Below are suggested guidelines to help you to honor each other while you are working through disagreements with each other.

• We will start by praying together for tender hearts and wisdom—committing to come together in a spirit of humility and reconciliation —considering the health of our partnership as more important than our individual interests.

• We commit to handle ourselves with maturity —being quick to listen and slow to speak —reaching for the goal of continually trying to better understand each other.

• We will speak the truth in love —respectfully honoring each other’s feelings.

• We won’t allow our discussion to escalate into yelling or name-calling. And we will refrain from provoking each other by delivering “cheap shots”—sarcasm, innuendos, and rudeness which complicates the issues. If that happens we’ll call for a time-out and come back together at an agreed upon time.

• We commit to MEAN what we say —so neither one of us is put into the position of being expected to read the other person’s mind.

• We will stick to the subject at hand—not allowing our discussion to sidetrack onto any other grievance at this time. (Other issues can be dealt with at another time.)

• We will avoid using “never” and “always” statements —seeking to be accurate, truthful, and realistic in what we say.

• We will seek to express our own feelings over the matter and speak to each other in “I feel” statements (explaining our own perspective) rather than in “you” statements pointed at our spouse accusing them of feelings they may not have. (An example of this would be: “I feel lonely when you’re gone so much,” rather than “You never come home.”)

• We will refrain from playing the “blame game” — and will each look for the plank in our own eye—rather than the speck in our spouse’s.

• We will apologize and sincerely ask for forgiveness for whatever way that we have hurt our spouse and for whatever tension we’ve caused in our marital relationship.

• We will work to forgive each other as Christ has forgiven us—never again reminding our spouse of the pain for which we’ve said we’ve forgiven them. And we’ll make daily choices not to dwell on those painful thoughts in the future.

• We will end our time together in prayer giving thanks for what we’ve learned about our relationship with each other. We will each ask God to bless our spouse and help us to be a blessing to them knowing that is our mission because of our marriage vows.

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We commit to follow these guidelines:

Signed: ______________________ and _________________________.

The above guidelines came to us from various sources — some suggested — some our own — and some from other sources that had no authors attached to them (so we can’t give them proper credit). We pray they will be of help to you as you work to resolve conflicts within your marriage. Please feel free to copy and adapt them in any way that works for you.

There is also a more detailed version of this document in the Communication Tools section of this web site with scriptures added that you might find helpful to review with your spouse at some point.

-ALSO-

Below is a link to Gary Smalley’s web site which has an article posted that could also help you in this area of communication. You may want to add or substitute several of the points listed onto the document featured above. Please click onto the link below to read:

• RULES FOR COUPLES’ CONFLICT