Conflict gets worse when you leave it alone. Convene a peace conferenceĬonflict does not resolve itself. It’s selfishness and an unwillingness to change. But the fact is, it’s not incompatibility. Each of us has an infinite capacity for self-deception. Marriage is a lifelong process of overcoming your differences. Jesus says, “Before you start getting the sawdust speck out of your partner’s eye, why don’t you get the telephone pole out of yours?” Using exaggeration, he is saying to check yourself out first. “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-5 NLT).Įverybody has blind spots. Confess your part of the conflictīefore you start attacking and blaming, you need to do a frank evaluation and ask yourself, “How much of this conflict is my fault?” God says, “Why don’t you try talking to me about it first?” Instead of expecting your mate to meet all your needs, God wants you to look to him. Only God can do that.Īnger is a warning light that says, “I’m expecting somebody to meet my needs.” When I have a need for you to be on time and you’re late, or when I have a need for you to notice me and you don’t, I get angry. You were thinking, “Good! All my needs are going to be met now! This person is the answer to my dreams and is going to fulfill me in every way.” There is no person alive who could possibly meet all your needs. You weren’t thinking about what you intended to do and the promises you were going to keep. One day you stood in front of a bunch of people and you said, “I do.” What you were really saying was, “I expect.” Many people are skilled at venting horizontally, but venting vertically is when you go to God.Ĭonflict often occurs when we expect other people to meet needs that only God himself can meet in our lives. I challenge you to practice what I call venting vertically. Before you go to the other person and talk to them about the problem, discuss it with God. If you’re going to pull together when conflict pulls you apart, you need to follow these five instructions. You feel stuck in your relationship because you have argued about certain issues over and over with no resolution, much less reconciliation. In our marriage we’ve gone five for five! We’ve hit every single one of them. The night before I got married, my father-in-law sat down with us and said, “There are five areas where marriages usually have conflict: money, sex, in-laws, children, and communication.” I want what I want and you want what you want, and when these competing desires collide, that’s called conflict. I think of me before I think of anybody else. James 4:1 says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Aren’t they caused by the selfish desires that fight to control you?” (GNT). The Bible says conflict is caused by selfishness. If you don’t know how to deal with it, how to resolve it, how to manage it, you can kill your relationship. In working each issue through to completion we have been able to retain a beautiful lightness in our relationship that we both cherish.Every relationship-even a good one-has conflict. But we still keep working on it until we both say that we feel complete, we understand our own part and responsibility in the issue rather than simply blaming each other, are willing to go on, and there is an even deeper connection and sometimes even humor to the situation. Sometimes we can clear the issue in a matter of a few minutes, sometimes an hour and sometimes it can take several days. Most times we have been able to work things through on our own. The therapist was able to listen to both of us and help us come to a place of resolution that we both felt good about. In those three times we sought professional help because there was a blind spot for each of us. We used all the skill that we have and yet it was still unresolved. There have been three times in our relationship when we were unable to resolve an issue on our own. Most times we have been able We have been together for 40 years, married for 36. We have been together for 40 years, married for 36.
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