Everybody Fights
Everybody Fights: So Why Not Get Better at It?
By: Kim and Penn Holderness
The YouTube sensation who graced the world with Christmas Jammies back in 2013 has now written a book on marriage. This book was inspired (at least partly) by people commenting on their viral song parody videos saying things like ‘#couplegoals’ and ‘What a perfect couple!’
Turns out, we aren’t the only ones that present our best on the internet! Penn and Kim Holderness decided they would be vulnerable and use their platform to confirm what we (should) already know—no one is perfect, and they, like us, have to work hard at their marriage.
Indeed. Everybody fights.
But we can have what they would call “productive” fights. There may not be an ultimate “right” way to fight. But there is a “better” way to fight. A way that could help your marriage thrive.
Why do we care? Well.
“This is marriage we’re talking about, our most sustained and sustaining relationship with a person who we promised to love and support as long as we both shall live. Shouldn’t we look at the 55% divorce rate and say, ‘Forget pride—what do I need to do to take care of this thing?’”
If you, like me, have read several marriage books, there might not be a ton of new information here- not reinventing the wheel is a thing right? So yes, you will hear about communication. You will hear that we can’t expect our partners to read our minds. You will hear that we need to be better listeners. You will hear to ask clarifying questions, say thank you, and treat your spouse like a stranger.
But what I think sets this book apart is two-fold: how it is formatted and its conversational tone.
It is structured around ten of their biggest ‘fights’. Penn and Kim each weigh in, setting the scene and giving us their side of the story. If you’re married and haven’t had one of these fights, I would be shocked. Here’s a sampling:
Can You Please Just Say Something? Anything?
I Do Everything and You Do Nothing
I’m Struggling with Snuggling
Are You Even Listening to Me?
Why Are You Being So Snippy?
It’s Like I Can’t Do Anything Right Anymore
They worked through these fights with their pastor, gained some helpful tools and strategies they’ve personally “battle-tested” the last five years of their marriage and are sharing them with us now.
If you’ve seen any of their videos, they are a little over-the-top but still entertaining. This book is somewhat similar. You definitely hear their personalities come through. It’s informal and funny. And 99% relatable. (I’m not a Snoop Dogg fan…)
What qualifies them to give us marriage tips? Well… not a lot. Except that they’ve been fighting a lot and have gotten better at by using these methods. And they fight a lot because ever since Christmas Jammies, they spend almost all of their waking hours together making and planning their videos. (Plus a solid year of Covid quarantine)
“We talk to one another easily seven hours a day. Six of those hours are debates about what rhymes best with ‘booty’ or how to get a camera angle that doesn’t take Penn’s chin from a double to a triple… but disagreements are inevitable when you spend that much time with someone, and if we had a knock-down, drag-out fight every time we saw things differently, we would never accomplish anything.”
So they clarify that this book is not for people struggling with serious marriage issues that may involve addiction, mental or chronic illness, or serious trust issues. They do not claim to have the answers for everything. But this is a book intended to provide a little boost to help improve our marriages.
And I think this definitely accomplishes that.
I won’t rehash all of their strategies here because without the context of the particular fight, it’s not as effective to understand how to employ them. That’s the point of reading the entire book and not just my stellar review.
But here are some snippets that I found relevant and relatable:
“It’s not what you said. It’s how you said it.” (ugh. this is definitely me)
”You see what happened there, right? You started with one fight and then escalated into every fight you’ve ever had or thought about having”
(you know how sometimes you ruminate on your feelings and you remember all the other times you had those feelings and then when you finally talk about it with your spouse you start bringing up ALL the things… well this is the part where they tell us to ‘stay in the airport’ and deal with one fight at a time)
“When Penn said that Kim wasn’t spontaneous, Kim heard, ‘I find you boring and uninteresting’ When Kim brought up how much they were spending on restaurant meals, Penn heard, ‘You aren’t providing for your family.’”
(this reminded me a little bit about the distorted cognitive thinking explored in The Coddling of the American Mind book I just read—the ways we interpret what others are saying or doing can have a huge affect on how we relate to people and how we view ourselves.)
“When something is bothering you, you might think its’ better to endure in silence, to play the part of the stoic or the martyr. Choosing that path may sound like you’re being the bigger person, taking the good ol’ high road. Au contraire… you are compromising your communication.’”
(shoot. so the silent treatment isn’t winning?)
“Three of the biggest challenges to good listening habits: distractions, laziness, and interrupting.”
(and 100% of distractions are phones, kids, phones, and phones, amiright?)
“Strike you statements from your conversations and replaced with I Feel.”
(Is it a ‘you statement’ loophole if you say: I feel [this] when you…?)
“[If I had had my phone on me] I would have clicked on a video of some guy who can hit a frisbee with a ping-pong ball from two hundred yards away and I would have gone mentally AWOL. But instead I was tuned into [what Kim was going through.]
(Um. actually I’m just put this one in here because the guy he is referring to is almost absolutely my husband. PENN: If you’re reading this, I think you should collab with @thatll.work and blow your sports-and-trick-shot-loving mind. You know… when you’re done being tuned into your wife…)
“Then she did that thing that I hate: she asked for specific examples.”
(right?! We need examples but we’re also supposed to forgive and forget…but also we’ll never believe our spouse unless they can prove it…but also we should “keep no record of wrongs”)
“A non-kinetic interruption is when you have something you’re so excited to share, you stop listening to what other people are saying while you wait for your chance to say your piece.”
(Also me…preparing my point-by-point response or chomping at the bit to share my stupid ‘me too’ stories that I don’t realize hijack the convo. Whoops.)
And probably the most relatable thing contained in the entire book:
“We spit out an average of over fifteen thousand words each day. True, about five thousand of those are a variation on ‘Has anybody seen my phone?’”
(for rarely leaving my house I lose my phone a shocking amount of times)
I know this is a long review, guys, but can we talk about marriage books for a minute? If only one person of the married couple reads a marriage book, does it really help anything? I feel like you have to both WANT to read the book and then read it together so you can actually implement the strategies. If just I read this book and then I tell Mike in the middle of a fight that he’s doing one of the 3 D’s, he’s not gonna get it. And when I explain it to him, he’s probably not going to be on board about ‘fixing’ it. So I think marriage books are best consumed WITH your partner. This also helps prevent you from reading it and thinking “Oh, such-and-such-my-lover should definitely read this part” (on every page). Because let’s be real, our biggest blindspots in life are probably in our marriages.
So I would recommend reading this WITH your spouse. (Full transparency: I didn’t. But I should have.)
And it’s short and super conversational so it’s not going to be a tedious book, I promise.
I think you’ll like it. (Except for the part where they talk about one of Freud’s theories. We don’t need to listen to that guy.)
One last comment. They’re self-proclaimed Christians, and they talk about the help they received from their pastor with each fight, but this is not a Bible-based marriage book. That does not render this book useless by any means—I think there are a lot of good ideas here that I think really would change your marriage if you’re willing to do the work— just know that there is an element of personhood and sin and grace missing from this book that would make a biblical marriage book worthy of your time as well. (I may update this once I read Paul Tripp’s marriage book next month)
In summation: Everybody fights. If you haven’t yet, you will. I’m ten years into marriage and I would have said I didn’t need this book the first 7 or so years of our marriage. But here we are- ten years in, four kids later, living in the age of facebook (I know I’m not cool) and TikTok (I know my husband is) and the ability to binge watch every season of Survivor from any country and our communication is sometimes in the pits. So read the book and fight more productively. It’s worth it.
Okay. Two more quotes because they made me laugh.
“I sat the family down and said, ‘can I have one hour…when you agree to pitch in around the house and lighten my load?’ They conferred and decided, Yeah, OK, this is literally the least we can do.”
“The shame was all completely in my head. The person judging me was me. The call was coming from inside the house, which made it all the more horrifying.” IN. SIDE. THE HOUSE.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
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