Marriage Fights--A Truce is Not Resolution

Do you remember your first real fight as a married couple?  I’ve heard of some couples that it occurred as they drove away from the church and others that it took months.  Did voices rise?  Doors slam?  Utter silence?  Did plates sail through the air?  What was it about?  One couple said their first fight was over whether or not it was acceptable to talk during a movie they were watching at home.  Another’s first blow out was over him forgetting his vows and laughing during the ceremony.  And let’s not get into the number of first fights initiated because of mothers-in-law.

The real question, though, is did you know how to handle it?  Conflict occurs in marriage.  A great counselor, Gary Rosberg, said, “If you have two people who have a pulse in the same room eventually it is not if you are going to have conflict, it is when are you going to have conflict.”  It occurs in your marriage, my marriage, and every other marriage that’s ever been, but the question remains:  Do you know how to resolve it correctly?

Too many couples only want to have a cessation of hostilities not necessarily the resolution of the issue.  Simply stopping a fight will only give a truce not a solution.  If one of you wins the fight, you both lose.  Marriage based on winning fights destroys the foundation of the relationship.  The becoming one flesh concept we discover in Genesis 2:24 is lost when one wins, because they are no longer one but two—a winner and a loser.  Winning cannot be the motivation in disputes; resolving must be the goal.

Unfortunately, most couples have no idea how to resolve an issue.  Some of us had poor examples.  Maybe your parents simply divorced rather than coming to resolution, maybe you witnessed abuse as a result of unresolved anger issues, or maybe it was simply always resolved behind closed doors and thus you never saw how to resolve it.

At Marriage in the Raw we have a seminar entitled, Better Communication = Greater Intimacy. (click here to find out more)  In this seminar we give a plan to resolve conflict.  If you would like to host a seminar, please contact us by clicking here.  We will get in touch with you and make this a reality.  If you are in trouble in your marriage, we can work with you as an individual couple in an intensive (click here) or, if you are close to Little Rock, we can meet with you weekly to get your relationship back on track.

What ever you do, don’t put this off.  If your relationship is suffering, the longer you wait the more entrenched the conflict becomes.