According to Gottman (2015) in his book about marital principles, there are 2 forms of conflict: perpetual and solvable. Perpetual would be problems that don’t go away such as one wanting a baby and the other not being ready. Solvable are just that. Neither issue is easy or painless, but both are very real.
I seem to really enjoy sharing stories from my own marriage, so here is another. I grew up in a very abusive home. If the laundry wasn’t folded correctly, you could bet that my grandmother would take out that entire drawer and throw it at my head, wood and all. Fast forward to now and our perpetual problem seems to be that my husband can’t fold towels correctly. He does try, but the creases still aren’t right. I have this nagging feeling like someone is going all but kill me for the creases being wrong and he thinks everything is fine and I need to get over it. Every week. For six years.
But how do we problem solve? For us, it took a lot of therapy on my part and an agreement that I would not fix any of the things he folds until he is out of the house. Really, it is communication.
We all have needs. Perhaps the biggest one we seem to all forget is the need to express them. We deserve it too. With that, comes listening.
Many have heard the parable about the blind men and the elephant. If not, here is the paraphrased version just for you:
A handful or so of blind men go to see and elephant wanting to know what it looks like. Each touches a different part and comes up with very different notions of what the elephant must look like based on that small part they touch not realizing that the elephant is all of their parts together.
This is conflict in marriage. Each person sees on part and determines that is the issue while neglecting to attempt to see the other parts of the problem. Stop and ask if you have any negative part in the matter. Have you tried to help it? what is your spouse seeing or feeling?
Trying to see the whole elephant and communicating to get the full image can help with both perpetual and solvable issues and possible save your sanity when folding laundry.
To Eternity and Beyond 