This month’s post is a bit long, but it has some great information on solving those problems that are not perpetual problems—those that cannot be resolved to mutual satisfaction. If you’ll follow these steps, I think you’ll find you can solve a lot more problems—and in a healthier way—than you have before.

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Last month we talked about perpetual problems (problems that don’t get resolved) and solvable problems (problems you can resolve). However, just because a problem is solvable doesn’t mean it will be successfully resolved. If you find yourself struggling to resolve your conflicts and you have identified these conflicts as solvable, then maybe you need to take a different approach to resolving them. Dr. Gottman spent many years studying and researching how happy couples resolved their conflicts and discovered a new model for resolving conflict in a loving relationship. His 5th principle involves the following steps:

1. Soften your startup
2. Learn to make and receive repair attempts
3. Soothe yourself and each other
4. Compromise
5. Be tolerant of each other’s faults

These steps will be easier for some than for others based on your upbringing and how you approach realtionships now, but easy or hard, they will be effective if you can follow them. Also, its important to keep in mind that the success of these steps will largely depend on how succesful you are at the first four principles—Enhancing your Love Maps, Nurturing your Fondness and Admiration, Turning Toward Each Other, and Letting Your Partner Influence You. If your relationship is overrun with negativity, hostility, resentment, or unforgiveness you’ll find it very difficult to follow these steps. You’ll need to do some foundational things first like forgiving each other for past hurts and offenses. Then, you can start working on the first four principles to build love, respect, and positive feelings into your relationship so you will be at a place where you can follow these five steps.

Step 1: Soften Your Startup

In both happy and unhappy marriages, the wife is usually the one to bring up a touchy issue and push to resolve it. The big difference between the two is how the wife brings it up. As we discussed in Chapter 2, beginning a conversation with a critical/sarcastic comment or gesture (harsh startup) pretty much dooms it to failure. A soft startup, however, where you convey your request with love, respect, and consideration puts your spouse at ease and fosters a safe environment for discussion. Softening the startup is crucial to resolving conflicts because research has shown that discussions invariably end on the same note they begin. That’s why Dr. Gottman can predict the fate of a conflict discussion with 96 percent accuracy within the first three minutes!

Although the wife is usually responsible for harsh startups—since she is far more likely to bring up difficult issues and push to get them resolved—the secret to avoiding them is for both of you to work together on the first four principles. If you do this, the wife’s startups soften naturally over time. So if your spouse tends to raise issues harshly, the best thing you can do is make sure they are feeling known (Principle 1), respected and loved by you (Principles 2 & 3), and that you accept her influence (Principle 4). Harsh startup is often a reaction that sets in when a wife feels her husband doesn’t respond to her low-level complaints or irritability.

Here are some suggestions to ensure your startup is soft:

Complain but don’t blame
Make statements that start with “I” instead of “You”
Describe what is happening, don’t evaluate or judge
Be clear
Be polite
Be appreciative
Don’t store things up

Step 2: Learn to make and receive repair attempts

When your discussion starts off on the wrong foot, or you find yourself in an endless cycle of recriminations, you can prevent a disaster if you know how to stop. I call these brakes repair attempts. Repair attempts are efforts the couple makes to deescalate the tension during a touchy discussion. When I need to de-intensify a discussion with Sharon, I often use humor as my repair attempt. It diffuses the tension so we can pick up the discussion again in a more relaxed atmosphere. There are countless ways to introduce repair attempts into your discussions and they will be different for each couple. You need to find what works for you as a couple.

The key factor in whether a repair attempt is effective is the state of the relationship. In happy marriages, couples send and receive repair attempts with ease. In unhappy ones, even the most eloquent repair attempt can fall on deaf ears. What separates stable, emotionally intelligent marriages from others is not that their repair attempts are necessarily more skillful or better thought out, but that their repair attempts get through to their spouse. This is because the air between them hasn’t been clouded by a lot of negativity. Because repair attempts can be difficult to hear if your relationship is engulfed in negativity, the best strategy is to make your attempts obviously formal in order to emhasize them. Then as your relationship becomes more consistently positive, your repair attempts can take on a less obvious, more natural form. Here’s a brief sampling of some repair attempts you could use:

I feel criticized, can you rephrase that?
Can we take a break?
I really blew that one
How can I make things better?
I’m sorry, please forgive me
I never thought of things that way
I see what you’re talking about
We are getting off track
I’m feeling flooded
I see your point
I am thankful for…
One thing I admire about you is…

Step 3: Soothe Yourself and Each Other

In the vast majority of cases, when one spouse does not “get” the other’s repair attempt, it’s because the listener is flooded and therefore can’t really hear what the spouse is saying. When you’re in this condition, the most thoughtful repair attempt in the world won’t benefit your marriage. Your heart may be pounding, you’re sweating, you’re holding your breath, your blood pressure is rising—your flooded. If your heart rate exceeds 100 beats per minute you won’t be able to hear what your spouse is trying to tell you no matter how hard you try. take a twenty-minute break before continuing. Keep in mind, it’s harder for a man’s body to calm down after an argument than a woman’s.

Do what you need to calm down. For some that might be listening to music, going for a walk, bringing your situation before God in prayer, thinking of something that’s calm and peaceful—whatever helps you relax and calm down so you can come together to discuss your conflict rationally and safely.

Step 4: Compromise

Like it or not, the only solution to marital problems is to find a compromise. In an intimate, loving relationship it just doesn’t work for either of you to get things all your way, even if you’re convinced that you’re right. This approach would create such inequity and unfairness that the marriage would suffer. Before you try to resolve a conflict, remember that the cornerstone of any compromise is the fourth principle of marriage—accepting influence. This means that for a compromise to work, you can’t have a closed mind to your spouse’s opinions and desires. You don’t have to agree with everything your spouse says or believes, but you have to be honestly open to considering his or her position. Often compromise is just a matter of talking out your differences and preferences in a systematic way. This is not difficult to do as long as you continue to follow the other steps to prevent your discussion from becoming overwhelmingly negative.

Step 5: Be Tolerant of Each Other’s Faults

Unfortunately, marriages too often get bogged down in “if onlies”. If only your spouse were taller, richer, smarter, neater, or sexier, all your problems would vanish. As long as this attitude prevails, conflicts will be very difficult to resolve. Until you accept your partner’s flaws and imperfections, you will not be able to compromise successfully. Instead, you will be on a relentless campaign to alter your spouse. Conflict resolution is not about one person changing, it’s about negotiating, finding common ground and ways that you can accomodate each other. This is where we can extend grace to each other in our marriages. Just as Christ shows us unconditional love and accepts us as we are, we can be Christlike to our spouse in the same way when we accept them as they are. This doesn’t mean that we don’t desire change in our spouses, especially if they have an unhealthy behavior pattern, but what it does mean is that we give those areas to God in prayer and allow the Holy Spirit to bring about lasting, life-transforming change. Our best efforts to change our spouse will at best come up short, and at worst cause our spouse to run the opposite direction. The best thing we can do is show unconditional love to our spouse and pray, not that we get our way, but that God has His way in our spouse. And when the Holy Spirit brings about change in our spouse, it brings Glory to God and fulfillment and health to our marriage.

Next week: Coping with Typical Solvable Problems