Resolving Conflict

Week 9: Resolving Marital Conflict

Sugar, flour, eggs and shortening are all ingredients that make cookies delicious. There are other ingredients that we do not notice as much, but they are vitally important to making a cookie taste great. These ingredients are baking soda and salt. These ingredients help the cookies to rise and the salt brings a depth of flavor that you do not even know is there. However, if these ingredients are missing you can see and taste the difference.

The same thing happens in our marriages. Often times we have the visible ingredients such as companionship, fun and family, but the ingredient of conflict resolution is missing. A marriage that is missing this ingredient can be frustrating to navigate, and often times will end up unhappy.

There is bound to be conflict in marriage. Anytime you bring two people together from different backgrounds and with different ideas there will be conflict. What we as couples have to do is figure out how to navigate our solvable and perpetual problems. In his book “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”, Dr. John Gottman, defines these problems. He suggests, “We have found that all marital conflicts, ranging from mundane annoyances to all out wars, really fall into one of two categories: either they can be resolved or they are perpetual, which means they will be a part of our lives forever in some form or another.” He further indicates that perpetual problems stem from “big issues such as trust, security, or selfishness.” Whereas solvable problems focus on the issue and not the person’s character. 

I will never forget a conflict that my husband and I had early on in our marriage. We were married in 1991. When we married I moved from my small home town to Atlanta to be with him. We were very close to his family and spent a lot of time seeing and visiting with them. My family was far away and we almost never saw them. I would call them regularly though. Unfortunately, our long distance phone bill (I know that’s old) was pretty high. I felt it was an expense we could afford, while my husband saw it as a waste of money. I was not willing to budge! I felt like talking to my family was important since he got to be with his family all the time. I think this conflict could have become a perpetual problem had we started attacking each other over it. Instead, we focused on a solution to our conflict. We found a way to manage my long-distance usage with his expectation that we live on almost no money. I would talk to my family once a week and we would only see his family once a week. It seemed fair and reasonable. 25 years later we do not have to worry about long distance calling. Technology has made that problem more manageable. The point is we worked together to solve a problem and not attack each other.

From a 1981 Ensign article, Breaking the Cycle: A Case Study of Conflict in Marriage”, we learn, “An important part of the communication process must be an understanding of your own and your partner’s expectations in marriage. With such an understanding, the change process can be much easier.” For my husband and me to work through our long distance phone bill issue we had to stop and try to understand where the other was coming from. It might have been easy for us to blame and point fingers, which probably would have led to more issues. Stopping and really focusing on the problem rather than the person helped us to come to a resolution.

So to have a marriage that is sweet and appealing there needs to be compromise. There comes a point where you can go from compromise to collaboration. Salt and baking soda are necessary to make a wonderful cookie; just like conflict resolution is necessary to stabilize a solid marriage.