3 Ways To Make Conflicts Healthy For Couples

By Author: Jean Capangpangan
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Finding faults is not going to help, but finding causes. What's the difference? Finding faults is looking at someone who is accountable for the conflict. Finding causes is looking what factors contributed to the fight or conflict (not looking at a person's contribution readily). To understand this correctly, let us examine how committed relationship's interactions really operate.

1. Causality. In a committed relationship, most of the time there are no straight answers on who caused or insinuated things. Call that Circular Causality or Correlational Causality. Circular causality means you can't totally blame the wife for nagging and a frequently drunk husband. The wife nags because the husband goes home drunk and at the same time, the husband is drunk because the wife constantly nags, and the vicious cycle goes on. Correlational causality are looking at factors that indirectly caused the problem, such as, the husband hasn't found other ways other than drinking in coping with his problems or the wife hasn't learned how to minimize her nagging.

What to do:
The partners may have to closely examine (better with ...
... a professional for a more safe discussion and to keep the partners on track on conflict resolution rather than a tug of war) the causes of their behaviour. They could be triggering each other's behaviour, but that's just a quarter of what caused the conflict.

Committed couples need to raise awareness and up-level mindfulness of one's individual behaviours and knowing when and how these behaviours rapture to conflict. At the same time, couples need to know on what scenarios these behaviours are likely to emerge. However, this process of conflict resolution becomes tough and rough when both are emotional. How messages are said, could be understood in an entirely different way and the discussion becomes another territory and a ring of fight
When couples begin to understand how these behaviours operate and how their emotionality transpires, they grow and become more functional couples and will have a more satisfying relationship.

2. Defense-Offense. On top of circular causality, there is Defense-Offense. People could communicate defensively not necessarily because they have something to hide, but past experience has taught them that if they don't have their shields on they could get constantly bruised. Sadly, others don't only act defensively, but they arm themselves and ready to go offensive for self-preservation.

What to do:
Couples may have to reassure each other on how much they care for each other, how they want to stay together and conflict communication does not need to insult, mock or ridicule to prove their point. Conflict communication intends to understand each other's differences, and how to get a way around together in spite of individual differences.
Each individual may also need to be aware of the history of their reactions. Committed partners may individually trigger certain behaviours, and one may have caused the other to anticipate something that's going to happen. Individually one may have to be mindful what defensive habits are ongoing and put an end to it (ideally, and hard to achieve, but doable). Defending one's self from being judged, such as explaining, helps but it doesn't need to transform to an 'offense' mode.

3. Gender Communication. Men and women's talk operate differently. When women talk, they want to unload and want her partner to understand what they're into, how they're feeling and what led to their emotionality . Women need to be listened to in order to gain relief from her frustration and anxiety. She feels supported when the partner just listens and understand her predicament. However, to men, they see talking out as that his partner as blaming them and they become impatient about the talking.

To men, when they talk, they find solutions, blame someone or seek for advice. When women talk, men gets in a solutions-focused position. But to women, they wanted to be just listened to. When women talk more and more, men become defensive and are more likely to explain themselves and get more irritated. Remember women find relief by talking about the problem. When women have gained relief, in the end, men will realize that in total women are not blaming them, but just talking about the problem.

What to do:
Gender differences really matter. Both have different needs. Men need to listen to fill in the need of their woman. Woman need also to realize that their man does not have the patience to listen all day and sometimes they need to be selective on what to say to encourage their men to listen. Men are are solutions-focused and by that, any problems in the relationship doesn't need to recur.

Women may just have to understand and respect their man' s limitation in listening. Stay on track with the problem and opening up issues in the past wouldn't help unless it is related to the current problem.

Men also need to understand and respect that their woman partner has the need to be listened to and that she is not looking for solutions, just yet. When women is relieved, men will discover that their woman is not blaming nor rejecting them, including his solutions. Women become more open to their men's solutions when women have unloaded their resentments and frustrations.

Resolving conflicts is never easy. Conflicts may arise because of differing opinions, preferences and ways. Sometimes, the partner wants to control the other according to his/her wishes; but remember that the person they fell in love with is an individual by itself without his/her influence nor controlling wishes (yet). To resolve conflicts, the bottom-line is respecting differences by care communication and acknowledging on how one's behaviours on triggers the partner and the spiral thereafter. Conflicts exist for better functioning in the relationship as couples.