Skip to main content

Resolving Conflict


          Resolving conflict can seem like a daunting task. Though we talked mostly about resolving conflict between a husband and a wife this week, I feel as if all of the things that we learned this week could also be applied to resolving conflict in a general setting as well like work or school.

         There have been times in all of our lives where we have been caught in the middle or approached head on by conflict. In some cases, maybe we are the ones that start the conflict. After further researching the four horseman brought to light by John Gottman, it became very clear to me that those four qualities are not just brought up around those whom we are married to, but also to those in our everyday lives like co-workers and classmates. We, as humans, are emotional creatures opposed to logical. We allow ourselves to become overwhelmed with emotion to the point where we do not or cannot think straight nor correctly and effectively map out a logical and sensible idea. For some people, it is the stress of a long day at school that makes them short and rude to their older sibling as they pick them up from school. For others, it the recent illness diagnosis of a child that causes impatience and little forgiveness to be given to those who may have made a mistake filling out the tax form. Regardless of the situation, stonewalling, etc. are prevalent among humans and it is up to us to learn how to react to those that are doing it to us and control our own selves so that we don’t do it to others.

          Allowing ourselves to lose patience or say something we regret to a coworker or a fellow student is regretful, but at the end of the day, you are able to work through it because you know that you will one day not have the consistent interaction with that specific person as you do now. In a way, you know that it will one day just be “swept under the rug” or “forgotten” before real resolution ever takes place. Unfortunately, there is no room for this in a marriage.

          Gottman has given us an incredible framework to follow in order to avoid problems like this from escalating into something that may be deemed as “unsolvable”.  When a fight, disagreement, etc. takes place, here are the steps to follow to correctly and effectively find a solution:

1.  Soften your start-up

2.  Learn to make and receive repair attempts

3.  Soothe yourself and each other

4.  Compromise

5.  Process and grievances so that they don’t linger

          I know that if we are able to follow these things, we will be able to not only solve problems in our marriages, but also in our everyday lives.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rituals

         One of the most inspiring things that we talked about this week, in my opinion, was found in chapter twelve of Gottman’s book when he talked about developing different rituals of connection with one another that have meaning. Since I got married two years ago, I have come to find that even the most tedious and menial of things have become little rituals that we treasure a lot. One of the main “rituals” that we have is getting ready for bed together and going to bed at the same time. Though our schedules conflict at times, it is so nice to know that at the end of the day, we will at least get to wind down together and go to bed together. By doing this, we are always able to say prayers together and keep that goal that we made to each other right when we first got married. I never thought it was a big deal growing up because that was never something that my parents did, but I have come to find that no matter what our schedules...
Post a Comment
Read more

Maintaining Healthy Familial Relationships

Feeling united in this life can seem like a daunting task even for those that appear to others to be in healthy, stable relationships. We have seen the separation that even our own, democratic society has currently and the unhealthy and disappointing divide it has caused since being created. President Eyring could not have explained it better when he stated the following: “All of us have felt something of both union and separation. Sometimes in families and perhaps in other settings we have glimpsed life when one person put the interests of another above his or her own, in love and with sacrifice. And all of us know something of the sadness and loneliness of being separate and alone. We don’t need to be told which we should choose. We know. But we need hope that we can experience unity in this life and qualify to have it forever in the world to come. And we need to know how that great blessing will come so that we can know what we must do.” Having health...
Post a Comment
Read more

There's Always Room to Improve

          Within any marriage, normally towards the beginning of the marriage, it is easy to recognize faults not only in yourself, but also in your spouse. These little faults can range from little things like not putting the dirty dishes away, to bigger things like aggression or lack of communication. Regardless, these faults are the responsibility of the person who possess them to improve for the sake of their marriage. At no point should either partner in a marriage expect the other to change completely as a person (you should know who you married), but I do think it is fair for compromises to be made in order to assure a happy marriage.           I have not been married for very long (almost two years), but I have seen the importance of this in my marriage so far. My husband is six years older than me and had a lot of time on his own to develop his own way of living lif...
Post a Comment
Read more