first. It will cost you the comfort of silence.

It’s worth it.

Dr. Corey Allan is a licensed marriage and family therapist, the host of Sexy Marriage Radio, and the author of the forthcoming book Go First: It Will Cost You. It’s Worth It.

For a free Healthy Marriage Mini-Course, visit tinyurl.com/smrcoursehhh.

The post What “Keeping the Peace” Is Actually Costing You appeared first on Hot, Holy & Humorous.

Maybe you could address the question about how to handle arguments. I know for us, they would become quite confrontational. She’d stand there with her arms folded accusingly, and the volume level of the “conversation” would begin to ramp up, and it would all go downhill from there.

It has taken me decades to understand how to deal with this…but now, we have a process in place to handle disagreements…

A wife really shouldn’t want to get into a confrontation with her husband, because if there’s one thing men are good at by (their sinful) nature, it’s fighting to win. And we can really pull out all the dirty tricks in order to be victorious. It’s wrong, I know, but that’s our worldliness coming out.

It took us longer than a decade to figure some things out too. However, in my marriage the one willing to fight long and hard was me.  I was more confrontational, while hubby withdrew when things got super-hairy.

During our “bad years,” I read about a bazillion marriage and self-help books. Not to mention hours and hours searching scripture for the magic marriage duct-tape that would patch all the rifts in our relationship. Let me summarize my takeaways and what worked for us.

Respect how your spouse best handles disagreements. For double-digit years, we played this terrible argument game in which I insisted on talking everything out and settling issues as they arose, while my husband bolted away from conflict and withdrew into what he considered a more peaceful mode of silence. The more I confronted, the more he withdrew. The more he withdrew, the more I confronted. What a horrible cycle!

My position was backed up by Scripture, I’d declare: “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24)” and “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:26-27).

My husband’s perspective was backed up by other Scripture! “Don’t sin by letting anger control you. Think about it overnight and remain silent.” (Psalm 4:4, NLT) and “A fool vents all his feelings, but a wise man holds them back” (Proverbs 29:11). Not to mention Proverbs 21:19: “It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.”

We were so entrenched in getting what we wanted and needed. Instead, we should have paid attention to what love really looks like, even in arguments: “[Love] does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful” (1 Corinthians 13:5). We’ve since figured out the better way is for each of us to seek out the other’s good in how we argue.

I watch for when he’s getting emotionally flooded and let him have break time. He knows I will need to talk things out more than he does and allows for that. Each of you must consider the other and give ground about how you argue in order for your disagreement to still happen in the context of respect and love.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Philippians 2:3-4).

Stop arguing about how the other feels. One of the absolute worst things to say is “You shouldn’t feel like that, so stop it.” Oh, how I wish I could simply turn off my emotional responses like the latest bad-idea reality show. Newsflash: Feelings just happen. They can be based on truths or errors or lies, but feelings themselves won’t  simply leave by willing them away. So stop arguing about how the other feels. Instead, tackle why they feel that way. Get to the underlying issues.

This is true with physical intimacy. Your spouse’s feelings about sex make complete sense — given their underlying beliefs. If your wife has experienced sexual trauma in the past at the hands of men and you’re constantly talking about wanting her to give you sex, it makes complete sense to her to feel used and unvalued. If your husband has been rebuffed by you a million times with excuses of how busy you are, it makes complete sense to him to feel disrespected and unwanted.

Now what if these two are married to each other? And they spend years arguing about how they feel about sex? But the issue isn’t their feelings, which are understandable under the circumstances, but their sexual baggage, their needs and values, their misunderstandings, the wrong messages they’ve believed about sexuality.

Make every effort to draw out the real issue to understand what’s causing your spouse to feel this way. You might find you’re way closer than you think when you begin to ferret out the core problems and work toward solutions.

Look for mutuality. This one’s the brainchild of Steven Covey, who wrote the wonderful book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you haven’t read it, go get your copy. Two of his habits made a real impact on how I approached disagreements with my husband: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” (which is dealt with better in the previous point) and “Think win-win.”

Too often, we think in terms of win-lose when arguing with our spouse. but from a biblical perspective, “…the two are united into one” (Mark 10:8). If you’re one, then her losing means he loses, and him losing means she loses. Even if you feel like you’ve won an argument, your other half and your relationship could lose — meaning you lose.

Approach disagreements with the goal of both of you feeling good about the resolution. That doesn’t mean you both win every time. Sometimes one of you gives up their position, but feels okay about it because they understand better or get something else in return or simply feel good about being listened to before a decision was made. Other times you find a reasonable compromise. And sometimes, you simply find a third way.

Regardless, the experience itself was a win for the relationship, not a horrible interchange in which you got knocked out in the marriage boxing ring. If you lose like that, you’ll build anger and resentment toward the person who dealt that knee-buckling blow, aka your spouse. Instead, you should walk with something you can feel good about — a win-win for both of you.

I have more on this subject, but if I said it all, this post would be ridiculously long. I’ll summarize that I also believe setting is important and how you communicate with one another matters. For more on those, check out How to Talk about Sexual Problems with Your Spouse and Are You Sure You’re Communicating? Also, What Detractors Have Taught Me about Resolving Marriage Conflict.

What tips do you have for successfully navigating marital disagreements? Where do you still struggle?

The post Q&A with J: How to Handle Arguments in Your Marriage appeared first on Hot, Holy & Humorous.