Addressing Marital Conflict

Married couples can get stuck in negative relational patterns filled with conflict and frustration. Here are factors why this happens and how to address it:

1. Self-Centered

   1. Selfishness: Prioritizing one’s needs over the relationship; unwillingness to consider the interest of your partner, sacrifice, or listen. "I am going to do what I want."

   2. Pride/Arrogance/Superiority: Refusing to admit when you are wrong, say sorry, or ask for help; needing to be right. Believing that you're better than the other person.

   3. Fear: Afraid of being honest, vulnerability, rejection, change, or failure; leads to attacking, shutting down, withdrawing, silence, or anger.

   4. Shame: Feeling unworthy, inadequate, insecure, leads to defensiveness or projecting blame onto the other person.

   5. Control/Demanding: Trying to fix or manage the spouse instead of addressing your own issues.

   6. Judging: Judging your spouse by your own standards. Accusing your spouse when they don't meet your expectations. Being the judge and executing the punishment on your spouse for not giving you what you want from them. Keeping a scorecard and a record of wrongs. The need to retaliate and get revenge when wronged.
      

2. Self-Protection

   When you are attacked, disrespected, blamed, criticized, put down, made fun of, wronged, hurt, or threatened, partners go into survival self-protection mode: Criticism, withdrawal, defensiveness, and shutting down are attempts to protect oneself.

3. Negative Bias

   Couples often develop an inaccurate confirmation bias: they only see the worst in their partner, assume bad motives, and ignore the good. They see themselves as all good, and their spouse as all bad.

   “You’re doing this on purpose,” “You don’t care,” “You always...” become the default interpretation of every behavior, even loving ones.

4. Labeling Each Other

   In frustration, spouses start using clinical or extreme labels:

   “You’re narcissistic,” “You’re toxic,” “You’re gaslighting me.”

   While some behaviors may resemble pathological patterns, these labels become weapons to shut down empathy and create distance.

   Labels are shortcuts to defend oneself by blaming the other person rather than self-reflection and seeking to understand.
   

5. Family of Origin

   1. For better or worse, we learn how to behave in a marriage by the pattern set by our parents. Each spouse grew up with a marriage modeled to them where they learned how to communicate, address conflict, express love, navigate life, and live as a husband and wife. Left un-examined, couples continue the same behaviors as their parents.

   2. We naturally defend our family of origin. Your partner may see the flaws in your family of origin that you are in denial about. A spouse may be triggered by their partner's request to change your family's way of doing things.
      

6. Differences

   1. The couple has not been able to resolve their differences.

   2. Couples by definition are two people, which will have many differences: values, vocations, religion, finances, family history, past relationships, personalities, preferences, expectations, roles, and goals for the future.
      

7. Life Stressors

   1. Couples can become compromised by life stressors leaving them more irritable, less gracious, tired, short-tempered, to the point where small issues trigger an escalated response towards each other.

   2. We can negatively respond to life stressors by trying to suppress them, escape from them, avoid them, or by attacking and blaming your spouse.

8. Immaturity

   1. A spouse has not been taught or learned the life skills to communicate, think before they speak, listen, have manners, be respectful, be considerate, be responsible, solve problems, have morals/ethics, to empathize, face challenges, have self-control, or social skills.

   2. Underdeveloped emotional intelligence: A spouse is unable to know what they are feeling and what they want, why they are feeling that way, and how to express their feelings and needs in healthy ways. And how to cope when they don't get what they want.
      

9. Unresolved Wounds

   Each partner carries emotional and psychological baggage—from their childhood, past relationships, trauma, or unmet needs. Left unchecked, marriage can trigger these wounds. Over time, these hurts get interpreted as personal attacks, even when they aren’t.

   “You don’t listen to me” becomes “You don’t value me,” which eventually becomes “You’re my enemy.”
   

10. Extramarital Affairs

    1. An affair is an escape from the reality of the marital relationship and a search for fulfillment outside of marriage. Instead of taking responsibility and providing accountability for the time and energy it takes to work on the marriage, they turn their attention elsewhere.

    2. Affairs can be: activities/hobbies, materialism/shopping, career, family, entertainment, or another person.

How to address a marriage stuck in a negative relational pattern

1. Shift from blame to accountability

Ask: “How am I contributing to the problem?” rather than “How can I fix or change my spouse?”

Practice humble self-examination, not accusation.

Do the work of personal healing, maturing, and growth. Unburden your baggage. Do not be defined by your past. Learn from it, heal from it, move on from it. Be teachable.

2. Create safety for vulnerability and connection

Healing begins when both partners feel safe to say things like:

“I’m scared.”

“I felt hurt when…”

“I miss us.”

"Can we talk?"

Relational and emotional safety is built through listening without judgment and validating one another's perspective.

3. Name the negative relational pattern, not the person.

Instead of labeling the other person, describe the negative pattern that you're both stuck in:

“I think we get stuck in a cycle where I pursue and you withdraw.”

“I feel like when I get critical, you shut down, and we both get frustrated.”

This externalizes the problem—it’s not you vs. me, it’s us vs. the negative relational pattern.

4. Effective communication.

Listen: Give focused attention. Remove distractions. Listen for understanding. Focus on what is being said, not the way it is being said.

Speak: Think before you speak. Speak kindly.

Verify understanding: Ask each other to make sure you are being understood correctly. What do you think I said? When both spouses listen and understand each other's perspective, then they can begin to work out their differences.

5. Confession, grace, and forgiveness.

Own your faults without excusing them: “I was harsh. I was selfish. I’m sorry.”

Give love even when it's not deserved. Be generous. Give the benefit of the doubt.

Forgiveness breaks the logjam of resentment and invites reconnection.

Marriage doesn’t require two perfect people—it requires two forgiving and humble people.

6. Repair with love in action.

Take small steps to reconnect after conflict. Loving actions in the midst of relational tension is a key to repair. "You matter more than this issue." "Our relationship is more important than this problem."

Regular check-ins

Words of appreciation

Notes and letters

Shared rhythms (hobbies, dates, working towards goals)

7. Resolve conflicts.

   Admit how you contribute to the conflict. Communicate that you are not enemies, but you are working together to resolve the conflict. De-escalate your impulse to retaliate, blame, attack, criticize, punish, get revenge.

   Define the conflict and get to the root issue of why you are in a conflict.

   What was I really feeling underneath the anger or shutdown?

   What fear or wound of mine did that conflict touch?

   What did I need from you that I didn’t know how to ask for?

   Here’s how I could have handled that conflict differently.

   What could help us navigate conflicts better next time?

8. Build Resiliency to face life stressors together.

   Anticipate difficulties in life. Build mental toughness, grit, and coping skills so that you're not too emotionally reactive. Have a mindset of "us vs. the problem". Commit to work together, understand each other, support each other, encourage each other to overcome the difficulty you are facing. Believe in each other, have hope that you will get through this.

   
   

9. Rebuild trust.

   Trust is not automatically given. Trust is earned through consistent behavior over time. The pain from being hurt does not instantly disappear. Give grace and time for the hurt to dissipate. Communicate your expectations. Acknowledge when your spouse is meeting your expectation.
   

10. Plan your life together.

    What kind of relationship do we want to create now?

    What does a positive relational pattern look like?

    What values do we want to live by as a couple?

    What kind of couple do we want to be in 1, 5, 10 years?

    What are three activities we can do that reinforce our closeness and trust?

Moving Toward a Healthy Marriage

Negative Pattern Healthy Pattern

Blame and labeling Accountability and empathy

Emotional reactivity Emotional regulation and safety

Prideful Self-Centeredness Humble repair and forgiveness

Assuming the worst Giving the benefit of the doubt

Performance-based acts Grace-based commitment

A Gospel-centered marriage to heal a marriage in conflict

We are all sinners in need of grace—and marriage is one of the primary places God uses to expose and sanctify our hearts.

Marriage is not about fixing the other person but becoming more like Christ in how we love, forgive, and serve.

Jesus shows us how to die to self in love (Eph. 5:25), how to forgive (Col. 3:13), and how to hope even when the other person isn’t there yet.