Week 1 Martin

I thought the most interesting part of Thank You for Arguing was the second chapter titled Offense. The parts of the chapter that I especially enjoyed were the second (Set Your Goals) and third (Control the Tense). In Set Your Goals, Heinrichs talks about marriage studies that John Gottman performed and Gottman found that couples who stayed married and couples who get divorced argue about the same things but it is how they argue that determines whether or not they stay together. In marriages that succeeded, those couples looked at an argument as a way to come to a solution for the problem while those that got divorced used arguing as a way to fight with their partner. The difference between fighting and arguing is you argue to reach an agreement and you fight to win. I completely agree with this because unfortunately in our society today, people are more worried about saving face or defeating someone else rather than coming to a constructive conclusion that benefits both sides. In the third part, Control the Tense, Aristotle says that all issues boil down to three categories; blame, value, choice. It is important to understand which category the argument falls in because if you argue the wrong issue it is very hard to meet your goals which makes sense to me because sometimes it seems that people, including myself, argue without really knowing what they are arguing.