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BY SALLY FRIEDMAN

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

LIFESOUNDS

It begins so innocently. I suggest, ever-so-gently, that my husband, who is driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, might just want to edge over to the left a bit to avoid the monster truck in the right lane.

I speak sweetly, in modulated tones. Or so I insist.

My husband, who has received these gentle suggestions from me for several decades, apparently does not agree about the tone issue. And we're off...

The dialogue goes something like this: He: "Who's driving this car anyway?"

I: "A person who doesn't strategize very well..."

He: "Look who's talking."

I: (voice raised a tad) "What are you implying?"

By now, the heat in the car has nothing to do with the thermostat. Two otherwise sane and sensible adults are about to go for the kill. Ancient grievances -- his attitudes about women in general, women drivers in particular, my lifelong penchant for being late, meaning that we're often forced to hurry to appointments -- it's all about to bubble to the surface.

And it does. With sound and fury.

Marital arguments are so bizarre. They seem to have an eternal life span. We cover the same prickly points over and over again, not just for months or years, but for the entire span of the marriage. Worst of all, nothing ever gets resolved.

I adore my husband most of the time. He's smart and funny, kind of generous.

But he's also the one person in the world who turn me into a totally irrational lunatic over issues as miniscule as why cracking one's knuckles is cruel and unusual punishment, and how he really should have cleaned the filters on the humidifier before they caused a major meltdown that brought a plumbing bill approximately equal to the national debt.

I know that my husband loves me – but that he does not love my desk. I know that he can sulk for days about why I managed to lose the warrantee form for our new TV under the mountains of debris that constitute a permanent layer on that desk. I also understand that he will mention it for days, managing to get my high crime into odd conversational moments.

We both know that we are flawed human beings with major and minor habits that will never change. But still we go at one another, as if change were indeed possible, and stubbornness were not our common bond.

My husband's training in the law has given him a decided edge in the minefields of marital arguments. He is logical, focused and linear - in other words, a formidable opponent.

My style is more "lyric." Or so I like to think. I use torrents of words that gush forth in no particular order. I tend towards drama, love hyperbole, and never have a logical mental outline.

Can this marriage be saved?

It has been for over four decades. But there are those moments when our differences seem to doom our ongoing debates about our children and their destinies, our eating habits, and how high is too high to set the heat or air conditioning controls ...

I wish I could say that my husband and I argue productively.

I wish I could claim that we learn from each confrontation, and keep on improving our respective debating styles. But that would be a stretch.

I have learned, over all these years of marital bliss, that it's best not to remind my husband too many times in an hour that it's his turn to unload the dishwasher.

He has learned that trying to make me pack sensibly when we vacation is a lost cause.

And together, we have learned that there comes a point in an argument, however fierce, when somebody's laughter will defuse the crisis of the moment, and that a hug speaks even louder than those angry harangues.

So yes, we will continue to have our wars on vacations, in the kitchen and always, always, in the car. And we will not, as one couple reportedly does, number our arguments so that just the mention of "Argument 212" defuses the whole thing.

That would mean missing all the fun.

Sally Friedman is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, resident of Moorestown, and longtime contributor to local, regional and national publications. The mother of three has seven grandchildren and is the wife of retired New Jersey Superior Court judge Victor Friedman. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .