Avoiding Screaming Matches with Christian Counseling

Principal 5 of a Principals of Marriage Series
from The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by Dr. John Gottman and Nan Silver
Tips and Strategies adapted from exercises in Gottman and Silver’s book

Sit down because I am fixing to drop a bomb– you and your spouse will not agree on everything. And there are some things you may never agree about. You’ll just spend the rest of your marriage occasionally clashing over them. But there are some problems you can solve, which is the subject of principle five of Dr. John Gottman and Nan Silver’s book, “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.”

How to Argue

Gottman offers five tips for keeping disagreements from becoming screaming matches. A lot of it has to do with treating your spouse with the same courtesy you’d treat anyone else. I’m assuming you wouldn’t call one of your coworkers an idiot and scream at them about how they can’t seem to ever remember anything. Why would you treat the person you claim to love most this way? (159)

1. Soften Your Startup

Take a second and think about how you approach bringing up a touchy subject with someone. You might run through different ways of phrasing what you want to say to make sure it comes out the gentlest way possible. You probably keep an open ear to make sure your tone of voice isn’t too threatening or presumptive. (159) “Softening the startup is crucial to resolving conflicts because, my research finds, discussions invariably end on the same note they begin. (161)

Harsh setup: How come I always get stuck cleaning up after dinner even though I’m the one who made it?!

Soft setup: Do you think you could help me clean up the kitchen after meals?

2. Learn to Make and Receive Repair Attempts

Repair attempts are sympathetic noises or statements people make during tense discussions to let the other person know they’re trying to understand their point of view and don’t want to fight. If your spouse gets defensive, you may retreat slightly or try to approach them from another angle. Unless you have zero conflict-handling skills, you already do this any time you have a disagreement with someone, you just may ignore it when disagreeing with your spouse. (159)

Example:

(Wife) Do you think you could help me clean up the kitchen after meals?

(Husband) I always put my dishes by the sink (defensively)

(Wife) I know you do, and I appreciate that.

Acknowledging their point of view rather than steamrolling over it if it doesn’t align with yours keeps you from coming across as an attacker. Your partner sees that you’re open to what they have to say, which makes them more open to what you have to say.

3. Soothe Yourself and Each Other

This step relies on effective repair attempts. As long as you and your partner keep your emotions in check, there’s hope for your discussion. If one of you feels overwhelmed by emotion, or that the only way you can respond is by shutting them out or exploding, ask to take a break from the discussion. “It’s crucial that during this time you avoid thoughts of righteous indignation and innocent victimhood. Spend your time doing something soothing and distracting like listening to music or exercising.” (178)

4. Compromise

To keep conflict from overwhelming your marriage, you have to learn to accept your spouse’s influence (which is what principle four in Gottman’s book is all about). You can’t just put your fingers in your ears and refuse to hear anything your spouse says that doesn’t accord identically with what you believe. You wouldn’t have married this person if you didn’t think they had something valuable to offer you, so take a minute to hear them out. (181)

Example:

(Wife) Do you think you could help me clean up the kitchen after meals?

(Husband) I always put my dishes by the sink (defensively)

(Wife) I know you do, and I appreciate that.

(Husband) Mm-mhm.

(Wife) It’s just that I’ll spend a couple hours in the kitchen making dinner, we eat, and then everyone scatters and I’m left alone to clean up the mess. It’d just be nice to have some help.

(Husband) Yeah, I guess I haven’t ever really thought about what happens after dinner.

(Wife) Well, it’d be nice if little fairies came along and took care of it, but they don’t. (laughs)

(Husband) (laughs) Since they won’t help, I guess I can pitch in a little more.

Here we see the wife making an effort to calmly approach a touchy subject, avoid letting her husband’s defensiveness get the best of him, and then help him see where she’s coming from. The even-tempered setup of the argument makes him more open to accepting her influence, which finally resolves the issue.

5. Be Tolerant of Each Other’s Faults

While some differences of opinion can be resolved, others can’t. Consider the age-old battle of where to squeeze the toothpaste from. This is not something with a definitively right or wrong answer; there are only persuasive arguments for both sides. In situations like this, where there is no likelihood of resolution, either accept the conflict as a permanent part of your relationship (or just buy his and hers tubes).

 Occasional Discord is Part of Marriage

A woman who’d been married for 25 years made a comment to her children a while back about how she and her husband had been arguing about the same things for 25 years, many of which were the same things his parents had argued about for 60. Gottman said the trick with these perpetual bones of contention is how you argue about them. Couples who respond to these unsolvable arguments by laughing at themselves rather than bristling at the problems stand a better chance at keeping them from overwhelming their marriage.

You just have to understand that you cannot change your spouse. But you agreed to accept them as they are when you married them, so it’d be unfair of you to hold their shortcomings over their head now. “Conflict resolution is not about one person changing, it’s about negotiating, finding common ground, and ways that you can accommodate each other.” (185)

 Help Resolving Fights

If allowing ordinary spats to overwhelm your relationship is something you and your partner struggle with, get in touch with a professional Christian counselor. A counseling session provides a neutral place for you and your partner to talk about sources of conflict in front of someone who can keep rein you back in if things get heated. Christian counselors use effective therapeutic techniques and Biblical guidance to help you and your spouse overcome your marriage problems and have the relationship God designed marriage to be.

Images cc: freedigitalphotos.net – “Parents with Two Kids” by photostock and “Problem and Solution” by scottchan