Fight or Flight

Written by Thomas Barnet

7 Secrets to Resolving Your Conflict

How do you handle conflict? 
Do you pick up your weapons and prepare for battle, or do you look for the nearest exit? 

Even though both of these reactions are quite “natural”, they are both very destructive to your marriage relationship.  Learn how to resist the “fight or flight” response and strengthen your marriage.

Conflict:  a clash of feelings or interests, a struggle between opposing principles, intentions, or opinions.

Conflict is as much a part of life as breathing.  Every human interaction brings with it the possibility of disagreement and conflict.  You have been dealing with it since the day you were born.  Thankfully your parents disagreed with your desire to play in the street and to drink the dish soap!

By the time you reached adulthood, you had dealt with thousands of conflicts and had learned to resolve them in various ways.  You developed a “style” or pattern for dealing with life’s irritations.  So did your spouse. 

When the two of you decided to spend the rest of your lives together, you did so with the greatest confidence that you would be able to work your way through every difference and disagreement.  The challenge is that now the two different patterns need to be molded into a single pattern that resolves disagreement without shattering the relationship.

Conflict resolution is so important to your marriage that it needs your full attention.  Unresolved conflict will DESTROY your marriage!  It will eat away at the trust and respect that hold you together and will create a downward spiral of bitterness,  blame, guilt, and loss of hope.

Without even realizing it, you make decisions on a daily basis in regard to how much energy and effort you are willing to spend to resolve a conflict.

It goes like this:

CONFLICT arises: You quickly answer some questions in your mind:

“How important is the relationship?”
“How long-term do I want the relationship to be?”
“What shape will the relationship be in if I say or do this?”

ACTION: You take action consistent with the pattern you have developed.

Let me illustrate with two very different situations:

When the clerk at the store rings up the wrong price for the item you are buying and is unwilling to call for a price check (conflict), you will quickly answer the above questions in your mind.  “I’ve never seen this person before and probably won’t ever again…the less time this relationship lasts the better…at this point I don’t care how much we like each other when we are finished…
ACTION >>> “I want to see the manager!”

Contrast this situation with the next one.

Jack is very excited because a friend at work offered him two tickets to an NFL game for an upcoming weekend.  It just happens to be the same weekend that some of Jill’s relatives that she hasn’t seen in years are going to be in town (conflict).  Jack and Jill run the same set of questions through their minds, but both have much more at stake than in the above example.
“This is the most important relationship I have…I want this one to last forever and be increasingly stronger… how can we find an agreement that will not damage the relationship?”

Major Flaw
One very common mistake most people make is to view conflict as always being a negative thing.  On the contrary, there can be many very good and positive outcomes from the successful resolution of it. New and better solutions, new ways of looking at things, finally reaching a lasting agreement, and more understanding of the way your partner thinks, are all positive results brought about by the original conflict.

Jack and Jill understand this, and these are the actions they take.  Jack checks with his friend right away to see if he can trade the tickets with someone for a different game so Jill can enjoy it with him.  Jill starts planning how she might be able to travel to see those relatives some time soon.  She wants to learn more about football, so she can be a part of what Jack enjoys so much.  Jack is open to the visit because he wants to know all of Jill’s family better and hopes to understand her better through it.  WIN—WIN.  Very positive solutions to what could have been frustrating and damaging to their relationship. 

“It’s All In Your Head”– The Fight or Flight Response

It actually is in your head.  Physiologist Walter Cannon was the first to document the chemical and physical changes that take place in our minds and bodies when we perceive danger and feel threatened.  The threat can be real or imagined, it doesn’t matter, the same chemical changes happen. 

There is an area of the brain called the hypothalamus that initiates this “fight or flight” response by starting a sequence of nerve reactions and the releasing of chemicals like adrenalin and cortisol into the bloodstream. This causes your heart rate and respiration to increase.  Blood is diverted to the big muscles to get ready to move, the pupils dilate, perception is enhanced, and impulses quicken.  The body has been prepared to either confront the threat or to run away from it.

The problem is that both of these options are deadly to relationships!

Successful conflict resolution requires the rational mind to be in control, but it is overruled by the fight or flight response.

Have you been a victim of the fight or flight response in your marriage?  Have you “picked up your weapons” too many times and ended up sorry for it?  Have you run away or gone silent on your partner and ended up causing further frustration because you couldn’t come to a resolution? 

You can learn to recognize the response when it begins to happen and purpose to keep the rational mind in control.  You also can establish some valuable principles for resolving conflict ahead of time that will serve your relationship well for the rest of your lives together.

Following are 7 secrets that will help you learn to both establish these principles and keep the rational mind engaged when conflict arises. This will allow you to actually strengthen your marriage through successful resolution. 

Secret 1:  Establish and Focus on relationship goals

Define your relationship goals.
Sit down with your spouse and write down the answers to these questions:

• What kind of relationship do we want?
• How do we want to be able to describe our relationship to others?
• How would others that know us describe what we currently have?

List the characteristics you want, like fairness, patience, honesty, openness, respect, longevity, compassion, strength, safety, security, peacefulness, etc.  Spend some time here. It will be well worth the effort (you will find out some things you need to know).

Purpose to resolve your conflict with these goals in mind
Promise your spouse that you will always do your best to seek resolution to conflict that will support these relationship goals. For example, if a sense of fairness is a goal, then each time you disagree, look for solutions that are fair to both of you.

It is much easier to hit a target when you know what it looks like!  It is easier to come to an agreement that feels fair when both people identify fairness as the target.  A reasonable compromise often becomes obvious when the goals are guiding the discussion.  When the fight or flight response begins, replay the relationship goals in your mind.

Secret 2: Clearly define the conflict or disagreement

You need to define the specific action, thought, or behavior that is causing the disagreement.  What exactly did I do or say that is bothering you?  Why is it a problem?  Does what I am doing cause you more work, am I doing it the wrong way, or does it make you feel ignored, belittled, or put down in some way?  

Learn to ask those two questions every time a conflict arises.  “What did I do?”, and, ”Why does it bother you?”

Many conflicts can be easily and peacefully resolved just by clearly defining the “what” and the “why”!  This may sound too obvious, but have you ever heard anyone say, “If you don’t know what you did (or didn’t do), I’m not going to tell you.  If you cared, you would know why I’m angry!”?  Sometimes people will clearly define the action they didn’t like but will not give the real reason they are upset.

Here’s an example:

Bob has been asked by his friend at work to join his bowling league that meets every Thursday night during the winter months.  This friend has a lot of struggles in his life at the moment, and Bob wants to help him get his life back on track.  Sally gets upset immediately when Bob mentions the idea and quickly reminds him that they often use Thursday nights as their alone time.  Bob thinks she is just being selfish.  Sally thinks he just wants a night out.  Sally really has a deeper issue of insecurity and is concerned Bob will find these other people more interesting and more fun than she is.

If Bob and Sally clearly define the problem, he will see that she isn’t being selfish (the WHY) but just feels insecure about her ability to develop closeness with him.  Sally will realize Bob isn’t trying to get away from her one night a week (the WHY), but sees he just wants to do this temporarily to help his friend.

Do you see how not defining the WHY in this case could lead to very wrong conclusions on both parts? 

This leads to the second step – define what each of you would view as the “perfect” outcome.  Now that the problem has been clearly defined, the questions become, “Can both points of view be achieved?”  “How much of each objection can be solved by different choices?”  “Are there other actions we can take to satisfy both of our needs?”

Let’s continue with the above example:

Bob remembers the relationship goal of safety and security and works it out to have breakfast with his friend every other Saturday morning while Sally does her regular shopping.  Realizing Sally needs reassuring regarding their closeness, he focuses on spending more alone time with her.  Sally remembers the relationship goal of supporting each other and offers to meet with his friend’s wife if that might be of help to them.  She sees Bob’s concern for his friend as an admirable quality and supports him in it.

Secret 3: Categorize the problem and create a “model” for resolution

Determine if the problem an economic issue, a use of time issue, a personal issue, or a responsibility issue? 

Most of the day-to-day conflicts in a marriage fall into a few distinct categories

The concept here is to create a “model” for resolving future problems of the same type.  The great benefit to having an agreed upon model or pattern for solving problems of the same type is that you aren’t  having to settle the same basic issues every time. That enables consistency in how you resolve conflict in general areas of life.

Let’s talk money! 
Because money causes so many arguments in so many marriages, I’ll use it as an example of establishing a model.  The goal here is for you establish a pattern you can use for the rest of your lives together.

Step 1 –  Agree on the answers to two basic questions:

1) What do we need? 
These are the essentials like a place to live

—how big, how new, where, how soon to own. 
Cars—how many, how new, when do we buy them. 
Food, clothing, appliances, furniture – all the things we consider necessities.

       2) What do we want?  What do you do with what’s left after what you need is purchased–items like savings, investments, recreation, hobbies, improvements, luxuries.

There won’t be anything to fight about if you and your spouse agree ahead of time that the expenditure you are about to make is either a legitimate need or a justified want.

 When an item gains your attention, this model prompts you to ask the question “Is this item a need or a want”?  If you have agreed ahead of time that you need two reliable vehicles at all times, then you won’t fight about spending the money to do routine maintenance on them.

Step 2 – Agree to utilize your combined strengths and abilities

The second key to avoiding ongoing conflict over a certain type of problem is to agree on which partner has the individual strength or ability to decide in that area and utilize that strength.

My wife has a much better sense for deciding what features our new clothes washer and dryer should have.  If she thinks the extra water saving feature is worth $150 more, I don’t challenge her opinion.  We agreed early in our marriage that owning a washer and dryer are a need (an essential item).  We also agreed to utilize her strength in choosing features. 

This is called WIN—WIN.  No CONFLICT even though this is a $2000 purchase.

Usually a conflict will involve multiple categories.  For instance, someone who has a personal problem with impulsive spending presents conflict in two areas—financial impact and the emotional issue itself.  From the example given, you can see how having a regular pattern for making decisions can help on a regular basis.

Secret 4:  Don’t take extreme, hard-line, “all or nothing” positions

The stronger and more rigid the position you take at the outset of a disagreement, the more you will find yourself having to defend it to the end. Comments like, “It’ll be a cold…”, or “No way in this lifetime am I doing that!”, turn the conflict into a battle of wills. Instead of defining the problem and developing a long-term agreement, you now become focused on not suffering embarrassment and losing credibility by “giving in” to any type of “backing down”.

Starting conflict resolution with an extreme position just puts you farther away from the middle ground where the resolution will be found.  In some situations when you don’t care about the closeness of the relationship when you are finished, you may consider taking an extreme position to get everything exactly your way. But this approach will turn your marriage into a competition and a power struggle. 

Every time you insist on a personal “victory” in solving problems in your marriage you will damage your relationship.  When you dig in your heels and refuse to consider any compromise, you are choosing to fight over this issue for the rest of your life.  You immediately lose the opportunity to come up with new ways of looking at the problem.  Instead of making your marriage more flexible and adaptable to change, you make it more fragile and brittle.

ATTACK THE PROBLEM—NOT EACH OTHER!

Secret 5:  Assess the emotional “attachment” to the outcome

One mistake many people make is failing to assess or evaluate the emotional attachment their spouse has to the desired outcome of a conflict. Here is where the “fight or flight” response most easily overcomes most people.  If you are going to control the response and not the other way around, you must learn to immediately assess the emotional investment that both you and your spouse have in the outcome of the disagreement at hand.

Have you ever found yourself surprised at the intensity of someone’s reaction when you did or said something you thought would help solve a disagreement?  In your mind you are thinking, “Where did that come from?”, or “How could my suggestion get that kind of explosion?” 

You obviously didn’t have an accurate assessment of the emotional attachment.  This is going to happen in new relationships and it will happen in every marriage early on. But as you live together, this will happen less and less if you study your spouse and learn to ask some questions about the conflict at hand. 

Ask yourself these things:

• How important is the outcome to me?  Why?
• How important is the outcome to her/him?  Why?
• How soon do we need a decision?
• How deep is the change I am asking for?
• How long has this been an issue?
• What body language signals can I pick up?  What emotions can I hear in the tone of voice and how intense are the expressions?  Does the intensity level seem higher than the situation calls for?

Underestimating strong emotional attachment can lead to comments like “So what’s the big deal?”  The big deal just got a lot bigger! PAY attention to the emotional attachment your spouse has to an issue, or you will PAY in other ways.

Let’s look at three basic possibilities when it comes to the level of emotional attachment to an issue.  Your level is going to be somewhere on a scale from “Low” (not very important that the outcome goes my way), to “High” (it is very important that the outcome goes my way).  This gives us roughly three possible situations when a conflict arises:

1) Low-Low 
The potential for serious conflict is low when both peoples’ emotional attachment to the outcome is low.  For example, if both people enjoy all three restaurant possibilities, then neither one really cares very much which one they decide on.  It is easy to assess the emotional attachment and for either person to “give in” to the other’s choice, because it really isn’t very important to either.

2) Low-High
The potential for serious conflict now is greater because the outcome is highly important to one of the people.  This is where the skill of being able to assess the emotional attachment becomes valuable, especially if you are the one with the low level. 

There are two common mistakes made by the one with the low level: The first is challenging the one with the high level just for the sake of not “giving in”.  (Why challenge the desire of your mate when either outcome is mostly acceptable to you?). The second is belittling or down-playing the importance of the decision.  When you recognize the emotional attachment is high for the other person, acknowledge the importance and stay involved in the decision.  If you act like you don’t care when it is very important to the other person, you will create a new conflict, even if it is unintentional.

3) High-High
Successful resolution is the most critical to the marriage relationship when both people have a high level of emotional attachment to the outcome of a conflict. 

Don’t let the “fight or flight” response “hi-jack” your interaction when you face emotion packed conflict.

This is where the response does its dirty work—when the decision is very important to both of you.  To resist the common problems of “blowing up” and “melting down” and letting the emotional brain takeover, here is where you need to put into effect the steps already outlined so that your rational brain can gain control.

• Repeat the relational goals you already have put in place that must be honored.
• Rationally define the details, thoughts, actions, behaviors, motives, and intentions that are causing the disagreement.
• Categorize the problem and discuss the “model” you have already. agreed upon—the pattern that works for you in these types of situations.
• Recognize and assess the emotional attachment each of you has to the outcome and decision.
• Don’t take extreme or “hard-line” all-or-nothing positions that will turn the discussion into a power struggle and make it impossible to be open to new view points and positive change.

Congratulations!  Once you have gotten this far, there are two more secrets that will solidify and maintain the lasting type of resolution you want to reach.

Secret 6:  Agree to communicate until there is an agreement that is acceptable to both people

This is called CLOSURE. It is extremely important that both people feel it. 

Closure is the comfortable feeling that the conflict or issue really has been resolved, and there is now a definite and clearly defined understanding of how to proceed.  If you don’t have closure, the issue is going to linger on indefinitely and will become harder to resolve.  If you have spent a lot of energy to work your way toward resolution, don’t give up short of the goal. 

When you have reached what you believe is resolution, take just a few more minutes to ask some very important questions.

• Does our decision only temporarily solve the problem or will it be lasting?
• Did all of the points that were important to each of us get considered?
• Are there any other promises we made or plans we have had that are going to be changed by this decision?
• Does the decision change our “model” for this type of issue, and if so, are we both comfortable with changing the model?
• Does the decision shift responsibility to one of us or add new responsibility to one of us?
• Did we come to this decision together or does it feel very one-sided to one of us—does it feel fair to both of us?
• Did we rush the decision when we didn’t have to?

Not every decision is going to be a once-and-for-all agreement.  People change, life brings about change, and your agreements will also need to be modified to adapt to change. Butut it is very important to commit to insisting on closure when all things have been considered.

Secret 7: Set yourselves up to succeed

1)  Remember that significant change can take some time of adjustment. Don’t become impatient when an agreement is slow in taking effect.

2) Consider a “trial period” when you are trying to resolve a problem that is very complex and charged with high emotional attachment. If you can only make small steps toward full resolution, then agree that you will try the small change for a designated time to see if you should make a larger change in that same direction.  Agree to commit to the trial period or it won’t be of much value.  If you don’t really try, you will just create a pattern of failure that will lead to loss of hope that the problem will ever be resolved.

3)  Celebrate your successes.  Agree to keep the discussion open about how the decision is going.  Tell your spouse when you feel like the decision is working and ask his/her opinion.  Encourage each other through the actual changes as they are happening.  Recognize and reward the effort you see being made by your spouse.  Say “thank you” when the changes are achieving the goal—when the new behavior has solved the original problem that prompted the change.

4)  Be prepared to make adjustments when things happen you didn’t anticipate.  Resist the temptation to reopen the conflict and fall back to “I told you this wouldn’t work.”  You can’t foresee everydetail, so being willing to make small adjustments is very beneficial.

5) Promise your spouse that you will do your best in every situation to avoid falling into the “fight or flight” response when future conflict arises.  Just knowing that your partner is actively trying is an important part of setting yourselves up to succeed.

No one is born with conflict resolution skills.  Find a couple that has been married for a long time and has a strong and resilient relationship that has withstood trials and storms and that would be willing to answer some questions about how they resolve conflict.  Ask them how they start when a problem comes up.  Ask them how they handle problems of a certain type.  Ask them how they come to closure when they have made a difficult decision.  Ask them about the problems they have overcome that were charged with emotion.  Ask them about how they have set themselves up to succeed. 

You will hear in their explanation that they understand these 7 secrets of conflict resolution.  They learned them and YOU CAN TOO! 

“Conflict Resolution” from Focus on the Family: https://www.focusonthefamily.com/get-help/conflict-resolution/

“How the Fight or Flight Response Works” by Kendra Cherry: https://www.focusonthefamily.com/get-help/conflict-resolution/y

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