Techniques to resolve difficult marital conflicts

Over the next four weeks we will be looking at a few conflict resolution techniques that can help us with those difficult and important marital conflicts that we, or our friends or families go through.

Our marital conflicts are both the mechanisms through which we communicate important information that may not be capable of other transmission, where we create solutions and bridge dark valleys, but also the ways in which we can destroy that special relationship.

What we say and do, what we do not say or do, all have an interconnected role in our marriages.

Conflict can heal, restore and transcend, or it can destroy. It is inevitable, it is necessary.

With that in mind, let’s start looking at a few aspects of marital conflicts.

Say what? Modern conflict case studies show that it is not so much the communication itself (most of us can communicate adequately, especially when in the presence of our partner) that causes the conflict problems, but what is understood by our partner when they receive our communication.

Neuroscience and psychology show that we really respond not so much to what is said, but to what we think and assume is said.

In that process we filter seemingly direct and simple communication through various lenses of past experiences, emotional and even chemical influences, and create what is known as “conflict scripts”, where we already have a story in our minds, and then communication gets filtered through that pre-existing template.

If we want to be better understood then, even if only for our own benefit, we will keep an eye on two of the moving parts in this aspect of marital conflict: first, we will try our best to communicate clearer, bearing in mind what could be assumed from our words, our non-verbal communication and the context of what we are saying as seen against the where and when of that communication.

Here seemingly simple aspects such as the time of day, the place where we communicate and the timing of that conversation can all play a big role in being understood clearly.

Also, we will accept that there is a limitation on what we can do to make ourselves clear and well understood, and we will assume that there may be a level of misunderstanding that occurred between the message being sent and when it was received.

We will compensate for and clarify this when we see a conversation going off the rails, where earlier is better.