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.