8 Things that Destroyed our marriage part 5

After reading the first four mistakes and knowing that there are four more mistakes coming, one might think “Man, your marriage sucked! No wonder you almost got divorced.” The irony is that we had a good marriage. We had the best marriage we could build. God in his grace and his goodness has shown us where we went wrong and we have allowed Him to change us…and that is the journey we are sharing this week.

This mistake wasn’t in my original 8…but it became so relevant to our lives yesterday, that I felt like God prompted me to include this mistake that almost destroyed our marriage…

#5-When we argued with one another, our objective was to be right (Trisha) or to be at peace (me), rather than to grow closer through our conflict.

We got married the summer before my senior year of college. We were young and in love and somewhat took pride in the fact we never really had a major argument through our time dating. But, man do I remember our first argument…I don’t remember what it was about, but I remember how it ended. Trisha looked at me and said, “I hate you.” Argument over! Whatever the issue was, in that moment, she was right and I was wrong. I never wanted her to feel that way again…so I apologized for whatever I did and we moved on.

As kids came into the picture and ministry responsibilities increased and our life got out of balance, I began to measure the success of our marriage by the absence of conflict. So if we didn’t argue more than we argued, then it was a good week. When conflict arose, I knew that Trisha was probably going to be right; I was probably going to be wrong. I knew the easiest way to move on was to identify why she was mad, try not to make her angrier by saying I thought she was wrong, and just apologize. She would feel better because she was right…I would feel better because there wasn’t conflict.

This pattern got so ridiculous in our relationship that it came to a head on a Saturday night about 6 months before we separated. Trisha was leading worship the next morning and I was speaking (probably on conflict resolution or something)…and we get into this huge argument. After a while, I look up and it is 1:00 AM. I am freaking out. Finally, I just said, “Please just tell me what I need to apologize for so we can go to bed. We can’t lead people closer to God tomorrow if we are like this.” My motivation for resolving our conflict had nothing to do with growing closer to her…nothing to do with becoming more of who God had created us to be…it was the fact that I wanted to stand on a stage with a clear conscious and have people be impressed with who I was pretending to be.

What I have realized is that so often God uses Trisha in my life to hold up a mirror to my soul and expose things in my heart that I wouldn’t see otherwise…and he uses me to do the same for her. When I avoid conflict and when Trisha just pushes to be right, we cheat a refining process that God is doing in our life and in our marriage. Don’t get me wrong…I don’t look forward to fighting with my wife…but when we do disagree and argue…most of the time I recognize it as an opportunity to grow closer through the conflict.

This played out in our life yesterday as Trisha and I got into an argument. We just weren’t seeing things the same way. What was so cool and what brought this mistake to my mind is to see how far God has brought us. Our conversation got intense and each of us voiced our opinion…but we were both going to stay with the discussion for the right reasons…she wasn’t demanding she was right and I wasn’t trying to apologize so the conflict would magically go away. We were both committed to allowing God to work in us through what the other person had to say…and by sticking with it we understood each other’s hearts more in the end.

If you are living your life right now trying to manage your conflict…hoping you don’t argue as much this week as you did last week…I know how miserable that can be. God’s desire is to use the conflict in our marriages to grow us more into the husband and wife he longs for us to be. How do you handle conflict in your marriage? Is there a conversation you could have this week that would allow you to leverage your conflict to become more ONE with your spouse? There is hope…we started with “I hate you.” And look how far we’ve come!