Conflict Resolution (in Marriage)

One of the best gifts that God has given me is a spouse that I am compatible with. It is an enormous blessing, and sometimes one that I only recognize when friends ask me for advice on how to handle delicate situations like the inevitable arguments between couples. Usually, I don’t know what to say. I can empathize and I can listen. But oftentimes I can’t relate.

But one thing that I have learned over the decade of work it has taken to keep our marriage intact, is how to react without sinning when we disagree.

Conflicts are an unavoidable feature of the fallen world we live in, even conflict in the closest of relationships is inevitable. I’m so very grateful that I can’t recall many fights or disagreements in my 10+ years of being married. But, rare as our disagreements are, it never ceases to catch me by surprise when Caleb and I can’t get along or agree on something.

I’m thankful that I’m not the person I was ten years ago. Handling conflict was never something I was great at in relationships and heated arguments would almost always end with me getting in the car and leaving. I didn’t yell a lot, and I didn’t use insults or call names. But abandoning the conflict (and my spouse) altogether was pretty much my go-to strategy and it always led to bitterness about my loss of control over a situation, which oftentimes spiraled into fantasizing about some other life I could be leading on my own without the restraints of having to live with (and get along with) another person. Which is a really awful thing to inflict on the health of my, or any, marriage.

I’ve never read the book The Five Love Languages but I’ve heard a lot about it, and I think there should be a companion of the same sort, but for conflicts. I think my “Conflict Language” would be abandonment. As a newlywed, my mindset could be described as “It’s fine that we have problems, I just don’t want to deal with the problems.”

When they came up, I left. Easy, right? It’s like the problem went away because I went away.

But…. They never go away. Sweeping them back under the rug of denial is a great way to grow a problem from a mothball size into a monster. It always resurfaces. And worse than the last time it came up. And now that I’ve practiced serial avoidance of conflict, I’ve reinforced a terrible habit that I now model to our children as a way of handling problems. I lose, my spouse loses, and the enemy wins.

The tactic of the enemy is to divide us and weaken our marriage. In those moments of disagreement, whether big or small, it can be hard to remember that when we choose our own pride rather than the wellbeing of our spouse or how God commands us to behave, the enemy is the one that wins. Not us. We don’t “win” a fight even if we are right if it takes an irreparable toll on our marriage.

 So how do we resolve the problem of our sinful tendencies to attack and defend our egos? How can we disagree biblically?

Ladies, if you are afraid that I might say “submit to your husbands,” you’re right. But of course that’s not the whole story. And that’s not my point here either. When we have conflicts arise between ourselves and our spouse we need to first look past the problem at hand and look to God.

God is not the author of sin nor did he create the conflicts we experience in our marriages, but he can use the opportunity to grow us and our marriages. As Christians we are called to repent from our knee-jerk reactions and turn to a more mature, biblical approach to handling conflicts. We can grow out of our sinful habits and into better ones.  

Galatians 5:20 lists “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions…” as works of the flesh. It’s hard to take a step back and see that some of our reactions when we are met with resistance are sinful. Our flesh wants to survive out of instinct. It’s also impossible to think that just because we love someone, we won’t have disagreements arise that need sorting out. But when we have Christ as the foundation of our marriages we no longer need to “fight” for survival.

After listing all the works of the flesh, Paul also identifies the works of the Spirit. Conflicts present the opportunity to bring out the worst in us. But if we pause, and trust God, we can demonstrate one (or all) of the fruits of walking with God. We can communicate and behave with love, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control.

It can be hard to model this behavior, especially when we can’t control how other people act. But with the help of the Holy Spirit we can turn an opportunity to sin into a witness of our changed hearts in Christ. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Gal. 5:24

Photo by Jakob Owens