They avoid conflict.

They say what they think pleases their spouses instead of telling the truth.

Oh, yes, they do what is convenient instead of saying what they really want.

Well, psychologists deal with a variety of problems.

But I would say that two most common normal problems are anxiety and depression.

That would be one class.

And the other would be lack of assertiveness.

And lack of assertiveness subsumes the problems that you just described.

People won't stand up for themselves and say what they need and want.

And then they don't negotiate properly.

They're avoiding conflict in the short term, which is a form of lie by omission.

And what that means is that problems aggregate around them.

That's often why people end up divorced.

People will stay married for a long time and one partner will say to the other, well, I've been unhappy for the last eight years.

It's like, well, that might have been something to announce in increments, say, weekly or even daily, long before everything accrued to the point where the only possible solution is a catastrophic dissolution.

There's a lot of conflict involved in setting a relationship straight.

You have to let each other know who you are because you're different.

That's going to cause conflict.

You're going to conflict about whose job takes priority.

You're going to have conflict about how to spend your free time, about how to raise your children, about how to manage the domestic economy, about what disciplinary strategies you should use, about where to vacation, about what to eat, like all of those things have to be negotiated through.

And all of that requires truthfulness so that each of you know what the other wants and will be satisfied with.

The only thing more exhausting than telling the truth and negotiating with your spouse is not doing it and waiting for the divorce.

Both of them are difficult, but I would recommend the former.

But you would agree that conflict avoidance is practical sometimes.

No, I don't actually.

I think in a marriage, for example, there's almost nothing so small you shouldn't fight about it.

But the question is, what does fight mean?

It doesn't mean win.

Like if you and I have a relationship, let's say it's a business partnership.

It doesn't really matter.

If we have a relationship and we have a difference of opinion, we need to battle it through.

But the purpose of the battle isn't so that your viewpoint prevails or that my viewpoint prevails, because either of us might be wrong.

The purpose is to engage in the conflictual exchange of opinion so that we can see a joint path forward to peace.

And that's the thing is like if you're fighting with your wife, the first thing to remember if you're fighting with your wife is you have to live with her.

So maybe beating her in the argument is not the right outcome.

What the right outcome is saying what you have to say, listening to what she has to say and see if you guys can come up with a mutually agreed upon solution that will make the problem go away.