Researchers at the University of Michigan carried out a study on

(14) A team at the University of Michigan recently published a study of how married couples fight. They also looked at how different "styles" of arguing might predict the future of a marriage. The findings appeared in the Journal of Marriage and Family. The study followed 373 couples over 16 years. Forty-six percent of them had divorced by the final year in 2002. (15) The couples were asked at four different times to report on their most recent conflict. First, they had to agree on which conflict was their most recent. The husbands and wives each had to choose from a list of behaviors to describe the Strategies they used. (16) The list included behaviors like calm discussion, listening, and trying hard to find out the other person’s feelings. The list also included behaviors like yelling, using insults, walking away or not communicating—in other words, the silent treatment. Assistant Professor Kira Birditt led the study. (17) In her words, the husbands were more likely to use the constructive strategies like discussing the problem, finding solutions, and the wives were more likely to use those destructive or withdrawal strategies. But Professor Birditt also says the study found that over time, wives became less destructive in the way they argued. Husbands stayed the same.