OK, please do not tar and feather me just yet, but my short answer to the question at hand of "Is fighting for your marriage worth it?" is not always. I hate to be a party pooper, but to me marriage while it is work, should not be a fight. Now let me take a step here and explain my viewpoint on this a little more. If you are "fighting" for your relationship something is inherently not right. This is hard to accept but it is the truth.

The first argument that will be posed against me is "what if there are children?" I can hear it already, and I say to you this is even more of a reason to sit down and really evaluate if this is something that can work. Children always seem to be the first to know when a marriage is done. That is the hardest part for children. They see the fighting and they see it from an objective standpoint and frankly they don't like it.

If they are older it is even more pronounced they understand that there are issues and problems. If you are "fighting" in any way they see it. A lot of adults I know now whose parents marriage didn't work say they knew at least 3-4 YEARS before the divorce actually happened that it was coming.

How can this be? Well it is actually very simple... They are observing without being able to do a damn thing about what they are seeing. So they learn to watch for the signs and get out of the way.

See, as we get older we tend to think that people are going to change. When the facts are, we should have learned by then that people don't change. Marriage is hard, it is demanding and when you have children you have to specifically make time to keep the marriage going. All that being said it should never be a fight. Fighting is never good, and if you find yourself starting that cycle it is something you and your spouse need to talk about right away.

My husband and I have a rule in our house: "If something is bothering you tell the other about it immediately. You can wait 3 days to see if it is a pattern, but if so discuss it." We also have a way of starting this discussion: "I know you are doing a lot and you know that I love you, but there is something you we need to talk about."

This allows the other to know that something they don't like to hear is about to be said but we don't approach it in an angry way. The other person is not allowed to ignore the issue and not allowed to get mad. Now I am not saying we are happy about these conversations, but we are not angry about it.

If you can't have these discussions your marriage is in trouble and I am not sure that "fighting" for it will help it. Fighting is hard on everyone in the family. You have to accept that it is part of a relationship, things change and you will each do things that bother the other, but no, I would not say you should ever "fight" over it.