Thursday, June 26, 2008
De-escalating Relationships (Chpt. 11)
There are probably thousands of books on how to books on marriage. The book made interesting statements in this chapter about factors contributing to relational dissolution and divorce. Conflict will always be in a relationship but I have heard it can be good because it brings you closer in your relationship. Well, with positive message behavior, this would be good in conflict, but negative message behavior can overtime destroy the relationship. Through negative message behavior comes flooding which leads to emotional reactions like criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling, and withdrawal. It is very easy to let our emotions get nasty in an argument. I am passionate about having a healthy and lasting marriage. I am reading a book called Love and Respect which talks about how to communicate in conflict and why we react the way we do by criticizing or stonewalling. Essentially women primarily need love and men primarily need respect. If we are not getting our primary need met we react in negative ways to our partner. If we can figure out how to communicate with our partner and grow in conflict, it will be priceless for the relationship!
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2 comments:
I have one friend that I rarely get into disputes with, and when we did get into any kind of dispute, we would try to face it head on and try to fix it right away. Recently, we somewhat got into a dispute and I'll admit, it's been a little weird. I know though that we've been through so much together, although we don't argue often, we'll eventually get through this one too. It really is all about staying positive and remember who you're dealing with. I know that my friend has the best intentions and sometimes we'll just have times when we don't see eye-to-eye. But yes, conflict is good because like they say, "no pain, no gain." It may may or break the relationship, but if you stay positive, it'll definitely make the relationship stronger than what it was.
That's interesting what you wrote about women needing love and men needing respect. I've found in my relationship with my boyfriend that that is totally true. I respect him, which he appreciates, and he loves me, which is exactly what I need. After being together for nearly a year and a half I can confidently say that we are successfully fulfilling eachother's primary needs. It's quite a revelation and I'm glad you wrote about it.
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