Reducing Marital Conflict
In any marriage, even the most supportive and harmonious, there will be disagreements, and the manner that couple resolves conflict affects the health, quality and longevity of the marriage. Some couples mistakenly believe their marriage has no chance of success if they have conflict, which may be due to the old-school belief that conflict should be avoided to ensure family harmony. The result of conflict avoidance is often simmering anger and deep-seated resentment about unresolved issues.
Ironically, voicing disagreements may actually create growth and intimacy in a relationship if the conflict is handled constructively. Conflict is normal and expected, and in blended families, issues of transitioning kids, ex-spouses, financial problems and parenting differences can increase the scope of disagreements with negative results.
Although one of many experts in relationships and conflict resolution, Dr Scott Haltzman offers unique insight 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 useful guide that highlights 8 useful strategies that make marriages work.
Strategy # 4, "Expect Conflict and Deal with It," helps couples gain a better understanding of conflict by describing the way men and women are biologically hardwired to cope with it, the moods and motives that cultivate disagreements, the patterns of conflicts and how to diffuse them. Everyone wants to feel listened to, cared for and validated, and understanding this goes a long way to helping couples resolve conflict and patch things up before they explode.
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 common.
2. 69 % of conflicts in a marriage are never resolved, and thats an acceptable level.
3. Both men and women can employ constructive ways to debate issues, and to agree to disagree.
4. Conflict often surfaces due to the inherent differences in how the sexes view conflict and how they cope with it.
Dr Haltzman describes the 4 common ways that arguments accelerate. See if you recognize yourself or your partner in any of these descriptions:
Feeding the Fire: We all know the situation where a criticism or complaint is voiced, the response being more hostility, and so on, until its a free-for-all that includes ancient history from arguments past. An escalating, major altercation cannot simply be shut off like an out-of-control video game, but keeps going at an ever-increasing pace. Strategies for putting the brakes on out-of-control "fires" include softening your tone, looking for areas of agreement, staying positive and "holding that emotion," which basically entails 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 dismissive message to women that makes them very angry. Women object to 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 this will fuel the fire of conflict with the women in their lives.
Negative Interpretation: Assigning unintended negative meaning to what a spouse does or doesnt say can incite major conflict that can ramp up quickly, since each person is responding to something that was neither voiced nor meant. Clarifying one's meaning and active listening can help reduce this.
Finger Pointing: This is the classic criticizing that demands an answer, which turns into defensiveness and more criticism. 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 fight is concluded. Both men and women must choose whether being right is more important than preserving 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 could come to an understanding.
Couples can enjoy experimenting with many different strategies to get back on track after a fight; this puts the conflict behind them so they can move past that 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 Scott Haltzman, M.D. However, you can join our conversation with Dr Haltzman when he will be our Ask the Expert guest on http://www.BlendedFamilyExperts.com.
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