why do we always fight – Save The Marriage: Even if only YOU want to!

Turning Conflict Into Intimacy

https://savethemarriage.com/stmblog/wp-content/themes/corpus/images/empty/thumbnail.jpg 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D. Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D. https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/669b7e375d93f77521ddaba08adb8063?s=96&d=blank&r=pg October 30, 2019 October 21, 2019

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

October 30, 2019

Relationships of any depth and any magnitude are going to hit up against conflict. It is just the nature of being close to someone. You are going to have differences that emerge. It is not a question of if, but when those differences appear. And then there is another question: how do you deal with the conflict? Does it serve to push you apart or does it pull you together?

In marriage, you are tying your life to the life of a spouse. That intensifies the potential for conflict, and the importance of that conflict. If someone else’s life has no real bearing on mine, I can disregard and ignore our differences… and we can even go our separate ways.

But in marriage, you pledge to move through those tough times, to find a way that works for both of you. And that raises the potential for the conflict.

For many couples, conflict only serves to divide and separate, not strengthen and pull together. Which means that an opportunity has been missed. A bridge has been lost.

On this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast, my guest is Mari Frank. What makes Mari’s outlook interesting is that she is an attorney. A divorce attorney. Not one who likes to take relationships apart, but an attorney who sees the sadness of relationships that could survive, that still have potential… where the spouses can’t see a way through their conflict.

After Mari watched marriages ending unnecessarily, she decided to do something. She used the skills developed over the years of navigating negotiation and mediation to help couples get below their surface issues and resolve their deeper conflicts.

And she realized that couples could do this before they landed in her office! Before their marriage was in jeopardy! Not only that, the conflict actually created a path to intimacy, if the couple followed it.

This led to her book, Fighting for Love. And in this episode of the podcast, it leads to our discussion of how conflict can be turned into intimacy

Listen in as Mari and I discuss the 6 A’s To A Long Relationship, and how to use HARD LOVE to get out of conflict.

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Fighting Versus Solving: Using Conflict

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

July 5, 2017

Do you find yourself fighting and fighting, but never making progress? Maybe you even look back and make the painful discovery: you are just repeating the same argument.

If so, you aren’t using conflict to get anywhere. You are just trying to win.

Conflict is better used when it moves you toward progress. It can serve to solve.

Or it can serve to wound.

Many times, I have heard the same statement: “I don’t want to argue about this anymore,” “I don’t want to fight anymore.” Both come from a realization that nothing is happening in the fight. No solution, no progress. Nothing but hurtful conflict.

Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, if a couple can’t make the shift, the wounds and hurts add up. Until one or the other (or both) call it quits. They give up, tired of the conflict. Some leave. Others stay, but refuse to communicate.

Either way, the connection suffers.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Conflict can serve to move you toward a better relationship. But only when you use it to solve.

Listen to the audio training below to learn how.

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