A Marriage Moment

Last night was week 2 of our marriage small group/class (in case you missed last week's post you can read about it here), and this week we ventured into the world of conflict. Yes, that dreaded "C" word that we all have to deal with. Some of you may say "I don't have conflict in my marriage," or "I know people who don't have conflict in their marriage," but as our therapist pointed out last night, that's only because one of the partners chooses to go along with what the other says without making their opinions known. When two different people from different backgrounds come together, it is not possible for them to agree on absolutely everything. Therefore, conflict is inevitable.

Instead of talking about how to get out of conflict though (that may be coming in future weeks) we talked last night about how we each tend to react in the midst of conflict and why--where those reactions and feelings come from in ourselves. Basically, anytime there is a conflict, each of us feels some sense of pain (we may not realize it's pain, but it is, there is a hurt there that well...hurts). Based on our own past stories and experiences, we each have a few dominant feelings (Fear Buttons) that immediately trigger a reaction from us (Coping Behaviors) because of pain experienced previously in life. Here's what I mean: (this is just an example, I'm not thinking of any particular family/couple as I write this) say your family experienced a great amount of loss while you were young--from death, divorce, abandonment or other ways. In an adult who experienced this amount of loss as a child, the buttons she has that cause an immediate reaction from her are probably pushed when she is made to feel alone or unsafe. Which means, that anytime her husband says or does anything that pushes that button (it could be incredibly minor, such as telling her he doesn't like the church she wants to plug into--if she's new in town and starting to make friends here, that's immediately going to trigger her feeling "alone" button) she reacts in order to cope with her feeling.

Just like we all have our "Fear Buttons," we also each have a few favorite Coping Behaviors that immediately come out of us. These are things we may have learned watching our parents cope (or not cope) with conflict and feelings, or they may just be innate traits in us that come out when we're afraid, hurt, or having our fear buttons pushed. For instance, common coping behaviors are: withdraw, control, attack, criticize, blame, shut down, use humor, pacify, escalate etc. So in this situation, the wife is feeling alone, and immediately attacks the husband for an innocent opinion based comment "I don't really like this church." Meanwhile, husband also has his own fear buttons from his own past--which means that when she attacks him out of her own coping strategy, she often will hit one of his buttons, which could be feeling worthless, feeling unloved etc. Of course, husband then has to cope with feeling worthless somehow, so he reacts with one of his favorite coping strategies--maybe he withdraws or explodes in anger. And, if husband explodes in anger, wife now feels unsafe and alone again which just perpetuates the cycle to the point that nothing gets resolved. And here we have...conflict!

I think her ultimate point was that in arguments we focus so much on the coping behaviors. "Why are you withdrawing, come back and talk to me!" "You can't control me!" "You always criticize everything I do!" "Don't shut down on me!" etc. Very rarely do we recognize what feelings in us are causing that behavior to be triggered. We can't control how our spouse responds, but we can become more aware of where our buttons are, why we have those particular buttons, and where they come from. There is hope! We were taught last night that those feelings and knee jerk reactions can be undone. Brain research has shown that with great intentionality, those emotional pathways that were developed early on can be erased and redrawn, but it won't happen on it's own. In the above example, if the wife had recognized that her husband's negative comment about the new church she was hoping to plug into had made her feel alone and isolated in a new town, she could have called a time out and said "I am feeling something really strongly. I don't know where it's coming from, but I really want to lash out and attack you for not liking this church and I know that's not rational." Together they could have explored why she was feeling what she was experiencing instead of getting caught in this cycle of attacking and getting angry with one another. It's about increasing our own self awareness so we can understand why we have our pain buttons, where they come from, and then ask ourselves "In reality, and in scripture, are these feelings true? Am I unlovable? Am I worthless? Am I alone?" We can't begin to undo these feelings unless we recognize them and explore their validity in light of what God says about us--we can't take off the old and put on our new selves if we don't realize where our old selves come from.