“Porcupine people don’t look like that’s what they are on the outside. But they’re hard to embrace because when you do; they can stick you with that which can hurt. God wants us to learn how to love these people even though they’re difficult to embrace. Loving them requires a thick skin and a soft heart, which is something we can develop. But the real truth is, all of us have a little porcupine person in us that can rear its ugly head at sometime. In every one of us there’s a beauty and some beast” (Lee Ezell).

The Bible tells us that “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (Proverbs 12:18). Do you speak to your spouse recklessly so your words pierce—or do you “speak the truth in love” so your words bring healing?

In a book we’ve been reading called: Whole Marriages in a Broken World. God’s Design for a Healthy Marriage by Gary Inrig (Discovery House Publishers) we found some wise thoughts on marriage. There’s a chapter in it entitled “The Porcupine Process” that we found so interesting we’d like to share excerpts from it. (You’ll have to get the book for the rest of what it has to say.) It reads:

Someone has compared marriage to two porcupines trying to survive an Arctic winter. When the mercury drops and the snow begins to fly, they cuddle together for warmth. But when they do their quills stick one another. So they pull apart, but soon begin to shiver. So they move together again—and stick each other. And so the dance goes on—damaging and distancing, damaging and distancing, until they realize that if they don’t learn to adjust to one another, they’ll never survive.

One of the facts of marriage is that we both have quills-feelings, attitudes, behaviors, and ideas that really can stick our partner. Learning to make our differences work for us rather than against us is one of the fundamental necessities of marriage. A healthy marriage is adjusted to reality. Productive conflict deepens a relationship, but destructive conflict threatens it.

People come to counselors and pastors with the attitude, “Tell me what I want to hear and tell them what they need to hear.” An unteachable attitude breeds an unreachable heart which produces unsolvable problems. According to John Gottman, “Stonewalling is the most destructive of the [risk factors] leading to a marriage’s downfall.”

John Gottman, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, has done an extended study of 2000 married couples over 20 years to discover the factors that bind a marriage together or tear it apart. He reports that couples deal with conflict using various patterns—avoiding, validating, and volatile.

He observes that the style of problem solving is far less important than the context of problem facing: “As long as there’s five times as much positive feeling and interaction between husband and wife as there is negative, we found the marriage was likely to be stable.”

Conflict tiptoes on the borderline of sin. “In your anger do not sin.” That’s why we need to choose our attitude carefully. We can multiply evil instead of resolving differences. All too easily we can fall into attacking and retaliating. Suddenly, trivial issues become prime irritants, because all the rest of the baggage is attached to it. The goal in conflict must not be just to keep peace but to establish a working harmony by resolving differences.

These 5 “rules of engagement” are important as we work through the porcupine process.

(1) Attack the problem, not the person. The problem is our problem, not just your problem or my problem. It affects us. I’ve found it useful to think of the issue as in front of both of us, not between us. “We” are a nonnegotiable; “it” is the problem. So the issue needs to be heard carefully, described clearly, and attacked cooperatively. At the same time, no problem can be solved that’s not owned and defined. The 1st step of healing is to identify the problem accurately and mutually.

(2) Fix the problem, not the blame. An amazing amount of energy is spent in times of conflict on blaming and excusing. The Lord Jesus calls me to focus on my own faults. Few passages are as relevant as Matthew 7:3-5: “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? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there’s a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank in your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

Fixing the problem means that I will apologize readily for my contribution and that I’ll focus on solutions, not mistakes. The ‘ventilation’ fad that encouraged people years ago to focus on their feelings and vent their anger led to short-term relief and long-term regret. As Carol Travis notes in a careful study of anger, “People who are most prone to give vent to their rage get angrier, not less angry.”

(3) Keep it private, not public. There’s a legitimate place for seeking wise, spiritual counsel. That’s very different than enlisting allies among family and friends, a process that distorts friendship and betrays marital loyalty. When we draw others into the problem, the tendency is for a win-loss mind-set to develop, as others are encouraged to choose up sides.

(4) Do it now, not later. The injunction, “Don’t let the sun go down while you’re still angry,” became one of the most important lessons of our 1st year of marriage. We determined before God not to go to bed angry with one another. We couldn’t always solve the problem and we haven’t always gotten to bed early, but we affirmed our commitment to “us” and sought to resolve the issue or de-fang it. But the issue is “who takes the 1st step?”

God’s answer is simple— you do, whether you have something against your partner (Matthew 18:15) or vice versa (Matthew 5:23 -24). The recognition that unresolved conflicts become Satan’s footholds means that now is the time.

(5) Pray it up when you bring it up. Conflict needs to be firmly placed in a context of love and prayer. “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8) It’s virtually impossible to pray sincerely with your partner if conflict is unresolved between you. “Treat them with respect—so that nothing will hinder your prayers.” (1 Peter 3:7)

The old saying is that nothing is as certain as death or taxes. Conflict in marriage is. But we can choose to fight to the bitter end or to a better end. The ability to resolve conflict is an essential ingredient of a healthy marriage.

We hope you found those thoughts helpful when dealing with porcupine people and conflict in marriage.

Please know that our prayers are with you as together we pro-actively work to make our marriages ones that are God-honoring.

Steve and Cindy Wright

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