Going the distance in marriage

In a month where many couples will celebrate their love on Valentine’s Day, Philip Jinadu discusses the reality of marriage. He reflects on the importance of being honest about struggles, as well as the need to prioritise time to strengthen the relationship.

It was a major milestone and it deserved to be celebrated – we’d been married 10 years!

So we pulled out all the stops. We arranged a week’s holiday together, just us – our daughters stayed with Grandma and Grandad. I sat across from my wife in our fancy hotel room and beamed at her: “Isn’t it great? 10 wonderful years of marriage!” She paused, then looked up and said, “They haven’t all been that wonderful for me.”

I’ll never forget that moment, or the conversation that followed as we talked into the night. In that moment, I couldn’t imagine how our relationship could survive what was being said. I don’t think either of us could. What was supposed to be a celebration of our marriage had turned into a moment of crisis and deep conflict.

Conflict is never easy or pleasant –it’s nearly always painful. And yet, over my years as a church minister, speaking to couples and counselling them, I’ve come to discover that conflict is not only natural in marriage, it’s often necessary.

The world-renowned psychologist, John Gottman, spent over 40 years researching marriages and marriage breakdown. With his team of counsellors and therapists, he created a model that could predict whether a couple would stay together with over 90% accuracy. It was Gottman who first popularised the concept of the ‘negativity threshold’. In blunt terms, the negativity threshold is the amount of bad behaviour we will tolerate from a spouse before we react.

If you have a high negativity threshold, you can absorb a lot of pain, disappointment and frustration. It takes a lot to get a rise out of you. If, on the other hand, you have a low negativity threshold, then you respond at the slightest provocation. You’re on a hair trigger; you let nothing go. Generally speaking, high negativity threshold couples tend to keep the peace, while low negativity threshold couples fight like cats and dogs.

…we sometimes forget the Bible’s instruction to not let conflict go unresolved.

So here’s the question: which couples are more likely to have long and successful marriages?

It seems counterintuitive, but the answer is actually low negativity threshold couples. Those relationships might not always look very harmonious, with all the petty bickering and squabbling, but issues are dealt with as they arise – no matter how small. In high negativity threshold relationships, however, unaired grievances can pile up, like ticking time bombs, and when the threshold is finally breached it’s often catastrophic. That’s what we experienced in our hotel room that night. Our threshold was fairly high, but we’d eventually breached it, and the fallout was almost more than we could handle.

Christian marriages are particularly prone to this issue. We know we’re called to be long-suffering and gracious, to keep the peace. We seek to “submit to one another in love” (Ephesians 5:21–33), to prefer each other’s needs, to die to ourselves. But we sometimes forget the Bible’s instruction to not let conflict go unresolved.

“Do not let the sun go down on your anger,” Paul says to the Ephesian Christians (Ephesians 4:26). Or as someone once cheekily put it, “Don’t go to bed angry – stay up and fight!”

My wife and I thought we were being godly and Christlike when we let things go. We would swallow our hurts, forgive in our hearts and move on. And, if we’re truly honest, we avoided the awkwardness and pain of confrontation and conflict. We worried that it was a sign our marriage wasn’t working. We didn’t know if we could survive being truly honest with one another. We had let the sun go down on our anger.

But anger unexpressed doesn’t magically go away. It just turns toxic.

“Shouldn’t we strive to not get angry in the first place?” someone might say. Actually, anger, like frustration, disappointment or hurt, is a normal human emotion. The issue is how we deal with it.

The apostle Paul says, “In your anger, do not sin” (also Ephesians 4:26). Reacting with anger when we feel let down or badly treated is not sin. Leaving it to fester unresolved is. Instead, we deal with it honestly and use it to help us address the root of the problem. This is what it means to walk in the light with each other, to speak the truth in love, to strive to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

The negativity threshold doesn’t mean that if we are naturally inclined to be long-suffering, patient and forgiving then we’re going to have awful marriages. But it does mean that we do well to address areas of conflict when they arise –before the sun goes down.

So, how do we resolve conflict in a marriage? Let me offer three keys.

First of all, commit to keeping short accounts with one another. It takes courage to engage in conflict. It’s easier to take the path of least resistance, to not rock the boat, to let sleeping dogs lie. But a commitment to not letting the sun go down on our anger means that we will be faithful to one another, not letting resentments pile up. It isn’t always advisable to literally stay up arguing into the night. Some things are better dealt with in the morning, when we’re less tired. But don’t let things go unresolved.

Secondly, commit to rules of engagement. There are ways to engage in conflict that are positive and healthy and ways that are not. For example, we never get physical. We avoid shouting matches. We may judge each other’s actions, but not each other’s character or motivations. We avoid saying things that we’ll regret later on. Case in point: it’s okay to say, “The way you treated me in front of our friends left me feeling disrespected.” It’s not okay to say, “I should have married your sister when I had the chance!”

Finally, commit to forgiveness. We’re broken and fallen human beings in need of a Saviour. We’re going to get it wrong and behave badly. Unless we seek and offer forgiveness, we’ll never make it. And if you encounter a situation where forgiveness seems almost impossible, seek help.

Back to that hotel room. Without a doubt, it was one of the most difficult nights of our marriage. But, in many ways, it was one of the best. We started something with that honest and painful encounter that fundamentally changed our relationship for the better. The conversation stretched out over the next few days and, by the time we returned home, our marriage reached a level of intimacy, joy and trust that neither of us had thought possible.

Next month we celebrate 30 years of marriage. A major milestone. And I can’t wait to celebrate it.

Philip Jinadu is director of Care for the Family.