It’s a new year with a clean slate…or is it? Do you experience the same conflicts over and over again seemingly making little or no progress to resolve them? Your not alone. Sharon and I have several conflicts like these that pop up with way too much regularity. Despite our best efforts to change, we end up going over the same territory and getting hurt by the same things. You can boil down all your conflicts into two basic categories, and this month we are going to learn about what those are.

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Every marriage is a union between two individuals who bring their own opinions, personality quirks, family backgrounds, and value system. It’s no surprise that even in very happy marriages the husband and wife must deal with a host of marital issues. Some conflicts are mere annoyances, but others can seem overwhelming and hopeless. All too often couples find themselves engaged in conflict or have distanced themselves emotionally from each other as a protective measure.Though you may feel your circumstances are unique, Dr. Gottman asserts that all marital conflicts—from minor annoyances to all-out wars—fall into one of two categories. Either they can be resolved or they can’t. Gottman calls these unresolvable conflicts “perpetual” problems. These conflicts will be a part of your lives forever, in some form or another. Once you understand and identify your various conflicts, you’ll be able develop coping strategies, depending on which type of conflict you’re having.

Perpetual Problems

Unfortunately, the majority of marital conflicts fall into this category—69% according to Gottman’s research. These are the types of arguments that if you fast-forwarded 5 years into the future to hear yourselves arguing, it would sound like you never left. You’re hairstyle and clothes may have changed, but the argument hasn’t. Here are a few examples of perpetual problems that happy couples in Dr. Gottman’s study lived with:

    1. Meg wants to have a baby, but Donald says he’s not ready yet—and doesn’t know if he ever will be.
    2. Walter wants sex far more frequently than Diane
    3. Chris is lax about housework and rearely does his share of the chores until Susan nags him, which makes him angry.
    4. Tony wants to raise their children as Catholics. Jessica is Jewish and wants their children to follow her faith.
    5. Angie thinks Ron is too critical of their son. But Ron thinks he has the right approach. After all, their son has to be taught the proper way to do things.

Despite their difference, these couples remain very satisfied with their marriages because they have hit upon a way to deal with their unbudgeable problem so it doesn’t overwhelm them. They’ve learned to put it in perspective and have a sense of humor about it. These couples intuitively understand that problems are inevitably part of a relationship, much the way chronic physical ailments are inevitable as you get older. Trust me on this one. You may not like the fact that you are losing your hair, or you can’t lift heavy things, or you need glasses to see when you once had perfect vision, but you learn to cope with them, avoid situations that might worsen them, and develop strategies and routines to help us deal with them. In unstable marriages, perpetual problems eventually kill the relationship. Instaed of coping with the problem effectively, the couple gets gridlocked over it.

The Signs of Gridlock

If you’re not sure whether you’re gridlocked over a perpetual problem or are coping well with it, this checklist might help. The characteristics of a gridlocked problem are:

  • The conflict makes you feel rejected by your partner.
  • You keep talking about it but make no headway.
  • You become entrenched in your positions and are unwilling to budge.
  • When you discuss the subject, you end up feeling more frustrated and hurt.
  • Your conversations about the problem are devoid of humor, amusement, or affection.
  • You become even more unbudgeable over time, which leads you to vilify each other during these conversations.
  • This vilification makes you all the more rooted in your position and polarized, more extreme in your views, and all the less willing to compromise.
  • Eventually you disengage from each other emotionally.

If this sounds painfully familiar, take comfort in knowing that there is a way out of gridlock. We will see how when we look later at Principle 6, Overcoming Gridlock.

Solvable Problems

Just because a problem is solvable doesn’t mean it gets resolved. When a solvable problem causes excessive tension, it’s because the couple haven’t learned effective techniques for conquering it. If you and your spouse are entrenched in conflict, it may not be obvious which of the two types of problems you’re having—perpetual or solvable. One way to identify solvable problems is that they seem less painful, gut-wrenching, or intense than perpetual, gridlocked ones. That’s because when you argue over a solvable problem, your focus is only on a particular dilema or situation. There is no underlying conflict that’s fueling your dispute.

The basis for coping effectively with either kind of problem is the same: communicating basic acceptance of your partner’s personality. If either (or both) of you feel judged, misunderstood, or rejected by the other, you will not be able to manage the problems in your marriage. This holds for big problems and small ones. That’s because people can change only if they feel they are basically liked and accepted as they are. When people feel criticized, disliked, and unappreciated they are unable to change. Instead, they feel under siege and dig in to protect themselves.

Finally, Dr. Gottman shares an important lesson he has learned from his many years of research. He says “in all arguments, both solvable and perpetual, no one is ever right. there is no absolute reality in marital conflict, only two subjective realities”. This is both new and controversial to some minds, but focusing on right or wrong—truth or falsehood—when dealing with marital conflict is not productive and often leads to gridlock. Instead, realize as Gottman says that there are two separate realities—yours and your spouses—and you need to focus on those realities when solving a problem. It doesn’t matter if I wasn’t trying to belittle my wife with my comment. If she felt belittled, that is the reality and I need to accept that, validate her feelings, and ask forgiveness for it. At a later date you may discuss other issues that may have contributed to your wife feeling that way, but at the moment you need to accept responsibility and resolve it in a loving way. We’ll learn more about how to do that next time.

Next month—PRINCIPLE 5: Solve Your Solvable Problems.