YOU CANNOT GROW WITHOUT CONFLICT

Muscles don’t actually grow during a workout, they grow after the workout, when the body repairs all the tears in fiber that occurred during the heavy lift. If the body repairs itself in a healthy way, the muscles will become stronger as a result of the tears, making your muscles bigger and more capable of lifting even heavier weights in the future. But if the body fails to repair itself in a healthy way, you will never get stronger, and be no more capable of lifting in the future. Like muscles, relationships also cannot grow without ruptures and it is not the rupture itself that causes growth, but the effectiveness of the repair that increases strength. If you can develop healthy rupture and repair habits, conflicts will only serve to strengthen your union, not weaken it.

“Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” - James 1:2-4 (NASB)

It is no mystery that unhealed emotional trauma during childhood can lead to emotional dysfunction during adulthood. But where does emotional trauma come from? It comes when there is a rupture that is never repaired. Just like physical injury, if the emotional injury isn’t repaired, the injury can remain unhealed, and even be open to further infection. No child can avoid these injuries but what we can do is learn how to repair them quickly. This is what healthy discipline looks like with children; an initial correction, which hurts them emotionally (they may cry or get angry), followed by comfort and reassurance, “I am still here, you are connected. You are not alone or separate, I still love you, you are secure.” This is repairing the rupture through the reassurance of an unbroken connection. 

If we never learn how to repair our relational ruptures in a healthy way when we are young, we can carry dysfunctional attachment into our adult relationships. This same concept of healthy rupture and repair, remains one of the greatest predictors of happy and healthy relationships, even for adults. The strongest marriages are not ones that avoid conflict but that have endured conflict and found healthy repair. The lesson is clear; instead of trying to avoid rupture, accept it as part of your relational growth—and get really good at repairing it. 

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ITS NOT IF WE FIGHT, BUT HOW WE FIGHT THAT DETERMINES IT ALL

Conflict comes in many shapes and sizes. Whether it is the feeling of subtle disconnect due to non communicated offense or a full on screaming match with accusations and insults, conflict exists in every relationship. It is not IF we fight that determines our marital success, but HOW we fight, and more specifically, how we repair that will determine our marital success. Every relationship has to deal with conflict but what a lot of couples don't know is that hidden within each conflict there is an opportunity to deepen your connection and strengthen your bond. One of the first steps to using conflicts as opportunities is to identify the true source of the conflict. The source is not always as obvious as it may seem, but once you distinguish a few key observations as a couple, identifying the sources of your true disconnect can become much easier.

Another discovery made by John Gottman in his data collection was that 69% of the conflicts married couples had when they began their therapy were still there 10, 20 and 30 years later. In other words therapy didn’t actually change most of their problems. 69% of marital problems were perpetual regardless of therapy. Some studies even suggested that the couples who went to therapy ended up worse than ones who didn't do anything at all. When they confirmed this reality, it caused a major shift in thinking about how to help couples treat their conflicts. Before this time, the consensus in the marriage therapy community was that relationships would improve if couples spent enough time discussing their problems. After this discovery, the consensus changed and now most are agreed that instead of trying to solve every conflict, we should seek to understand our differences so that we can determine which things can and should be changed, versus which ones will need to be accepted and managed. 

WHAT YOU DON’T WORK OUT, YOU’LL ACT OUT

In a relationship, what we don't work out, we’ll act out—or more accurately, whatever you don’t work out with words, you will act out with attitudes or actions. Emotional maturity is being able to communicate your feelings with words. This is the first thing you should understand when trying to master emotional communication. When your heart gets offended by your partner, if you don't find words to express your heart, or even if you do find words, but you feel they are not being heard, your heart will always search for ways to communicate until it feels heard. This emotional communication usually comes in the form of attitudes and actions. In other words, if your heart finds itself in an environment that is not welcoming or patient enough for verbal communication, it will use attitudes and actions instead of words to communicate how it feels. These attitudes and actions are our heart's way of forcing communication even when words are not found to express itself. Learning to accurately decipher your family member’s non-verbal cues—like their tone or body language—can help you quickly understand what they might be feeling even when they can't seem to find words to express it.

Your heart NEEDs to feel genuinely known and cared for by those close to you. Just as babies often cry and scream until their caregivers figure out what they need, when we don’t find the energy, courage or words to convey our feelings directly, we will likely express how we are feeling indirectly with attitudes or actions. These attitudes and actions are like primal cries for connection, or desperate attempts to communicate the needs of our inner world. When your heart feels rejected, even in some small way, it often naturally feels the need to reaffirm the connection that is being threatened. When you do not find words to communicate your heart’s need, your heart will act out with attitudes and actions, act as a cry for attention and reconnection. This cry for attention is often a sloppy, imperfect and often illogical attempt from your subconscious mind to communicate that you need to reconnect.

Ironically, when partners have not yet leveled-up their emotional intelligence, they will often react to these attitudes and actions with contempt rather than connection. A spastic and bizarre cycle of unspoken communication using mere attitudes and actions will play out until there is an explosion and the couple finally uses words to express the details of their hearts. Their hearts will finally get what they originally wanted and they will feel connected again even though it was far more painful than it needed to be. If you don't learn to find words to quickly and truthfully communicate the issues of your heart the easy way, your heart will force you to do it the more painful way, which takes longer and can be far more destructive. 

There are two sides to this of course, which is that if one partner has emotional intelligence and is trying to communicate truthfully how they are feeling, the listener must be secure enough in their attachment to the communicator, not to react from a detached ego’s separated and insecure mind, which is bent on self protection and fault-deflection, instead of from the connected, Christ conscious mind, which sees things calmly from an attached viewpoint. 

DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOUR ANGER

“Be angry, but do not sin, and don't let the sun go down on your anger.” - Ephesians 4:26

In this passage, Paul emphasizes the crucial need to confront and resolve close relational ruptures in our heart before the day ends. Maturity in love involves actively addressing ruptures within our relationships rather than ignoring them. One of the opposites of love is indifference. When we allow conflicts to linger unresolved, we risk letting them fester into harmful behaviors or attitudes. Therefore, it is essential to seek reconciliation and understanding to maintain the health of our connections.

One way to gauge your emotional intelligence and psychological stability is by measuring the time it takes you to “return to normal” after getting offended. Some people are able to immediately use words to describe the specific feeling their heart is producing in response to the offense they have experienced. Other people may remain angry or offended, acting out their protest in attitudes or actions for many days, weeks or even years! This is because they have never had sufficient training toward developing their emotional intelligence and psychological stability. This training usually comes in the form of push back from parents, siblings, childhood friends and social settings. When kids are raised without healthy examples of conflict resolution or rupture and repair, especially from their family, they can end up as adults who lack emotional and psychological stability and the training must come through their marriage or other adult relationships. There is no shame in this so long as you are willing to humble yourself, admit your upbringing never helped you process emotion in a healthy way, and work together toward maturity in this area.

If you and your partner have developed the habit of using bad attitudes or actions to express your hurt feelings, you might pout, ignore, curse, threaten, stomp, slam a door, sigh deeply, neglect common courtesy, drink, eat, smoke or perhaps even masturbate. Whatever the case, it might take you quite some time to undo these habits. You can start replacing those bad communication habits now, and in the meantime, you can help each other transition into verbal communication by gently identifying the attitudes and actions each partner has used in the past to communicate when their heart gets offended or hurt. As you go forward, you will both likely begin to recognize these attitudes and actions as they start, this time finding words to express your feelings instead of using attitudes and actions.

Several effective methods for conflict resolution have been discovered and confirmed for some time now. The ones showing the greatest results all seem to share “listening to understand” as a primary rule of turning conflicts into blessings. They each have slightly different ways of arriving at that understanding, so we have decided to create a hybrid method for you in this lesson.

DON’T DEBATE—INVESTIGATE

Fighting to understand instead of to win involves a different communication style. Instead of approaching conflicts as a debate, we need to approach them as an investigation. These two communication approaches carry a tremendous difference. In a debate, you have predetermined that you are correct and your goal is to win the argument. Debates inherently instigate a war of egos. When couples engage in a debate, they typically adopt a winner-takes-all mentality, with one separated ego "winning" the argument and the other one "losing." The tone is often confrontational and defensive, with each detached identity focused on proving their point and disproving the other's. This approach can lead to a lack of active listening, as individuals become more concerned with persuading the other to see things from their perspective rather than understanding each other's viewpoints.

In contrast, investigations seek to ask questions, listen and understand others' perspectives before jumping to any conclusions. The investigation is not about one person finding who’s at fault. Its two people, approaching the problem together, objectively trying to understand the string of events that caused the offense to happen in the first place. This approach diminishes ego, fostering a sense of teamwork and cooperation as couples work together to find mutually beneficial solutions. An investigative style of communication is characterized by a focus on curiosity and understanding rather than "winning," and is marked by empathy and compassion. 

To shift conflict styles, we must put a high value on understanding their perspective, asking questions to better understand their point of view and which emotion the offense made them “feel.” Then, instead of getting offended, we are just simply honest about how the conflict makes us “feel.” Then, we try to agree with and validate each other’s feelings. “I can understand how you would feel that way.” Finally, we apologize for whatever role we played in the offense and commit to trying to do better in the future. By adopting the investigative approach, you can cultivate healthier communication habits that strengthen your bond and help you navigate conflicts more effectively. This style of communication can REVERSE the curse of conflict! Instead of having conflict lead to a deeper sense of division and disconnection, when you use conflict to better understand your partner, it will be used to build a better sense of trust, respect and deeper connection.

THE OPPORTUNITY CONFLICT PROVIDES

Hidden within each conflict is an opportunity to deepen your connection and strengthen your bond. Your job is to figure out what that opportunity is, and take advantage of it. Listening is key! Using the most proven conflict resolution processes known, we have developed a hybrid conflict resolution outline below: 

SEEK UNDERSTANDING: Instead of focusing on who is to blame, or correcting inaccurate recollections, focus on investigating and asking questions until you understand what happened to offend your partner. 

UNCOVER THE EMOTION TRIGGERED: Ask what specific emotions they felt as a result of the offense. 

VALIDATE THEIR EMOTIONS: As soon as you understand exactly what you did and the emotion it caused them to feel, you can usually end the conflict as quickly as you’d like, unless your ego gets involved. To remove the conflict from your partner’s heart, all they need is to hear you validate their feelings and show that you understand their perspective. “It makes total sense why the thing I did made you feel abandoned! I am so sorry for making you feel that way. I would never want to do anything to make you feel abandoned! I will try never to do that again.” - Most conflicts will end right there. 

After this, you can do a few more things to turn this conflict into a blessing. You can use the opportunity to reaffirm your vows—reminding them that it is your life goal to make them feel increasingly more loved and cherished each year of your life. You might also invite them to help you strategize a plan to prevent this problem from happening in the future. Or you can conclude by praying together and laying together—perhaps the funnest ending!  

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It’s not what you fight over, but the way you fight that matters. By engineering your fight style, you can convert just about every conflict from a destructive force to a constructive force in your union. It might take some time to transition into a new fighting method, but the process begins with two simple steps. First, see yourselves as a unit, fighting together against the conflict, never against each other. Second, treat each conflict as an opportunity to upgrade your relationship.

Copywrite (C) Jacob Reeve 2024