As it was once said, “We live in perilous times” — no one can deny that no matter where you live in the world. Unfortunately that can be said within a lot of marriages as well. Many of them become staging areas for dramatic and traumatic battles between husbands and wives, exploding into “unfair” fighting causing all kinds of destruction.

If you and your spouse do not resolve your marital conflicts (which we ALL have at different times) in ways that are healthy, then we encourage you to PLAN A PEACE CONFERENCE. Your spouse is not supposed to be treated as your enemy, no matter what she or he does. The Bible says, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9).

Conflict can be healthy and can even be beneficial to your relationship. As counselors Drs Les and Leslie Parrott tell us, ”Without conflict it is difficult to peel away the superficial layers of a relationship and discover who we really are,” which is true. But attacking each other isn’t a healthy approach.

Les and Leslie go on to advise (in a Marriage Partnership article titled “One Fight, Two Winners“), ”Attack the problem, not the person. You are not going to change your spouse through arguing. A natural impulse during conflict is to defend and protect your position, not to accommodate the other person.”

I don’t know about you, but we’ve sure been there as far as verbally attacking each other. And what happens when we do, is that the other spouse becomes so defensive to what we say or do that the point we were trying to get across gets lost. It becomes a battle of WHOSE right rather than WHAT is right, or what we’re trying to communicate.

We realize that many spouses don’t “get it” as far as approaching marriage as the partnership they vowed to participate in at your wedding.  When this happens, all the other spouse can do is do the best they can as they partner with God to approach matters in ways that are “peaceable” and “wise”, as we’re told in the Bible in James 3 and James 4.

For the rest of this Marriage Message, we’re going to share pointers from various sources to help you plan a Peace Conference for your marriage. But for those of you that don’t have a spouse who will be agreeable to this, please look over the list to see what you can use, none-the-less.

We’re told in the Bible, “If it is possible, AS FAR AS IT DEPENDS ON YOU, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18). So do what you can, with God’s help, to find a way to be a peacemaker within your home. That doesn’t mean that you can never say anything negative to your spouse, it just means that you’re careful and prayerful in what you say and the timing of it all.

• Approach your spouse for this “conference” at a time other than a “H.A.L.T.” time. (You can read more about this in the article “Communication Tools for Couples” as well as a few other places on our web site.) But basically, it’s refraining from approaching your spouse with serious discussion issues during times when he or she is Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired.

If your spouse isn’t ready to talk at that time do as Drs Les and Leslie Parrott suggest:

• “Schedule a mutually agreeable ‘appointment’ to discuss what’s bothering you. This takes initiative, but a face-to-face meeting is critical if you hope to resolve your differences.”

• Be considerate of your children, when you work out your disagreements. As the Crosswalk.com article, “Find Peace and Confidence Despite a Difficult Marriage” points out:

“Make your children a priority. Realize that your children are adversely affected by your marital problems. Make the time to listen to them express their thoughts and feelings on a regular basis. Be honest with them and acknowledge the problems that exist in your marriage, but don’t disparage your spouse unnecessarily. Admit the facts, but don’t try to turn your children against your spouse. Provide as much stability as you can for them, and meet their needs. Don’t depend on your children to meet your own needs, but seek to meet their needs with God’s help” (Karla Downing)

(You can see further tips concerning this matter in: “Marriage Message #347 – Arguing in Front of Children” and “Marriage Message #348 – Disagreeing in Front of Children.”

• Don’t involve others in your disagreements. It’s a good idea to S.T.O.P. (See The Other People) so you don’t embarrass them and your spouse. (“Marriage Message #346 – Arguing in Front of Others” explains this further.)

• “Make sure there is only one issue and that both of you are discussing that same issue. Sounds simple, right? But most couples don’t define their issues, so they end up arguing about different issues when they think they’re talking about the same thing.” (You can talk about other issues at other times.) (Gary Oliver, From the Marriage Partnership article, “Healthy Conflict?“)

• Beware of contaminating your Peace Conference with Relationship Germs. Dr Gary Smalley defines them:

“There are four reasons—I call them relationship germs—that cause more than 90 percent of divorce in America: withdrawing, escalating, belittling, and developing negative beliefs. They all have to do with negotiating your differences. All four of those relationship germs produce anger. So if you monitor anger every day, and clear it up, you stay emotionally out of the dark and more connected with each other” (from the article Marriage Partnership article, “Handling Hidden Differences“).

• You may need to call a “Truce” at some point, which basically is a type of “time out” for both of you to calm down and condense these disagreement times into shorter segments. (You can learn more about this in Marriage Message #121 – Calling a Truce“.) But Truce times are NOT set so you can entirely avoid or evade the subject. It is another tool to help you resolve your differences in healthy ways.

• Be willing to flex and yield to your partner at times. Scripture says, “Wisdom… is peace-loving and courteous. It allows discussion and is willing to yield to others; it’s full of mercy and good deeds. It’s wholehearted and straightforward and sincere” (James 3:17, TLB).

• Don’t to forget to treat each other with respect and honor. As the Bible says, “Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10). We can’t emphasize that enough! I don’t know why it is, but so often after marriage (and sometimes before) we seem to go into a brain freeze where we forget to treat each other with honor, as God tells us to do. When we remember to honor each other above ourselves all the points mentioned above naturally occurs as a result.

“We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly” (Sam Keen).

We have additional tools that can help you as you plan and work through your Peace Conference in the “Communication Tools” and the “Communication and Conflict,” as well as the “Gender Differences” sections of our web site. We hope you’ll use them.

It’s our prayer that together we will get serious about holding “Peace Conferences” in our marriages rather than fights and making our marriages into war zones. May God help each of us to reflect the heart of Christ in every aspect of our marriages!

Steve and Cindy Wright