Couples who frequently argue with one another (by "frequent" I mean once a week or more) will tell you that arguing is good—it helps "get things out into the open" and "helps resolve issues." This may be so (indeed, we've all felt the relief that often results from a good row), but in my experience and observation, I have noticed that frequent arguing often means something else. One or more of the following three possibilities are good bets as to what's really going on with the couple who has more than the average number of blow-ups:

1. The relationship harbors more than the usual amount of anger because either or both partners don't know how to communicate their feelings in a timely fashion. Certainly, everyone gets angry on occasion—and if there are two people around, then you have the perfect recipe for an argument. But if these feelings of anger are expressed spontaneously, in the moment, as they occur, they will resolve themselves and the couple will return to a "normal" equilibrium. Many people, however (whether or not they're in a relationship) don't openly and honestly express their feelings as they occur. Yet as with everything in life, what goes in must eventually come out. Unfortunately, what comes out are often feelings and issues from a long time ago. In his 1961 book, On Becoming a Person, psychologist Carl Rogers describes how this expression of historical issues and feelings is perceived by the party to whom they are being expressed:

   When a person is living behind a front, a façade [meaning he puts on a face to hide his real feelings], his unexpressed feelings pile up to some explosion point, and are then apt to be triggered off by some specific incident. But the feelings which sweep over the person and are expressed at such a time—in a temper storm, in a deep depression, in a flood of self-pity, and the like—often have an unfortunate effect on all concerned because they are so inappropriate to the specific situation [about which the couple is ostensibly arguing] and hence seem so unreasonable. The angry flare-up over one annoyance in the relationship may actually be the pent-up or denied feelings resulting from dozens of such situations. But in the context in which it is expressed it is unreasonable and hence not understood.
   
   Here is where therapy helps to break a vicious cycle. As the client is able to pour out, in all their accumulated anguish, fury, or despair, the emotions which he has been feeling, and as he accepts these feelings as his own, they lose their explosiveness. Hence he is more able to express, in any specific family relationship, the feelings aroused by that relationship. Since they [the feelings] do not carry such an overload from the past, they are more appropriate, and more likely to be understood. Gradually the individual finds himself expressing his feelings when they occur, not at some much later point after they have burned and festered in him (318).

   He goes on to write:

   It appears that an individual finds it satisfying in the long run to express any strong or persistent emotional attitudes in the situation in which they arise, to the person with whom they are concerned, and to the depth to which they exist [italics are mine].  This is more satisfying than refusing to admit that such feelings exist, or permitting them to pile up to an explosive degree, or directing them toward some situation other than the one in which they arose.
   
   It seems that the individual discovers that it is more satisfying in the long run to live a given family relationship on the basis of the real interpersonal feelings which exist, rather than living the relationship on the basis of a pretense. A part of this discovery is that the fear that the relationship will be destroyed if the true feelings are admitted, is usually unfounded, particularly when the feelings are expressed as belonging to oneself [italics are mine], not as stating something about the other person.
   
   Our clients find that as they express themselves more freely, as the surface character of the relationship matches more closely the fluctuating attitudes which underlie it, they can lay aside some of their defenses and truly listen to the other person. Often for the first time, they begin to understand how the other person feels, and why he feels that way. Thus mutual understanding beings to pervade the interpersonal interaction (327).

2. The couple has more than the usual number of issues to argue about. This indicates a potential problem:
    
   1. in the dynamics of the relationship itself; or
   2. in one or both of the of the partners themselves as individuals (ie, one or both partners have psychological or psychiatric problems which exist independent of the relationship; one of the most common problems revolves around insecure attachment)
3. The couple has no other way of being intimate. Arguing is the only way the two partners know how to be close to one another. Such a couple might claim that incessant arguing as just an idiosyncrasy of the relationship—a quirk that makes the relationship "unique". Arguing is,  in other words, the couple's own special way of communicating and showing affection. From my own point of view, I think this represents a pathology in the relationship or in one or both of the partners individually.

Again, although all couples argue from time-to-time, constant arguing is a red flag indicating a problem(s)—and the warning should be heeded. Depending on the cause, individual or couples counselling (or both), may be beneficial for everyone's sake. In some cases, a break-up (temporary or permanent) may be the best idea.