If you’re new here {hello, all you visitors from the A-to-Z Challenge–hope you’ll stick around!}, I’ve been exploring the topic of marital conflict almost since the beginning of LiveSimplyLove.
My goal in starting this blog was to combat some of the fairy tale perspectives out there about marriage and instead tell a real, true story about the realities and challenges. Conflict is one of those realities.
So, I started a weekly series called Make-Up-Monday to motivate myself and others to openly share stories of marital conflict. There are some doozies {ours included} but thankfully they all end in peaceful resolution.
One thing we’ve learned about conflict resolution is that the initial topic that sets off the conflict is often not really the issue. In fact, if we spend a bunch of time going back and forth with heightened emotions about how he loads the dishwasher, or why I don’t want to throw away a stack of papers, or how we should spend our money, we aren’t likely to resolve much.
What’s really going on? Sometimes it’s how we feel those behaviors impact us or maybe it’s the tone with which we communicated to each other. Or it could be an underlying distrust that’s built up because of a recent {or long-ago, but unforgiven} breach of that trust. The list goes on, but one thing is true: If you are in a marriage, you’ve experienced conflict.
The longer we’ve been together, the better we’ve gotten {OK, he’s better at it than I am} at looking for the underlying issue rather than at the immediate topic.
Did I get my feelings hurt earlier? Is that why I’m lashing out?
Did I have a tone with him? Is that why he shut down?
Or maybe I disrespected him and didn’t realize it.
Thankfully, resolution is the end result, but it happens a whole lot faster when one of us realizes our wrong(s) first and confesses it to the other.
So…what are your biggest conflict trigger locations or topics? Ours is the kitchen!
Photo credit: © miket – Fotolia.com
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Well put. Communication during conflict can be hard. But it is key. It’s also important to step back and realize why there is a conflict in the first place!
Amen! Thanks so much for stopping by!
You’ve done a marvellous job at working out what causes conflict between yourself and your husband. I wish I could get a grip.
Hi Francene – Thanks. It doesn’t come easy (right? Isn’t that the case with most good things). For a long time we’ve been surrounded by lots of amazing teachers and read some good books on the subject. But I’ll give credit where it’s due–nothing has done more for helping us resolve conflict peacefully than our faith in Christ and our understanding of how much WE’VE been forgiven by Him. Reading God’s word (the Bible) and taking it to heart, asking God to change us and trusting Him to do that–that’s where the big changes have come. On our own, we have no strength (or will) to do this well.