The Marriage Counseling Blog

When you and your partner have a disagreement, how do your conflicts end? It’s important to examine how your conflicts resolve. Healthy conflict resolution is good for the marriage. If your conflicts do not end in a healthy way, it can create further marital problems.

When you and your partner disagree on an issue, what happens? Do you yell and scream until someone walks off? Do you eventually pretend to agree with your partner even though you don’t, just to make the arguing stop? Do you yell until your partner “hears” you? Do you feel like you have to win? Or do you just stop talking and the problem never gets resolved? All of the above possible resolutions are unlikely to be helpful to your relationship. When conflict ends without resolving the problem, nothing changes. Neither partner is going to gain true peace and satisfaction without an adequate resolution.

Perhaps you have difficulty “not winning” a disagreement. Some people argue until they are blue in the face just trying to prove a point. It then being right becomes more important than solving the problem. It doesn’t take into consideration the other person’s feelings and needs and doesn’t focus on collaborative problem solving.

If you walk away to make the arguing stop, you probably leave the issue unresolved. Walking away can be a great skill if you are getting too angry to effectively discuss the problem. This only works though if you are able to resume problem solving once you feel calm again. If the problem is just ignored and not addressed again, nothing was solved.

When problems are not effectively resolved, anger and resentment can build. If you and your partner disagree, yet cannot talk about it in a productive manner, one person may just try to solve the problem on their own. Or perhaps, nothing will happen at all and the problem will continue. Learning how to effectively talk with one another in a supportive manner can be very helpful. Learning how to communicate your needs and also learning how to listen to your partner are skills that can help resolve disagreements. Therapy can be helpful to teach people skills to solve problems if they are not able to do so on their own.