What happens when a couple want to stay together but find themselves fighting and not understanding why?

Sometimes couples lose their way in the marriage. The subject of their fights and arguments is not the source of the disagreement but a proxy masking larger tensions. Situations like this tend to worsen as fights and disagreements loop into the marriage over and over. The waters become muddied, and it is the rare couple that can work out its differences without outside professional help. This does not mean family or friends.

The couple may not be able to unravel the dynamics of their own marriage without a cool, if not cold, eye looking on because they are, by definition, too much involved in the difficulties. Each spouse cannot hear himself or herself or see himself or herself.

A trained marriage counselor or therapist can help them to learn to listen to each other carefully, to disagree in ways that do not escalate into combat, and most important get along.