Conflict Resolution in Marriage

 Conflict within marriage is inevitable but how you handle the conflict can either bring you and your spouse closer together or drive you apart.

Look at it this way. You have two people with different personalities, backgrounds and communication styles. Mixed with a bunch of expectations, bad habits, interesting idiosyncrasies and then you add a few daily life trials. Guess what? You for sure will have some conflict. 

Every marriage has its own tensions and we could probably tell you all the things NOT to do. But one thing that we know and understand for sure is that it’s not about trying to avoid the conflict but it’s about how you deal with it. Healthy conflict resolution can lead to a process that develops oneness in your marriage. And I don’t know about you, but we want to spend more time loving each other instead of being at odds with each other.

So here are five steps (in no particular order) to help you and your spouse resolve conflict in your marriage. Remember there is really no way to avoid it. But the question becomes how will you handle it?

                 

Step 1: Loving Confrontation

Confronting your spouse with grace and tactfulness requires wisdom, patience, and humility. Blessed is the marriage where both spouses feel the other is a good friend who will listen, understand and work through any problem or conflict. To do this will take loving confrontation.

• Check your motivation. Will your words help or hurt? Will bringing this up cause healing, wholeness, and oneness, or further isolation?

• Check your attitude. Loving confrontation says, “I care about you. I respect you and I want you to respect me. I want to know how you feel.” Don’t hop on your bulldozer and run your spouse down. Approach your spouse lovingly.

• Check the circumstances. This includes timing, location, and setting. 

• Check to see what other pressures may be present. Be sensitive to where your spouse is coming from. What’s the context of your spouse’s life right now?

• Listen to your spouse. Seek to understand his or her view, and ask questions to clarify viewpoints.

• Be sure you are ready to take it as well as dish it out. 

• During the discussion, stick to one issue at a time. Don’t bring up several. Don’t save up a series of complaints and let your spouse have them all at once.

• Focus on the problem, rather than the person. 

• Focus on behavior rather than character. This is the “you” message versus the “I” message. The “you” message is like saying “You’re always late.” The “I” message would say, “I feel frustrated when you don’t let me know you’ll be late.”

• Focus on the facts rather than judging motives. 

• Above all, focus on understanding your spouse rather than on who is winning or losing. When your spouse confronts you, listen carefully to what is said and what isn’t said. 

 

Step 2: Know, accept and adjust to your differences

Because opposites attract, that’s one reason we sometimes have conflict in our marriage. I consider myself an extrovert and my husband is an introvert. My husband can thrive and survive in high-stress situations and I run the other way. But we balance one another out and if you’re honest with yourself that’s a possibility why you married who you did. Your spouse added a variety, spice, and difference to your life that it didn’t have before. 

 

But after being married for a while (sometimes a short while), the attractions become repellents. You may argue over small irritations—such as how to properly squeeze a tube of toothpaste—or over major philosophical differences in handling finances or raising children. You may find that your backgrounds and your personalities are so different that you wonder how and why God placed you together in the first place. It’s important to understand these differences, and then to accept and adjust to them. God gave you a spouse who completes you in ways you haven’t even learned yet. 

 

Step 3: Forgiveness

No matter how hard you try to love and please your spouse… spoiler alert: they will fail. With failure comes hurt. And the only ultimate relief for hurt is forgiveness. One of the keys to maintaining an open, intimate, and happy marriage is to ask for and grant forgiveness quickly. And the ability to do that is tied to each individual’s relationship with God. 

 

Jesus said, “For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions” (Matthew 6:14–15). The instruction is clear: God insists that we are to be forgivers, and marriage, probably more than any other relationship, presents frequent opportunities to practice. Forgiving means giving up resentment and the desire to punish. By an act of your will, you let the other person off the hook. And as a Christian you do not do this under duress, scratching and screaming in protest. Rather, you do it with a gentle spirit and love, as Paul urged: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32).

 

Step 4: Pursuing

“If it is possible, as much as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men.” (Romans 12:18) The longer we live the more we realize how difficult those words are for many people, including ourselves. Living peaceably means pursuing peace. It means taking the initiative to resolve a difficult conflict rather than waiting for the other person to take the first step. To pursue the resolution of a conflict means setting aside your own hurt, anger, and bitterness. It means not losing heart. My challenge to you is to “keep your relationships current.” In other words, resolve that you will remain in solid fellowship daily with your spouse—as well as with your children, parents, coworkers, and friends. Don’t allow satan to gain a victory by isolating you from someone you care about.

 

Step 5: Return a blessing for an insult

“Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.” (1Peter 3:8-9 NIV) So what does it mean to return a blessing for an insult? Chapter 3 of 1st Peter continues on to say “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it.” (1Peter 3:10-11) To give a blessing first means stepping aside or simply refusing to retaliate if your spouse gets angry. Changing your natural tendency to lash out, fight back, or tell your spouse off is just about as easy as changing the flow of the Mississippi River. You can’t do it without God’s help, without yielding to the power of the Holy Spirit. It also means doing good. Sometimes doing good simply takes a few words spoken gently and kindly, or perhaps a touch, a hug, or a pat on the shoulder. It might mean making a special effort to please your spouse by performing a special act of kindness. Lastly, being a blessing means seeking peace, actually pursuing it. When you eagerly seek to forgive, you are pursuing oneness, not isolation. 

 

God created us for relationship. Do not let unresolved conflict rob you of the joy that healthy relationships can bring. Remember the relationship is more important than the issue.