You may not realize this but I have been blogging for the past three years. It has been quite the experience, to say the least.  What I find interesting is that of all the posts that have been written, the ones on how to nurture a healthy marriage have been the most popular.  This tells me a few things. One, my readers want to build healthy relationships, and two—that more information about ways to nurture and grow as a couple are needed.  Maybe the hard truth is that the people who care most about this topic are actually the only ones who read my posts 🙂 I digress.

If you want to grow as a couple, being able to resolve conflict is one of the most important things you can spend your time on. If’ couples don’t understand how to navigate conflict in healthy ways, it will eventually chip away at the relationship over the long term.

In case you missed it or need a refresher, here are a few highlights from two of my most popular posts on resolving conflict in marriage:

From What a Movie Can Teach Us about Loving our Spouse, we used the example of on old classic movie “Groundhog Day” to show that oftentimes we are dealing with the same issues/patterns that repeat in different ways. Like the movie “Groundhog Day”, there may be a root cause that we have to deal with to help us move on from that same “repeating tape”. Here’s a blurb from the blog:

What I’m suggesting is that we start looking at our own “Groundhog” challenges—whether that is an argument we tend to “have to win” with our partner or it’s some other area where we always seem to butt heads with our partner over, and to start looking at it differently. Could it be that these so-called challenges are actually lessons for us to learn and grow from? Can we offer grace to let our partner grow? And can we give up being “right” for letting the other person feel heard and understood? These are all questions you need to answer. It’s that important.   

When we start to identify those repeating patterns, we may find there are lessons there. It may be things we need to understand about our partner or realize about ourselves, but whatever they are, there are opportunities for growth, and where there is growth, there is hope!

In the post “Conflict Doesn’t Have to Destroy Your Marriage”, we went a little deeper into the “what” and “why” of conflict, as well as “how” to resolve it in a healthy way:

Becoming “one flesh” means more than the physical. Marriage is also a spiritual and emotionally connected union. The reality is that in marriage you are one, yet we are still very much individuals who can sometimes not agree on a variety of issues.

You may be asking, what is so wrong with conflict? Well, conflict at its core isn’t necessarily an argument; it can take many forms—sometimes conflict can cause us to avoid communication, and it creates internal conflict within us.  A few things we all need to remember about conflict:

1. It is inevitable in a marriage
2. It can wound
3. It creates isolation
4. It doesn’t get better with time if you leave it unresolved
5. It requires forgiveness

I have learned that forgiveness isn’t itself the healing, but healing is impossible without it.  If you are truly offering forgiveness, you can’t keep bringing up what you said you have forgiven as a weapon. You have to find a way to move on.  The good news however is that when a couple is committed to not winning a conflict at all costs but rather seeking the good of the relationship as a whole, restoration is possible.

Conflict is one of those challenges all of us will face at some point in our marriage. The choice we have before us is what we will do once it comes.

Are there areas of conflict in your marriage that need a little extra support? Send me a message if you would like to find out more about one-on-one couples mentoring that I am offering this summer.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and if this post connects with you, share it with your followers—we love to see our community grow.

Your Virtual Life Mentor,

Doug