Do you want avoid fighting with your spouse? Do this one thing and you can prevent an issue from escalating.

If your spouse gets upset because of something you did (or sometimes something you did not do) then all you have to do to legitimately calm things down, and literally suck the negative energy out of the conflict, is to validate. What does it mean to validate?  My wife Amy has one of the greatest quotes on validation I’ve ever heard, “I love you more than proving myself right or proving you wrong.” I have to give her the credit for that one!

Validation has nothing to do with facts, who’s right and who’s wrong, but rather validation is all about the feelings.  Feelings are never right or wrong, they just are.  If you have ever had your feelings hurt or experienced a negative emotion with someone, what do you want? Ultimately you want to validation that you are hurting and from that point on it can vary widely on what needs to happen to ultimately repair the damage.  But the first thing people want is to simply be heard and validated for their experience.

If you want to instantly stop a fight and destroy the negative emotions, all you have to do is validate your spouse. Let him know you understand and can see how you hurt him. Let her know that what she is feeling is real. If you go to facts (instead of validation) the argument will get worse and more ugly. If you go toward validation, things will calm down immediately and you two will be able to have a rational discussion about whatever the conflict was about.