This past weekend Amy and I participated in a marriage conference with Restoration Church. The morning session was led by Dr. Allen and Tina Holmes from Daystar Church in Greensboro, NC. In that session Dr. Holmes shared ten marriage conflict mistakes to avoid:
1. Avoiding Conflict Altogether – Ken Sande would call this “peace-faking.” This doesn’t resolve the underlying reason for the conflict, it merely postpones it.
2. Being Defensive – Defensiveness is a sign there is not enough grace. Personally, I want to try to grow more in this area. I find myself tending to quickly run to a defensive posture even when it is not warranted.
3. Overgeneralizing – using phrases like “you always” and “you never.” I have to give credit to all many of my professors over the years who drilled all most of this language out of my vocabulary!
4. Always Being Right – this is a tough one when you are always right, right?
5. Poor Listening (usually caused by in formulating the rebuttal)
6. Mind Reading – I may think I know what my spouse is thinking but what she is thinking may not be what I think she is thinking. I can then get into conflict with something that is completely imaginary and all in my mind.
7. Playing the Blame Game – “But God, the woman you gave me gave me this fruit-its her fault and really your fault”
8. Trying to Win the Argument
9. Character Attacks – This is like throwing an emotional grenade into the conflict. All it does it cause damage and does nothing toward resolving the conflict or working toward a resolution.
10. Stonewalling – using silence as a passive aggressive way of attacking the issue. This is a trap I fall into-often I will just shut down.
Question for discussion: Which conflict mistakes do you tend to make? What are you going to do to correct those mistakes?
This is part three. You can read part one here and part two here.