How to Handle Conflict in a Relationship | Christian Relationship Advice

hey girls Tiffany Don here with my husband James hi everyone today we’re gonna talk about conflict because some of you have written in asking how we solve conflict in our marriage and as always we are not perfect we are only two years into we’re newlyweds and we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below of what helps you solve conflict but here are five steps that help us in our marriage because we certainly have experienced some conflict I think the first year of marriage can be a tough time for conflict and so these are some things that I’ve known life savers for us yeah and I don’t I think that conflict has a negative connotation in our society but conflict is absolutely normal because I am an individual person and Tiffany as an individual person and anytime to individually people try to do something as intimate and as awesome as living life and sharing space together 24/7 there going to be differences of opinion and that brings people closer together but it’s something that as often gets dealt with in some very unhealthy ways that actually push the other person farther away yeah I think that’s so important to remember conflict can bring you closer together if it’s done in the right way and we definitely seem that true again and it’s also inevitable so learn how to do it laugh at because if you’re not if you’re not printing any conflict or any disagreements chances are it could be because one or the other of you are not being honest with each dances are it’s because someone isn’t being honest or they aren’t really in touch with how they really feel yeah so our first thing that has helped us is honesty just being willing to be honest with ourselves and with the other person about how we’re feeling one of my friends I was talking with recently and her husband did something that really hurt her deeply and she called me and was like just kind of sharing what had happened how hurt she was and I was like well what did he say when you told him how it hurts you and she was like oh should I tell him I’m like yes you should tell him yeah yeah especially if it’s the wife who’s hurt or the girlfriend who’s hurt the guy is not gonna know unless you use words to tell us or you look yeah it’s don’t real copy time and even if you are petty all the time like you’ll have no idea why like can be like shouldn’t you know what’s going on with me like I’m clearly not okay they have no clue they don’t finish yeah very confuse stuff and the thing is a lot of times you have to pay attention even to little things a lot of times people think oh well it’s only a little thing maybe I shouldn’t make this a big deal hope it goes away my dad always told me about relationships which is straight out of the book of Song of Solomon is that it’s the little foxes that spoil the vines and what that means is it’s not this big thing that comes in that destroys your vineyard it’s this little fox that sneaks in it bites a few vines here and bites a few vines there and then eventually over time things start to come crashing down on a daily and weekly basis there’s things where you have disagreements and differences of opinion and you have to address those you can’t just throw them under the rug because they’re gonna pile up there and pretty soon you’re gonna have a trash heap in the middle of your living room which is gross you shouldn’t do that so I think as you start to address those little things and be honest with each other our second tip is be aware of the place and time that you choose to talk about your convoy like one of the big things for us is we don’t want to address it in the middle of a family gathering or that other people are around we’re in front of other people yeah come into one one thing right we actually saw we went over to some newlyweds house and they were clearly continuing to have a disagreement with one another and yeah like baking jabs that the other we’re alone is not good don’t you don’t want to air out your dirty laundry in front of people that doesn’t mean you always you should pretend like everything’s okay right it’s just do the person you’re with the the courtesy as in another as another grown up to talk about it one on one yeah because odds are if you have a one-on-one conversation you can both have the opportunity to really be honest and know what the other person is thinking if you’re doing it in front of other people a person’s instinctive reflexes I gotta make myself look good I got it by myself yeah it’s gonna push you farther apart if you do that it’s gonna lose trust in ya going along with choosing the right time a lot of times conflicts have to be processed verbally people like me number three eyyy eyyy men we run out of words at about 4 p.m. each day I’ve read that women have a lot more words to use up each day than men do and emotionally like apparently women have more I think it’s like 7 times the amount of I don’t know baby synapses in your brain whatever does that process an emotion in your brain I read that women have seven times more of them than guys yeah so like if I have something that’s bothering me I immediately know what’s bothering me why it’s bothering me and what I want to do about it crazy price for James won’t even know there’s something bothering her birthday’s not a lot faster though like a lot it does it takes one of the process and I need to have the energy to do it so now Tiffany will say you know I’ve I have been really stressed about our budget for example can we talk about that no say yeah yeah I would have the energy for that or I would say no right now and you need to respect that because if you’re going if you’re insisting on having a discussion right then that night in the other person doesn’t have the energy yeah that it will not be fruitful yeah just really well nothing will get resolved again you’ll just push each other away instead of using the conflict to draw closer to one another yeah and then I think the fourth tip we have is to keep it constructive so that it is pushing you closer together so part of this is by using I statements and this is really been huge for me to learn so I’m instead of saying like you made me feel this way instead I would say when you did this this is how I took it and this is how it made me feel and so I’m taking ownership of my own feelings instead of putting the blame on him and that makes it so the other person isn’t feeling blamed wrong that offensive either so that’s super helpful using I statements yeah yeah absolutely something we’ve been discussing a lot recently is our second anniversary and in my mind we have a really fun life together so our second anniversary I don’t know that we would do anything in particular but for Tiffany this is marriage anniversary and I want flowers and a dinner I want to go somewhere you want flowers I’m glad with filming this video service that so we’ve had to discuss so much you know what what are we gonna do and why are we gonna do it because my inclination is to do one thing Tiffany’s inclination is to do another thing and if Tiffany says you don’t love me you know that’s pretty offensive but if Tiffany says when you say I don’t want to spend the money to go to a fancy restaurant what I feel even though I know you love me what I feel is unloved and I can’t really criticize her for like a week for feeling a certain way you can’t criticize a person for feeling a certain way you can say wow you know I can understand why you might feel that way I don’t feel that way but if you feel that way you know there’s there’s not a lot of disagree but if she said you know you don’t love me you know I would have I would have been very hurt by that and would have argued back and we would not have had a constructive conversation yeah and really the purpose of these conversations I think is to understand where the other person is coming from so both of you taking the time to really listen and watch Jen’s oh you’re but they’re saying instead of spending your time like being distracted by thinking about what you’re gonna say next instead like focus on what they’re singing and really trying to understand it and that in itself just understanding like oh the reason you feel this way is because he wants to save our money so he can keep doing these really cool things we do together all year long like that’s really special and so it helps me feel like okay he’s not saying he doesn’t want to like go do something big in a fancy because he doesn’t love me it’s just like he wants to do other special things together and so the more we try to understand each other the more it brings us closer together instead of making it your goal to always be right which is my inclination I really have to focus we’re both oldest children so we like to say if there’s a lot of people who are right in our house all the time we both like the bakery right although you’re much better at saying that you’re not I really struggle with that so making it not about that and instead making it about understanding the other person is huge just gonna draw you closer to God that draws us closer together and then being willing to apologize and be like ask for forgiveness and humble yourself and that’s the hard part of marriage is at least for me being willing to like be humble enough to admit when you’re wrong whenever I say you were right he’s like connects it again please I don’t hear that enough can hear that again please but it takes humility and it’s hard if it knows like what I still feel like I’m right and then I think the fifth tip that we have is be willing to ask for help you can’t solve everything just by yourself yeah we have been so thankful and blessed to have different older couples and different wise friends in our lives that we can go to sort of with the other person’s a permission and understanding and be like you know we have talked about this issue so many times and it feels like we say the same things over and over again you know can we talk to someone else to try to have find some conclusion yeah so you get another perspective because eventually I feel like I can I I know what how I feel and she knows how she feels but we haven’t been able to really resolve the issue and sometimes you have to talk about it a bunch of times to even get your resolution but for us the names you have to get that outside help too and so we’ll have like friends of the same gender that will like like my best friend who’s a girl I’ll talk with her I wouldn’t want to like talk about something I’m struggling with with James to a guy friend because that could cause like an unhealthy weird emotional attachment but I still have friends that like just a few trusted close friends that will sometimes go to with the other person’s knowledge and then we also what we usually do is um have we have a bunch of married couples who will go and talk to you together about it and also when needed counseling so we were working through one issue for like the first year and a half of our marriage talking over and over and it was so hurtful to both of us and like we just couldn’t find a resolute for it and so I ended up starting to go to a counselor and that was life-changing for me and for our marriage I mean huge difference of the law so I hope that these tips can help you girls and as always comment your thoughts below we can’t wait to hear from you and we’ll see you again on Friday love you guys and bye