By the end of Margie’s life, Margie and I still had many unresolved conflicts between us, though we grew tremendously over the years in our ability to honor and respect each other despite these many differences. Some of our conflicts originated in personality differences, some in gender differences, and others from different values and lifestyle choices. Underlying all these were our “deeper hidden issues,” which Gottman identifies as the most critical in marriage. These deeper hidden issues included our respective areas of selfishness, sins, and wounds. These underlying issues fueled the surface conflicts and made them far more intense and hurtful.
Most couples have difficulty accepting, honoring, and negotiating differences when it comes to these “deeper hidden issues.” Our fallen nature has a basic core of self-centeredness that hinders our capacity to reconcile our differences and become more unified. We also bring into marriage a whole lifetime of accumulated vices and selfish behaviors that must be addressed and confronted in the day-to-day conflicts that inevitably arise. It is vitally important to acknowledge these areas. As these are confronted, we come to realize that each of us has significant wounds and areas of sin that must be healed and forgiven before we can make peace with these unresolvable issues.
You and your spouse have thousands of differences between you, but only a small number of these are critical to your overall well-being as a couple and family. Identifying these critical issues will help you see what prevents you from enjoying greater connectedness and unity. Discovering the underlying roots of your repetitive conflicts will also reveal where your unhealed wounds and sins continue to undermine your marriage. Many authors identify lists of critical issues in marriage that can make or break a relationship. The “big three” that are listed by many commentators are money, sex, and parenting. These three issues are critical because they affect your livelihood, your relational fulfillment, and your family harmony. And all three have a significant impact on your marital unity.
You may or may not have strong feelings about each of these issues. But even if your values about these issues are relatively compatible, you will still have some fundamental differences in the way you approach these three areas. In addition to your differences in personality, gender, and love languages, you were each influenced by the way your family of origin handled these matters. Without fully realizing it, you internalized values of how to respond to these issues in the atmosphere of your home, school, church, and subculture while growing up. Some degree of conflict is almost inevitable because of the dissimilarities in your upbringing, personality, and perspectives. Moreover, these conflicts can become heated and problematic when contaminated by your individual areas of self-centeredness, sins, and emotional wounds.
Margie and I had conflicts involving all three of these critical issues (sex, parenting, and money management). Though we were fundamentally compatible in our sexual relationship because of our shared love language of touch, I carried some inner conflicts about sexuality into our marriage. I brought wounds of insecurity and mistrust into our relationship because of my father’s infidelity and my first two girlfriends’ betrayals. For the first ten years of our marriage, I had repetitive nightmares about Margie being unfaithful. With Margie’s reassurance, I eventually realized that my conflict wasn’t with her but within myself coming from past trauma.
Following a season of intense exploration, I discovered these unhealed traumas were accompanied by unforgiveness. These were the deeper issues underlying this area of conflict. I was projecting my fears of being betrayed onto Margie and selfishly trying to control her relationships with men as a way of protecting myself from being hurt again. It wasn’t until God healed these deep wounds of betrayal and abandonment from my childhood that I could let go of my insecurity and trust in her faithfulness.
Regarding parenting, Margie and I had relatively few conflicts in the early years of our children’s life. For the most part, we parented well together. But our conflicts increased significantly when our daughters became teenagers and began to rebel at times. When our children acted disrespectfully toward their mother, I failed to correct them. Worse yet, I encouraged them to express themselves, which infuriated Margie even more. Once again, I had to look inside my own heart before I could address this problem effectively with Margie. After prayer and self-examination, I realized this was an area of covert sin in my life originating from my own teenage years.
After my dad left, my brothers and sisters and I acted disrespectfully toward my mom. Without seeing the connection at first, I was letting our daughters disrespect their mom in a similar way. I wrongfully sided with them in their anger rather than stand in unity with my wife. Once I came to realize this, I had to apologize to Margie (and to God) and uphold her honor and authority by disciplining our children when they disrespected their mom. Before I saw my part in this dynamic, we had many arguments over parenting our teenage daughters. Once I made the shift in my thoughts and behavior, the disrespect in our home decreased significantly, as did the conflicts between Margie and me.
Finally, in the area of money management, we had ongoing conflicts throughout our marriage. Margie enjoyed shopping. But she didn’t like to keep track of her spending and didn’t mind using a credit card. I hated debt, handled money conservatively, and liked to give money to those in need rather than buying more for us. Margie resented my giving money to others when we had unmet needs as a family. Periodically, these issues would erupt in heated arguments. Paying our bills at the end of the month seemed to be a trigger for both of us. After many unsuccessful attempts to resolve this issue, we finally grew in understanding of each other’s perspectives, personalities, and wounds. Margie was naturally more inclined to spend than I was. But that wasn’t the biggest factor in our conflicts. She shared with me her experience of watching her parents fight over the bills as a child. Her mom would spend money freely, often buying clothes for herself and her children on a credit card. Her dad would tersely question her mom about using the credit card, and Margie would see them fighting over money. Resenting her father for this, she unwittingly projected her resentments of her father onto me when I asked about receipts and credit card bills.
On my side of this issue, I realized that my mom, left without income, piled up debts after my dad left. I came to realize this influenced my fearful attitude toward debt and unrestrained spending. It also increased my compassion for those families without enough, which fostered my desire to give to those in need. These realizations helped take much of the heat and judgments out of our conflicts, even though the conflicts themselves never went away until the last few months of our marriage, when the only spending was on doctor’s visits.
These “big three” critical issues of sex, parenting, and money may or may not be hot topics in your marriage. But I can assure you, you have some critical issues in your marriage that need to go through a similar examination. These critical issues may include friends, relatives, time management, work involvement, affection outside the bedroom, tidiness, honesty, addictions, unfaithfulness, and so on. These are typical issues in marriage, but they may remain unresolved because of the underlying root attitudes that fuel the conflict and make it a problem area in your relationship. These underlying root attitudes, as I have been demonstrating, are often hidden from our sight. They involve our unhealed wounds, our unconfessed sins, and our habitual patterns of self-centeredness. Healing and forgiving these underlying root attitudes are the keys to unlocking your marital conflicts and building unity in your relationship.
This excerpt from Be Devoted: Restoring Friendship, Passion, and Communion in Your Marriage is reprinted with permission of Ave Maria Press.
Bob Schuchts is the bestselling author of Be Healed, Be Transformed, Be Devoted, Be Restored, and Do You Want to Be Healed? He is the founder of the John Paul II Healing Center in Tallahassee, Florida, and cohost of the Restore the Glory podcast with Jake Khym.
