This is a guest post by Wyatt Fisher Psy.D. More about Wyatt at the end of the post
Conflict, tension and miscommunication are common in marriages.
In order to break the cycle of hurt and anger, it’s important for couples to learn how to work through these experiences.
One of the best ways to move your heart from anger towards forgiveness is discerning how you contributed to your partner hurting you.
How we contribute to the wound
I was meeting with a married man several years ago and he was expressing how hurt he was that his wife continually criticized him and seemed to overreact to his clutter in their house.
He was consumed with how much her hurtful words injured him.
Now, it’s true she could have expressed her frustration more effectively, in a less attacking and critical way.
However, upon talking with his wife, it turns out she had repeatedly asked him through the years to pick up his clutter politely and he would often dismiss her request and not do it.
Therefore, she began feeling unheard and dismissed, eventually leading to frustration and critical words.
Once the husband was able to see how his behavior of not sensitively respecting her need for organization made her feel devalued and how those feelings led to her critical spirit, his anger towards her behavior substantially decreased.
Moving forward, they both had important lessons to implement.
She needed to make a concerted effort to express her frustrations in more gentle, non aggressive ways and he needed to respond and follow through on her desire for more organization in their shared living space.
Who is fueling the flame?
So often people become hyper focused on how their partner has mistreated them they fail to see how they may have contributed to the mistreatment.
To clarify, this isn’t referring to any form of verbal, physical, or sexual abuse which is never excusable regardless if one party is provoking the other or not.
Marital conflicts are almost always a cycle of two people fueling the flame. (Click to Tweet)
Therefore, being able to discern how your behavior influenced your partner responding in a way that hurt you is crucial.
Moreover, this principle is Scriptural where we must first look at our own flaws before focusing on our partner’s.
Mathew 7:3 says
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye”
The next time you are feeling hurt, frustrated, or offended by your partner, start by analyzing how you may have contributed to the cycle.
Question – What do you feel makes people over-focus on their partner’s flaws while under-focusing on their own? What would help this? Please share in Comments
One of the habits that my wife and I have gotten into is just to regularly communicate and ask questions about how we can improve. It helps to kinda clear up little things like this a lot.
Great tip Loren, reminds me of something you shared a while back on “regular maintenance checks” and how it helps keep a marriage healthy : ) thank you for adding to the conversation.
Ngina, as always your post make me thing about what I can do to make my marriage better. Being honest with oneself is not easy but change for the better. Good post.
Thank you Betty, your thoughts here always help me think better too.
Great additions DS, thanks for adding.
ACIt’s amazing to me how easily we can fall into self- deception. I’ve been recognizing the importance of having outside accountability in your marriage, because they can help you to see things that you’ve justified. I’ve been attending a marriage class and last night the pastor defined HUMILITY- as the action of honesty. After, reading this post, I found this definition to be right on point. In order to be humble in our relationship we have to beA willing to be honest with ourselves. Without humility our relationship will be crippled.
Thanks for this post, it matched up perfectly with my marriage class!
I am so glad to hear the post lines up with what you studied yesterday, AC. I like that definition of honesty! Blessings to you.
Good stuff! It’s so easy to pint the finger – “he who has no sin throw the first stone” – right? As usual, spot on Ngina!
That scripture says it all Dave. we have all fallen short and we must examine ourselves first before we start examining others!
great post
: ) thanks
As I was reading your posts, I immediately thought of the saying that it takes two to tango.
Blessings XX
Mia
It does Mia! I think we forget that alot as spouses!
Looking through the eyes and heart of our spouse is such a valuable thing to do, difficult but so important. Matthew 5 says it clearly, it’s easy to see the wrong in other people while at the same time not seeing our own. Great post, Wyatt Fisher.
Indeed, it’s difficult but so important if we want to resolve conflicts faster. Thanks so much Dan
I think one of the problems is that we live in a culture that is constantly telling us we need to get our needs met. The focus is always on us. The solution for me has been to work hard at seeing my husband through God’s eyes. When I renew my mind, I’m more aware of my own faults and I’m more able to give grace to my husband when I see his faults.
Amen Barb, God’s perspective is truth. often times we struggle to renew our mind for this very reason.. 🙂 But when we do, we have the right perspective and our marriage can grow stronger
This was a great post! I think that we often believe that our spouse’s sin is really worse than our own. When in reality, we just sin differently than each other.
So true Robyn! Thanks for that
Hmmm… Old post, I know… but I want to respond to Robyn’s comment here.
Christians (among others) tend to reduce things to as simple a concept as possible, and I think we frequently oversimplify. Describing both spouses as just sinning differently is certainly one of the possibilities. I think either one could be worse. Furthermore, the “instigator” might (not) have been that person. Thé question is: why do we make a deal of That aspect of the conflict? I think there is a tendency to feel safer or better if we can create a sense of “equitable generosity”. That is, if one opponent says that both are probably equally guilty, then both can sort of confess their contribution without actually “losing”. No-fault argument.
I think, however, that finding the root of a marital problem is so important that we can’t ignore fault and magnitude (yes, I live in earthquake country). I think forgiveness should be readily available and abundant, but we almost completely overlook the role of repentance between two people who need to reconcile. Mentioning the need for restitution almost feels heretical these days… Restitution can feel like a sentence to the one who has sinned, so it may be received as a *lack* of forgiveness. A sincere, “how can I make it up to you shows a sincere concern, not only for having done wrong, but for the other person — who is *supposed* our focus anyway.
This is too bad, because a married couple really should desire to make restitution and make healing and joy and happiness easier.
One other thing that I find difficult to deal with is how unaware we are of certain important aspects of reproof. I don’t want my wife to be unable to make me aware of how I have hurt her. On the other hand, it seems that wives find justification in their husband’s sins for contention, and nurturing a lack of trust. I am my wife’s head, and if she ignores my authority, then she is taking over /my/ role as her head. But, if she begins to control or lead /me/, then she is trying to take over /Jesus’/ role as my head. I don’t have a bright red line that shows when this has been done. Contention not only infringes on Jesus’ role, but can subvert the husband from paying proper attention to his real head. It also shows contempt for him that can shred his confidence and crush his spirit. This can affect a man’s health and work and relationships in numerous ways, just as it would anyone, if it continues without healing.
Looking forward to replying here but for now getting supper ready …. will be back in the morning when I have some time available.
I think it’s easier to focus on your spouses flaws because you have to live with the person. They are literally with you more than anyone else so it’s impossible for them to hide those flaws from you. For me it always helps to remember how imperfect I can be. I would also say that we need to have an attitude of truly helping our spouse rather than trying to “fix’ them because they bother us.
Helping instead of “fixing” – marriages will be so much richer and better if we cultivated that attitude Caleb, thank you for sharing that
We don’t want to see our faults or we try to hide our imperfections by focusing on the other person’s imperfections. i remember praying for God to change my wife when all the time it was the man staring back at me in the mirror that needed to change. I spent so much time focusing on the speck in my wife’s eye that I didn’t acknowledge the beam in my eye.
This is true Bernard. I have been guilty of the same. Thank God for His convicting grace
Great post. It all starts with humility in my view. We tend to see ourselves first instead of others and their needs. Mature people don’t need to be right, but insecure people hurt others. Been guilty of that more than once… but thanks for the reminder… “It takes two to tango!”
“mature people don’t need to be right”, so true!