By order of the weekend I sentence you to life . Who am I kidding . I procrastinated today , which means no life tomorrow <| sep |> I was all ready to chime in after reading the title , then read the post , so my answer here is going to change a bit . Knowing how to fight isn ' t a bad thing . Asking you to give up something you don ' t want to , that you have studied for years , is wrong in my book . Everything cannot be resolved with words , no matter how much everyone might hope that is the case . Speaking from personal experience though , there is a man I know who has also studied martial arts for years . and will defend if he thinks the situation calls for it . Yet sometimes , I don ' t think he should go about it the way he does . for two reasons . and I only mention this because maybe it may play into the bigger picture for you two yet , her asking you to stop practicing martial arts . it ' s more likely this isn ' t the case . but still . First reason . sometimes someone spouts nonsense and is looking for a fight when it is possible to ignore themdownplay the situationleave . and the situation escalated because he felt the need to defend . For example , say we were at a pub , and some guy was saying something ridiculous to me . or was causing some sort of minor scene in which he was offending others . It ' s cases like this where I figure it ' s not worth it for him to possibly find himself in some sort of legal trouble for punching some guy in the face after escalating the situation by verbally confronting him . when verbally confronting him was obviously going to lead to something physical . even if he deserved it . And when it involved me ? I would even feel a bit guilty I had a role in him possibly getting in trouble . even though I didn ' t ask him to defend me . Second reason . if a violent confrontation is enivtable , like in your situation OP , sometimes it ' s pretty obvious the other party doesn ' t have fighting skills on the same level as someone who has trained in martial arts for years . Now I have no idea how this fight went down , but I know in my case there have been times where it seems it would have been easy enough for him to restrain them without having to lay them out . When someone has martial arts training , it ' s easy enough for the other party . even if they instigated the fight . to claim excessive force and try to press charges . Again , no idea if this applies to you , as I ' m only speaking from my personal experience . And again , I think asking you to no longer use any physical violence and to only use words in a dangerous situation isn ' t going to fly .