Recently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its annual awards ceremony, The Academy Awards, to honor achievements in the movie industry. Invariably, the performances that are most respected and awarded are dramatic roles—the more dramatic, the better. This year was no exception. While drama may be rewarded in the movie industry, it doesn’t yield the same results in marriage. In fact, drama in a marriage can be toxic to the health of your relationship.

Don’t stuff it

When your spouse does something, or says something to get you upset, what is your response? Do you suppress your feelings to avoid a conflict? Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big believer in showing grace to our spouse whenever possible, but if you’ve tried to overlook the offense and it just keeps bothering you, that’s a sign you need to deal with it—sooner rather than later. Because suppressing your feelings to avoid a conflict will eventually lead to a bigger conflict down the road.

“You can pay me now, or pay me later”

If you’ve read many of our posts you know that my wife Sharon and I are very different people. One of the ways we are different is how we communicate. Sharon came from a home where there was no yelling or fighting between her parents. My experience was quite the opposite. Therefore, when I’m passionately discussing something, Sharon feels I’m yelling at her. In my mind I’m not yelling but she hears it as yelling. Early in our marriage Sharon was afraid to speak up when I said or did something that hurt her feelings. Consequently, by stuffing her feelings, anger and resentment would grow until it would burst forth over a seemingly small matter. She would blow up at me over something trivial and I would fire back at her in amazement, “I can’t believe your so upset about that!” After spending quite some time unpacking what was really behind the rage and hurt, I would usually discover the root of the hurt was something I said or did a long time ago.

Resurrected feelings

If you try to avoid conflict over one issue, it will come out over another issue. It’s been said that “buried feelings, especially painful ones, have a high rate of resurrection”. Avoiding conflict will just postpone the inevitable. Eventually the anger will come out, maybe not over the original issue, but instead over something far more trivial. Now it gets more complicated to resolve because the more you bury your feelings, the harder it gets to even remember why you were upset in the first place.

And the Oscar goes to…

Remember, drama is bad for a marriage. Don’t try to act like everything is OK when it clearly isn’t. If your spouse knows you at all, they can tell when something is wrong. Don’t make your spouse play the guessing game of trying to guess what’s wrong with you, or how they may have hurt you. When your spouse asks you “what’s wrong?” and you reply “nothing”, it can be very frustrating and even cause an argument, because your spouse can clearly see something is wrong. If you don’t want to talk about it because the hurt is still fresh, tell them that and then commit to a time later that day when you will talk about it. Likewise, if while you are discussing things, emotions escalate and one of you needs to take a time out, say that. Don’t just walk away with no explanation. Once again, agree to a time you will come back together to finish the conversation.

If avoiding conflict is part of your normal pattern of behavior, you need to consider what the bible says. “Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.” (Eph 4:15). If we want to grow more like Christ we need to be honest and loving in our communication, especially with our spouses. In marriage there are no awards for drama—only heartache.

Do you have a pattern of avoiding conflict in your marriage? Do you find yourself fighting over seemingly trivial things? Dig deeper to find the root causes of your anger and hurt. Commit to speaking the truth in love to your spouse.