Have you ever found yourself in an endless cycle of arguing about an issue until one, or more likely, both of you ended up hurt and wounded with no resolution to the issue? Whether this has this been a pattern for your relationship, or just an ocassional occurance, there is a better way. God gives us the blueprint for God-honoring relationships that allow us to resolve most issues with love and respect for each other.

When problems get complex and seem overwhelming, sometimes its helpful to get back to basics. Get to the core of an issue. Many times your complex problem has a fundamental solution. And it all starts with a clean slate.

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Research has shown that the number one topic to start conflicts is money. In fact, research shows that it doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s before marriage, early marriage, late in marriage, whether you’ve got a lot of money or a little bit of money, money is an issue for everybody at every stage in their marriage. But, usually, its not even about money. Because money involves so many decisions, day-to-day, week-to-week, you can’t avoid it being a part of your life—your marriage. However, when you examine the deeper level issues behind most conflicts about money, they have little to do with money itself. Money brings with it hidden meanings for us about values, about priorities, about control, and other issues. If couples can’t figure out that there is something on that deeper level going on, they will have little success resolving their money issues because the deeper meanings will keep getting in the way.

Money conflicts are one example that illustrate how we can be spinning our wheels concerning an issue or topic in our marriage that never seems to get resolved. It seems that no matter how many times we discuss it, we just end up arguing with no resolution. Chances are, you haven’t addressed the deeper issues. Maybe you don’t know what the deeper issues are. Maybe they are too painful to discuss. Maybe you don’t feel safe discussing them, worried your spouse will react harshly or in a disrespectful manner. Whatever the reason, you need to get to the root of the problem. When the root is healthy, the branches and leaves flourish. If you have an unhealthy tree, you can spend alot of time, effort, and money trying to revitalize the leaves and branches, but if the root is damaged and left untreated, the tree will eventually die. Relationships are alot like that. Over time, if your root issues go untreated, your relationship can end up on life-support, struggling to stay alive.

So how do you get to those root issues? First, you have to identify them. You do this through calmly talking about it, not when you’re in the midst of a conflict, but when you are both agreeable and ready. Open up to each other about how you felt during the conflict. Don’t accuse the other, but use “I” statements, not “you” statements to express your thoughts. If you can’t seem to talk things out calmly without inflicting more pain on each other, you may have unresolved hurts. To explain further, let’s again use a money conflict as an example.

Let’s say I want to spend $2,000 on an investment opportunity that I was made aware of. I’m excited because I see great potential for doubling or tripling my money in a short amount of time. I eagerly tell my wife but the look on her face tells me she doesn’t share my excitement. I say, what’s wrong? She tells me she doesn’t feel good about it. I snap back, “when have you ever felt good about taking a risk”? My mood changes from excited to resentful. My wife feels unheard and minimized. We are at a crucial stage here. What happens next will depend largely on our awareness of what the real core issues are and whether or not we are starting from a clean slate—not hanging on to past hurts and transgressions.

If we are starting from a clean slate and have good will towards each other (a knowledge that we have each other’s best interests in mind), we can agree to take a time-out, cool down, and collect our thoughts. Then we can come back together to calmly discuss what we were feeling at the time to resolve the conflict. We might say something like this:

“I thought you would be excited too, and when you weren’t, I felt rejected and that you didn’t trust me or have confidence in my judgement”. “I felt ridiculed and that my opinion didn’t matter when you said I never feel good about taking risks”.

Neither of us were trying to say those things or hurt the other, but we felt those things because of deeper issues in our lives. We can then ask each other’s forgiveness for the hurt we caused, extend forgiveness to each other, and affirm our love for each other. Then we can go back to calmly discussing the original issue and arrive at a resolution that we both agree on. That honors God and each other.

However, if at that crucial stage you have not resolved old conflicts and forgiven each other for previous hurts, you will be incapable of calmly discussing anything or displaying the love and grace needed to arrive at a healthy resolution. It might sound something like this:

“When have you ever made a good decision involving money”

“You’re always fearful about everything. If it were up to you, we would never take any risks!”

“Yeah? Well at least we would have some money left instead of losing it all on your crazy investment schemes!”

“Well its my money! I earned it and I should be able to do with it what I want!”

This verbal barrage will go on until one of them can’t tolerate it anymore and either physically leave or mentally and emotionally checkout. After awhile, they may come back together, say a token “I’m sorry”, or just ignore that there was ever a fight. They’ve just added another brick to their wall.

Instead of building a fortress around our hearts, God provides a way for us to live in freedom—free to love each other and extend grace as God has extended grace to us. So how do you know if you’re carrying unresolved anger, hurts, resentment? Your attitude is a good indicator and a good place to start.

Your answers to the following questions will help you determine your attitude.

1. Do you believe your mate loves you?
2. Do you believe your mate has your best interests in mind?
3. Do you believe he or she sincerely cares about your well-being?
4. Do you notice more of your mate’s positive or negative qualities?
5. Do you dwell more on your mate’s positive qualities or negative ones?
6. Do you spend time encouraging your mate’s positive qualities?
7. Do you pray for your mate?
8. What single word best describes your attitude toward your mate?

Forgiveness—asking forgiveness, and forgiving others—is a core principle of relationships, and a central component of the gospel. Without it we are doomed to an eternity in hell. Without forgiveness in our marriage relationship, we are doomed to repeat and relive our past hurts, build futile walls of protection around our hearts, and miss out on the beauty and wonder God designed the marriage covenant to be. A covenant so wonderful in fact, that God uses it to explain His relationship to the church.

Jesus wiped our slate clean at Calvary. Let’s keep the slate clean in our marriages and bring glory to God and joy to each other.

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”
Colossians 3:12–14