Dealing With Marital Conflict
By Sheena Berg
In any marriage, even the most supportive and harmonious, there are times when there are disagreements, and the way the couple resolves conflict affects the health, vibrancy and staying power of the marriage. Some couples mistakenly believe their marriage has no chance of success if they experience disputes, which could be due to the old-school belief that conflict is best avoided to ensure family harmony. The result of conflict avoidance is often barely controlled anger and deep-seated resentment about unresolved issues.
Ironically, discussing disagreements may actually create growth and closeness in a relationship if the conflict is resolved constructively. Conflict is normal and inevitable, and in blended families, issues of transitioning kids, ex-spouses, financial problems and parenting differences can increase the scope of disagreements with negative outcomes.
Although one of many experts in relationships and conflict resolution, Dr Scott Haltzman offers unique perspective and practical advice in his best-selling book, The Secrets of Happily Married Men: Eight Ways to Win Your Wifes Heart Forever. Dr Haltzman has distilled current research from countless married men into a helpful guide that highlights 8 useful strategies that help marriages thrive.
Strategy # 4, "Expect Conflict and Deal with It," helps couples gain a better understanding of conflict by illustrating the way men and women are biologically equipped to deal with it, the moods and motives that drive disagreements, the patterns of conflicts and how to diffuse them. Everyone wants to feel listened to, cared for and respected, and being aware of this goes a long way to helping couples resolve conflict and patch things up before they spiral out of control.
This is what Dr Haltzman wants us to know about conflict:
1. Happy and unhappy couples argue about the same amount of time and about the same basic issues: money, sex and housework being the three most popular.
2. 69 % of disputes in a marriage are never resolved, and thats OK.
3. Both men and women can learn constructive ways to debate issues, and to agree to disagree.
4. Conflict often arises due to the inherent differences in how the sexes perceive conflict and ways they deal with it.
Dr Haltzman describes the 4 common ways that fights accelerate. See if you can spot yourself or your partner in any of these descriptions:
Feeding the Fire: We all know the scenario where a criticism or complaint is voiced, the response being more hostility, and so it goes, until its a free-for-all that includes ancient history from arguments past. An escalating, major argument cannot simply be shut down like an out-of-control video game, but keeps accelerating. Strategies for calming out-of-control "fires" include softening your tone, becoming aware of areas of agreement, focusing on the positive and "holding that emotion," which essentially means refraining from escalating into a higher gear with hurtful comments.
Withdrawal and Avoidance: Men are more likely to withdraw from and not deal with a grievance than women are, and this sends a discounting message to women that makes them very irritated. Women dislike avoidance because discussing an issue makes them feel better, even when the issue may not be resolved. Men avoid and withdraw for understandable biological reasons but these behaviors fuel the fire of conflict with the women in their lives.
Negative Interpretation: Assigning unintended negative meaning to things a spouse does or doesnt say can incite major conflict that can ramp up quickly, since each partner is responding to something that was neither voiced nor intended. Clarifying one's meaning and active listening will help reduce this.
Finger Pointing: This is the classic blaming that demands a response, which turns into defensiveness and more blame. The effective technique is to use I statements that point the finger at yourself rather than your spouse. The most important element of a conflict is how its resolved or "patched up" when a quarrel is over. Both men and women must choose whether being right is more important than having a healthy marriage. Among recently wed couples that could not patch things up after a contention, the divorce rate was 90 %, versus an 84% successful marriage rate of those who managed to make up.
Couples can have fun trying out all different strategies to get back on track after a disagreement; this puts the fight behind them so they can move forward and focus on the goal of enjoying a happy marriage.
About the author
Sheena Berg enjoys writing articles for the StepHeroes step parenting advice newsletter. To find out more about happily married men, there's no substitute for reading "The Secrets of Happily Married Men" by Dr. Scott Haltzman. However, you can join our conversation with Dr Haltzman as our Ask the Expert guest on http://www.BlendedFamilyExperts.com.
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