Week 9--Managing conflict

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Why you gots to be a butt?

That, bad grammar and all...usually said in a kid-like voice, is how my husband and I diffuse the tension that can arise from perpetual, or even solvable, problems within our marriage.

John Gottman has proposed that there are two kinds of marital conflict, perpetual and solvable. According to Gottman in his book “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”, 69% of marital conflicts fall into the perpetual category, meaning they are problems that you will always fight about. Granted, not all of those “fights” are going to be of the knock-down, drag-out variety. In fact, even happy couples have things that would be termed perpetual conflicts.

I loved this quote from Gottman’s book,

“Despite what many therapists will tell you, you don’t have to resolve your major marital conflicts for your marriage to thrive.”

There will always be conflict in a marriage. People who tell you they don’t have conflict are either lying to you or to themselves. In fact, my husband has often told me that his parents never fought. I’m not sure if he meant just in front of the kids, or at all, but after knowing them for a while and being on the outside looking in, I can see that my mother-in-law gives in a lot to what her husband wants but that must work for them. They’ve been married 52 years now. But watching how they interact, I know that would not work for my husband and me.

When it comes to marriage and conflict, you need to find what works for you. It is interesting to think that, in a marriage, something that would be a perpetual problem for you could be a solvable problem for another couple.

One thing that is important to remember in a marriage is that following Christ’s example will always be the best way to resolve conflict. He has asked us to “Love one Another” and if we can remember that, everything will work out. Elder Lynn G Robbins gave a talk in 1998 entitled, “Agency and Anger” where he talks about the fact that we have our agency and can choose to be angry or not. Talking about Satan and his war on the family he says,

“His strategy is to stir up anger between family members. Satan is the “father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another” (3 Ne. 11:29; emphasis added). The verb stir sounds like a recipe for disaster: Put tempers on medium heat, stir in a few choice words, and bring to a boil; continue stirring until thick; cool off; let feelings chill for several days; serve cold; lots of leftovers."  

That doesn’t really sound like a recipe that I want cooking at my house, but I can tell you that it does happen.

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Elder Robbins goes on to talk about how so often we say things like “I lost my temper” or “Someone made me mad” as if it’s something that we can’t help. Being angry is a choice that we make and we can certainly work at not making that choice. No other person can make you mad, you choose to be mad. I guess that’s a downfall of agency in our lives.

Elder Robbins says, “Anger is a yielding to Satan’s influence by surrendering our self-control. It is the thought-sin that leads to hostile feelings or behavior. It is the detonator of road rage on the freeway, flare-ups in the sports arena, and domestic violence in homes.

Unchecked, anger can quickly trigger an explosion of cruel words and other forms of emotional abuse that can scar a tender heart.”

We need to work to overcome anger, especially in our family relationships. We have made solemn covenants with our spouses and we need to make sure we are living up to those covenants we have made.