It’ll Be Hard To Argue With Me

Would you like a guaranteed cure for stopping arguments in your family?

I bet you would.

Well, I’ll tell you what works for me. We don’t have many arguments, and I think I know why. I believe what works for me will work for you. But, it takes strength, confidence, courage, and humility to try it.

It’s really pretty simple. Every time an argument starts, before it heats up, but when you can tell it’s likely about to – just shut up! That’s not physically hard to do. Actually it requires no effort at all to say nothing. It may require a lot of emotional effort: strength of will. That’s why you’ve got to be strong, have a good self image so you can have confidence in yourself, be brave enough to take a risk, and humble enough to just keep quiet.

I dare you to try it! When a conversation with your spouse or kids begins to change gears into a disagreement and then starts to escalate into a full-blown argument, don’t let it. The guaranteed way for two people not to argue is for one of them to withdraw from the field…to say nothing.

Now I’m not talking about pouting. That’s something else entirely. Announce to your partner in conversation that you feel your relationship is too important to allow an argument to weaken it. Tell your loved one that you are going to be quiet now because they are important to you and you just won’t do anything to harm the relationship that you treasure. They will have to stop arguing too, because they now have no one to argue with. You are not interested in winning (an argument); you are interested in saving (a relationship). Tell them you will listen, but you will not argue, even if it means keeping completely quiet.

This behavior (more appropriately, “lack of” behavior) will be hard the first time you try it. The old impulse to get your “two cents worth in” will be hard to resist. But the higher value you place on the relationship, the easier it will be for you to keep your mouth shut.

What you have just read is not an original idea with me. Guess where I got it.

So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1:19-20 NKJV).