Conflict

According to John M. Gottman there are two types of marital conflict. Solvable and perpetual. 69% of marital conflict falls into the perpetual category. This means that you may never agree on whatever it is you are fighting about and that is ok. “Despite what many therapists will tell you, you don’t have to resolve your major marital conflicts for your marriage to thrive.”

 We are all different and all come from different backgrounds and therefore we will have different opinions on things at times. When you and your spouse don’t agree the trick is to not get into a gridlock over it. Avoiding the topic will lead to emotional disengagement. So the best thing to do is to learn a healthy way to resolve conflict between you and your spouse.

One thing to avoid when trying to resolve conflict is anger. “We need to recognize and acknowledge angry feelings. It will take humility to do this, but if we will get on our knees and ask Heavenly Father for a feeling of forgiveness, He will help us. The Lord requires us “to forgive all men” for our own good because “hatred retards spiritual growth.” - Faust. “Contention is of the Devil”, or so it states in the scriptures. The adversary wants us to be “miserable like unto himself”. Maybe this is why anger feels like the easiest emotion to exhibit when encountering conflict. “To those who say, “But I can’t help myself,” author William Wilbanks responds: “Nonsense.” “Aggression, … suppressing the anger, talking about it, screaming and yelling,” are all learned strategies in dealing with anger. “We choose the one that has proved effective for us in the past. Ever notice how seldom we lose control when frustrated by our boss, but how often we do when annoyed by friends or family?” Controlling one's anger might take a lifetime to master but it can be done. 

The fourth and fifth principles in resolving conflict are to compromise and to be tolerant of each other's faults. We need to keep in mind that we are not perfect. Our spouse is not perfect. Our children are not perfect. Life is not perfect. Even if everything is going good and everyone is happy things are never absolutely perfect. My husband and I often disagree about the level of cleanliness we feel our home should be. I am blessed with a husband that does not see ANY of the mess and nothing really bothers him. I, on the other hand, see everything and my mood tends to be dictated by the state of the house. I am home all day with tiny little cute item relocators and it becomes impossible to clean everything all by myself. So I try to enlist the help of the other occupants of the home. This is not an easy task. The conflict between my husband and I isn't in the fact that our house needs to be clean, but at what level it needs to be clean. He says that I am too picky and we could never live up to my standards. I say that people could try a little harder to clean until it is all the way done. Over the years we have had to come to a happy medium. For everyone's sanity I don't make them clean every waking hour and my husband helps rally the kids to help do chores each day. There needs to be a balance in everything in life. I am glad I married my husband. He helps me remember that I need to relax and have fun sometimes.