Avoiding Conflict and Confrontation in Marriage
What does a “normal” marriage look like to you? What’s normal to you may be completely abnormal to everyone around you because all of our interpretations of “normal” can be drastically different. One thing in marriage that should be discussed long before we say “I do” is “How do you handle disagreements or conflict.” Everything is peachy until one of us may disagree with a situation or their feelings may be hurt by their spouse and how we approach those moments can DRASTICALLY alter the course of our marriage over time. My “normal” surrounding discussing your feelings especially in relation to conflict is “bury your feelings and stack the wall higher”. Being brought up in an environment where expressing your feelings especially in relation to something that can be painful is not ever done because the answer to everything is “pray about it and have faith”. The “fix of religion”. Im not saying don’t pray about things, please PRAY ABOUT EVERYTHING ALWAYS just like we are called to do in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. However if that’s the response to completely avoid what it going on in your heart and in your life then that is not ok because the path of avoidance leads to tremendous pain and regret. Something that shaped me into the mold that I am having to breakdown and reshape is conflict in marriage. Raised in a home where I can’t recall one single argument or disagreement in my parents marriage put a false facade on what a “happily married” couple looks like. As abnormal as this seems to everyone reading it this it is all that I knew as normal until my early 30s. Something I should have discussed long before but at this point walls were so high that light was no longer visible.
A handful of circumstances that we will get into another time, led me to completely avoid all possibility of conflict in my marriage. Avoiding conflict in the present to avoid a painful discussion will only lead to scars that only God can heal and you will have to learn to live with them. Ephesians 4:25-27 tells us to “speak the truth…..never let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.” Growing up thinking my parents were happily married allowed the enemy to give me a false sense of reality surrounding communication and conflict. Any time I may have felt different about something I immediately would suppress the feelings and emotions out of fear that me discussing my feelings with Tasha would lead to a huge blow up and possibly our marriage would be over, because “happy” marriages don’t fight. I know crazy right. So many of these seemingly minute disagreements would have been discussed resolved and would have allowed our marriage to thrive and grow. Instead avoiding these moments and continuing to bury and stack them one on top of the other lead to a life I never would have imagined I would find myself living. It is incredible what the devil can do with such a small spec of dirt over time. Continuously burying every negative emotion was driving a wedge further into our marriage that I was so blind to see. What I thought was protecting and saving our marriage was the very thing that the enemy was using to completely destroy it. He will rarely ever tempt you to do the thing you would “never” do. But what he will do is lead you down a path slowly over time so that you end up doing the very things you promised yourself you would never do. Seems crazy I know, but an avalanche does happen without millions of individual snowflakes accumulating, sin and satan’s tactics are no different. Satan never tempted Adam in the garden until Eve arrived. There is nothing the enemy hates more than marriage and nothing he wants to destroy more than your marriage. He knows the power that a Christ centered marriage can have in impacting our family, children, and can break generational transference.
Satans greatest threat is the marriage relationship. Anything he can do to destroy marriage he will do because destroying your marriage doesn’t only affect husband and wife. It will alter the course of history in your lineage and can wreck your children and your children’s children. Failure to communicate in your marriage and in any relationship for that matter is an open door for destruction and a lack of security. No matter how upset, hurt, or how difficult the topic is we must ALWAYS be diligent in communicating with our spouse. The content of our communication is important but the delivery of the message has the power to completely alter the course of the topic being discussed. Prior to communicating your thoughts feelings and emotions to your spouse visualize yourself having the same exact conversation with your spouse only on opposing side and picture how you would want to be spoken to. A lot of times during intense conversations the message isn’t wrong but the delivery of the message leads to a fire that was never meant to be started. Satan also has the ability to take how we are speaking to our spouse and turn it into flaming daggers that can pierce their heart and regardless of how intense the conversation may get, always be diligent and conscious of how you are speaking to your spouse. If your speaking to them in a way that would hurt and upset you than regardless of the content your in the wrong for failing to communicate in a loving and sincere manner and the topic of the conversation will be completely missed because now the discussion is at a heightened emotional state where both spouses are shooting from the hips instead of serving from their heart. No one on earth has the ability to uplift and love your spouse greater than you do and HOW you speak to them especially during a difficult conversation can display a love to them that they have never felt. Also on the same hand you have the power to completely tear them down and destroy them in a way no one else can either. Proverbs 18:21 “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.” We have the power to speak life AND death into our spouses, why would we ever want to speak anything into them except life?
In the case of our marriage there was the potential for a lack of communication to continue on to another generation and continue to be destructive to the entire family. If this is the case in your relationship you don’t have to passively accept “it is what it is”. You have the power to become a transitional character who in a single generation changes the entire course of a lineage. Will it be easy? No, will it be worth is? Absolutely and for the sake of your marriage and your children you will alter the course of their environment and transition their development to avoid all of the struggles and heartbreak that you endured as a result of generational transference. For this to take place will require a massive amount of patience, hope, faith, persistence, prayer, and love on the part of both spouses. It won’t happen overnight but nothing worth having ever comes easy but the biggest and best first step I can recommend to improve the communication in your marriage is to start by praying together every single day, and praying for each other throughout the day. Christ has the power to transform you from the inside out and in turn will transform your marriage in ways you could never imaging but He must be first. Become comfortable being uncomfortable. Very few things give me more anxiety in life that having a disagreement or argument with Tasha. My wiring is so screwed up that my heart rate shoots up, I get sweaty, short of breath, and am borderline panic mode. While at the same time my wife views this same discussion as a healthy productive good thing in our relationship. Two different worlds two different perspectives. Force yourself to accept the uncomfortable moments and pour out your heart to your spouse regardless of how it makes you feel in the moment because on the other side of it you will be closer and that will grow the strength of your marriage. Live in a state of grace and awareness that some things won’t be easy or come easy for your spouse but love them anyways and show them grace and in those two things they will become much more comfortable communicating especially difficult conversations.
“These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; 17 do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the Lord.”
Zechariah 8:16-17.
Written by: Andrew Lasater