Watch any advertisement and you will soon see, advertisers focus on one thing and promote that. It’s sound advice to keeping mind when dealing with marriage and especially with problem areas, disagreements or arguments.
Too often when couples get embroiled in an argument, they forget this advice and start pulling in other incidents and troubles from the week before, the month before or the years before. This is not helpful. When you have problems in your marriage don’t try and work on them all at once. Otherwise it can seem an overwhelming task and all end up being put aside as too hard. Pick out the one thing that is most critical and work on resolving that. If, and when, that is resolved then you can come back and look at what other problem need to be worked on.
The same applies in a disagreement or argument; don’t keep harking back to things that have happened previously, just concentrate on the issue at hand. Keep your words relevant to that and do not detour into tangents that ultimately have no bearing on the matter needing to be resolved. Tone of voce and the words chosen are critical. Accusatory words and tone only serve to enflame a situation further.
Sometimes it might be only a seemingly little or unimportant thing like him leaving clothes on the bed so that they need to be moved before sleep time. But little things do matter.
If you are finding it a problem, then you need to find a way of dealing with it. Either by choosing to ignore it, which may work for a while but in the end probably won’t. The longer habits go on the more frustration and resentment builds. That little thing may not be bothering you all that much at present but sooner or later it will. Whether it is weeks, months or years, you will probably reach breaking point and explode and that’s not helpful to anyone.
A better way to deal with the situation is to tell him about it saying something like, ‘I would appreciate it if you could put your clothes away and not leave them on the bed.’ Or it might be, ‘I would appreciate it if you could wash up when I am busy.’
Notice in these examples the words are not accusatory. You’re making it more about how you feel and allowing your husband to show his love by doing something to help you. If this type of phrasing of problem areas seems unnatural at first, practice it, so that when you need to use it, it comes out naturally rather than sounding forced. The more often you do something, the easier it becomes.
Tomorrow we’ll look at more problem areas in marriage and how to deal with them effectively.
Disagreements Aren’t Always Bad for Your Marriage