George dreaded arguments with his wife. They had always argued a little, right from the start. But they had always gotten past their arguments fairly quickly and without any major disruptions. Lately, though, their arguments had become more frequent and much more hurtful. George didn’t even know the arguments’ cause. It seemed instead like they could argue about anything. And what was worse, George no longer felt in control during their arguments. He had run out of coping tricks and tools. When he thought they were done arguing, they would just go ahead and argue even more. George knew that they had to do something because they could both see that their arguments were affecting not only them but also their kids.
Conflict
Conflict between spouses is definitely something to address as a priority, if you wish to preserve good family life, improve family life, or rescue your struggling family life. While a good marriage is the foundation for a good family life, a struggling marriage can bring a family to its knees. Marriages can struggle in different ways, with changes in the health, abilities, interests, and affections of the partners. Some struggles are natural, predictable, even beneficial. But when spouses break into conflict, the family faces peculiar challenges. Conflict can do quick damage to a marriage and family, if not properly addressed. Continual and extended conflict can not only damage the marital relationship and threaten the family but also harm its members, including children. Address marital conflict concertedly and wisely, to preserve and improve your family life.
Sources
Sources of conflict matter as much or more than the conflicts themselves. Conflicts can wound and damage. Avoid severe conflicts if you can. But avoiding or minimizing conflicts doesn’t necessarily address their source. And if you don’t address the source of conflicts, you’ll likely have more conflicts. Try, then, to get to the source, even as you set rules for civil engagement and hold one another accountable to those rules. In other words, manage conflict, but also get to the conflict's source. Conflict isn’t even bad, something to avoid, if it reveals a hidden cause or source that spouses need to address. Conflict may be the welcome symptom of a marital illness you need to diagnose and cure. Sources can include the things just mentioned above, like the changing health and capacities of one of the spouses, requiring changes in the marital rhythms, or changes in one of the spouse’s interests and affections. Get to the bottom of things quickly, if you can. Let conflict reveal its sources so that you can address its root.
Engagement
Rules of engagement for marital conflict, though, are important, too. Sometimes, it’s not whether you fight but how you fight. Don’t, for instance, catastrophize. Don’t turn small things into big things. Don’t make mountains out of mole hills. And don’t exaggerate, especially accusations. Don’t, for instance, interpret something that just happened between you as yet another example of things your spouse allegedly always does. Avoid the words always and never because they’re probably not true. When you allege that your spouse always or never does something, your spouse will probably have a recent example when your spouse did the opposite of what you just alleged was true. And that opposite example will only further fuel your argument. Recognize that your tendency to exaggerate has its source in the emotion and frustration that you feel, and your desire to get your spouse’s attention and reaction. Simultaneously recognize that by exaggerating the factual basis for your frustration, you’re just making yourself even more frustrated, while frustrating your spouse, too. If you find that you’re both unable to communicate with reasonable calm and accuracy, then stop communicating for the moment, and resume as soon as you can do so.
Peace
You’ll often hear that frequent open communication is essential to a healthy marriage. And that’s likely true. But even good things have their limits and qualifiers. Not all communication is good. The slings and arrows of pointedly critical attacks have the objective of hurting, not of communicating or negotiating. Communication may be essential, but so are peace, respect, civility, and rest. Often, the better tactic isn’t more communication but instead holding your tongue. Keep your peace. If you’re thinking, I probably shouldn’t say this, then don’t say it. Don’t unnecessarily blow things up. Letting off steam isn’t a helpful practice. You’re not a teapot. When you let off steam, all you do is habituate yourself to letting off more steam, so that soon all you’re doing is steaming. Practice peace. Discipline yourself not to react and hurt but to listen, process, and absorb.
Resolution
Your goal in marital conflict should be resolution. Your goal in marital conflict is not proving yourself right, proving your spouse wrong, or preserving your pride. You may be right, your spouse may be wrong, and you may have reason for pride. But if you and your spouse are already arguing, you won’t achieve those other objectives until you first resolve the conflict. The apologies and admissions nearly always come later, not in the thick of argument. Once you resolve the conflict, you can discuss things, usually later, to accomplish other goals and pursue other interests. Arguments do not resolve matters in an enduring fashion. Arguments may lead to truces, but truces aren’t stable. Discussion, not argument, resolves matters enduringly. Discussion first reaches agreement on the issue, then on the goals of resolution, then on the options for resolution, before agreeing on the best option. You can’t agree on much of anything during an argument, no less the issue, goals, options, and resolution.
Irritation
Managing conflict well can keep spouses communicating with and relating to one another in a civil and respectful manner. The ability of spouses to argue while keeping their peace and quickly moving on in a restored and cordial relationship can be a good lesson to children in the household. But remember to address the sources of conflict. Irritation is one source, if a minor source, of conflict. Sometimes, a marriage in which spouses argue doesn’t have a big problem as the argument’s source but instead too many small irritations. We are each, at times, prickly. Those times may be when we’re hungry, tired, sick, or stressed. In those moments, a spouse can be a surprising source of irritation, without any such intent. Both spouses, the irritable one and the innocent one, need to be mindful to avoid irritating one another. Sometimes, you simply can’t help it. You both, for instance, have to breathe. And you can’t control what you do when you sleep. So when breathing, sleeping, and other necessary and innocent acts become irritations, try relieving both the irritation and the irritability’s source. Feed the hungry, rest the tired, heal the sick, and relieve the stressed spouse. And until that happens, keep a little bit apart to avoid the irritation. Don’t let small irritations mount into big conflicts. We’re generally not very good at tolerating accumulating irritations. If a burr is under the saddle, you’d better get it out before it becomes an open sore. Tolerating irritations is risky business. Instead, try removing them.
Commitment
Issues involving the continuing commitment of a spouse can be a much bigger marital problem than small irritations between spouses. Changing affections, particularly reduced affection directed toward one’s spouse and increased affection toward another, can trigger marital conflict. Shifting affections can stir jealousy, insecurity, and mistrust. The spouse who begins to no longer trust the other spouse regarding fidelity bears a heavy burden, one that can quickly fracture a marriage and cause real harm within a family. A spouse may be slow or quick to pick up on signs and symptoms that their spouse has taken a romantic interest in someone else. Sometimes, a spouse is the last one to see it because they don’t want to do so. Yet spouses can also project their own insecurities onto an innocent spouse. No matter. Concerns over commitment, justified or not, are mutual problems, not the problem of only one spouse. And both spouses should take quick steps to address them. The suspect spouse may be able to quickly halt whatever activity gave rise to the worried spouse’s insecurity. The concerned spouse may be able to clearly articulate to the suspect spouse the activity that raises the concern. Both spouses should respect one another enough to act quickly and clearly, with all due assurances. Accountability is essential in this area. Children may see the issue and have it deeply affect them long before the parents deal with it. So do so quickly.
Effects
As just suggested, always keep in mind and view the effects of marital conflict on the family. Arguing with your spouse affects not just the two of you but also the whole household. One sometimes hears a couple say that they stayed together for the kids, which may be all well and good. But frequent severe arguments in front of the children is not all well and good. Severe arguments can display an ugly side of human nature that children ought not to see, particularly from their parents toward one another. Marital conflict is not just a poor model for family relationships but also drives a child’s insecurity. Children may worry whether their parents are going to hurt one another or break up, leaving the children with a broken household. Children may also blame themselves for the arguments, even if you and your spouse have given them no reason to do so.
Control
A significant problem with marital arguments is that neither you nor your spouse is necessarily in control. Arguments are emotional, by their nature implying a loss of control. When you lose control of your emotions, you lose control of your reason along with it. And when you lose control of your reason, you lose control of your mouth, saying things you don’t mean and that you regret later. In the worst case, heated arguments can get violent. A necessary and appropriate call to 911 can lead to arrests, personal protection orders, and removal of a parent from the home, leaving the household temporarily broken even if the parents are fully prepared to reconcile. Don’t underestimate the power of emotions and anger to cause instant harm to your marriage and family, beyond your control to immediately repair. Stay away from all anger, bitterness, and rage as if your marriage and family depended on you doing so. They may and do. Keep control of your mind, mouth, and emotions. Let cooler heads prevail.
Grace
Grace is thus a key to restoring marital peace, respect, and confidence. Holding grudges is a sure way to sow the ground for further conflicts. Offenses can be hard to forget. Harsh words, insults, and disrespectful actions can linger in a spouse’s spirit. Those are times, though, to treat the lingering impression as the enemy, not the spouse who initially inflicted it. Bitterness and offense are the opposition, not your spouse. Your spouse may no longer be harboring the cause that led to inflicting the offense. Holding a grudge against your spouse would thus make no sense. Even if your spouse is still loaded for bear, you’d better not be. Your ability to absorb and shed offenses may be what your spouse needs to get past the cause inflicting them. Show your spouse grace. Indeed, show your spouse mercy. Your spouse may have shown you grace a hundredfold more. Grace is your power in marital conflict, not power and not judgment.
Mystery
When engaged in or recovering from a conflict, keep in mind, too, that many things may be lurking deep beneath the conflict’s surface, more things than you can fathom. Yes, conflicts have apparent causes and sources. Give a good go at discerning and addressing them. But conflicts may also be expressing hidden psychological, physiological, spiritual, and mythological dimensions of your spouse’s makeup and of your own. You are each constantly working out things you cannot directly perceive and can hardly understand. Spouses may repeat apparently irrational behaviors that are instead compensating for childhood issues. They may emote maniacally out of hormonal imbalances. They may battle with demonic urges clearly having sources well outside themselves and instead obviously thick in the zeitgeist. Spouses may also be carried along on ancient narratives that everyone else is also working out in their own way, you included. By their proximity and place, spouses are the natural target and appropriate reflection for all these and other deep and mysterious things. Let those things work themselves out without succumbing to them. Marriage is at times a hero’s journey, not just quotidian leisure.
Trust
Broken trust can be a special challenge for a marriage and family. Spouses can make mistakes. Big ones. Spouses can also deliberately pursue their own worst corruption. Bad ones. And when they do, they often deceive the other spouse, at least for a time. Some corruptions don’t just harm the actor. They also harm the actor’s spouse and household. The deceptive spouse may secretly spend the children’s college fund or secretly contract a disease that the innocent spouse could catch. Deception in pursuit of corruption can, in other words, become betrayal. Broken trust isn’t something spouses easily handle on their own, if they manage to handle it at all. If that’s your situation, promptly get help from a marriage counselor, pastor, or other qualified professional whom you trust. It’s a long road back from betrayal. And it’s a journey both spouses must take if the marriage is going to survive and the family is going to prosper with it.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how severe are the arguments you have with your spouse? What would make them less severe? Do you and your spouse hold one another accountable for civil engagement during arguments, such as avoiding yelling, threats, and other expressions of anger? Do you or your spouse at times lose control of your words and actions during your arguments? Have you noticed longer-lasting effects of your arguments on one another? How quickly are you and your spouse able to resume cordial relationships after your conflicts? Have you noticed the effects of your arguments on your children or others in your household, or on your friends and acquaintances who are aware of your arguments? Are you both able to walk away for a cooling off period if your conflict escalates? Do you and your spouse at times have civil discussions in which you agree on the issue, agree on the goals, agree on options, and together choose the best option? Can you see how replacing argument with discussion might ease conflicts? Do you and your spouse have an issue of trust or betrayal between you, for which you should get outside help?
Key Points
Spouses must find ways to resolve conflict peaceably for the family.
Resolving conflict fruitfully should include addressing its sources.
Spouses should follow rules for civil engagement during conflicts.
Spouses may need peace at times when resolution is not possible.
Enduring resolution comes through discussion, not conflict.
Reducing irritations can reduce the frequency of unnecessary conflict.
Changes in commitment are a serious source of conflict to address.
Severe conflict can have serious negative effects on the family.
Maintain control of mind, mouth, and emotions at all times.
Show grace and mercy during and after marital conflict.
Respect that you are each working out deep and hidden things.
Breaches of trust and betrayals may require skilled outside help.