Gracefully Handling Conflict in Relationships

Conflict is natural whenever any two people try to get along. Running from conflict can lead to all sorts of negative consequences. In this episode, author Joël Malm and his father, Rick, discuss how you can handle conflicts with grace by first nailing down the issue.

Editor’s Note: The transcript that follows was automatically generated and lightly edited, so please be aware there could be typos or other small errors. The Stream is working toward a transcription service that does fast, accurate, and reliable work; thank you in advance for your patience!

00:00:06:28 – 00:00:10:03
Hey, welcome to the podcast. Joel here with dad.

00:00:10:07 – 00:00:13:28
And I’m Rick. How are you today, Joel? What’s going on?

00:00:13:29 – 00:00:19:02
Doing good. Hey, you been in, you were in Europe for a while.

00:00:19:05 – 00:00:21:08
Yeah. Don’t tell everybody.

00:00:21:10 – 00:00:24:28
Yeah. We were. Yeah. We’re going for. You’re visiting? See? Ten missionaries over there?

00:00:24:29 – 00:00:32:00
Yeah. Serving in the rough spots of Spain and southern France. It was. It was a tough one, you know, suffering for Jesus.

00:00:32:01 – 00:00:36:27
Somebody’s got to do it. Yeah, but that means there’s missionaries over there too. So yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know.

00:00:37:01 – 00:00:48:18
So they actually know they, Yeah, I mean, it is kind of it is a hard soil as far as sharing the gospel goes, because, yeah, I’ve been burned over. People have been burned by the church over and over again for centuries.

00:00:48:18 – 00:00:55:18
Actually have to get kind of creative. Yeah. I like, when some of the missionaries, you went visit their musicians over there, which is kind of a cool way to get in there.

00:00:55:21 – 00:01:05:02
Yeah, music’s kind of the heart language of everybody. Every language, every culture, every age kind of has one music and native country, Western, which is kind of interesting. I think that the French love.

00:01:05:02 – 00:01:08:01
It and the French love it. The country western. Yeah.

00:01:08:03 – 00:01:09:23
They do it up big too. It’s good.

00:01:09:23 – 00:01:20:13
It’s really cool. Yeah. So, we’re talking about conquering mountains the whole year, and we’re on relationships. Last week’s episode of, about how to how to survive 50 years of.

00:01:20:13 – 00:01:21:15
If so, you or what?

00:01:21:17 – 00:01:41:23
I don’t think it’s how to survive, right? To thrive in 50 years of marriage. Yeah. I, did really well, so I want to continue talking the relationship thing, you know, and I want to talk specifically about this thing that I’ve learned in marriage. Emily and I were talking the other day, and we were saying, what’s the number one piece of advice we give for people on how to have a good marriage?

00:01:41:25 – 00:01:54:27
And she’s like, learn to work through conflict. And, she, she said, she’s like, I’ve been gifted in that. I have a husband who doesn’t mind conflict. That’s he calls it a gift.

00:01:54:27 – 00:01:56:09
He calls it a gift. Okay.

00:01:56:15 – 00:02:17:03
But she said, you know, a lot of people, she’s like, I don’t know if they have these hard conversations. And what happens is tension builds, you know, assumptions build, resentment builds, and all of a sudden you just have these blow ups. She’s like, you don’t let it get to that point. And, but I’ve had to learn that, like, I’ve one of the things I’ve had to learn is that the issue is rarely the issue.

00:02:17:04 – 00:02:33:01
Yeah. So one of the common things threads in our home is we have a small home in when I’m in the kitchen and my very presence in the kitchen bothers her, she’ll walk in like, what are you doing? I’m like, well, I’m making a sandwich for lunch. And she’s like, well, why do you got to do it here?

00:02:33:01 – 00:02:50:12
And I’m like, well, because it’s the kitchen. That’s like where we mix with it. When my sheer presence in the room bothers her, I know I’ve done something wrong somewhere in the past and we have to talk it through, but usually what happens is we’ll talk it through for like 45 minutes. And then she’s like, I just realized why I’m mad at you.

00:02:50:12 – 00:02:55:15
A couple of days ago, I asked you what you thought about this dress and you didn’t even comment.

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And I’m like, yeah.

00:02:56:21 – 00:03:08:21
So it’s an interesting thing that I think a lot of us, we don’t even know what we’re thinking until we express it. So yeah, but the bottom line is conflict. The willingness to go just because we disagree doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.

00:03:08:23 – 00:03:09:10
Right?

00:03:09:10 – 00:03:28:19
It’s I call it I call it fighting. Well, but I’ve learned that word fighting triggers people because some people have actually seen physical fights in their home. So, I would say that’s my best piece of marriage advice. Is that learn to deal with conflict. So I want to talk about that today because you and mom deal with conflict very differently than Emily, and I do it differently.

00:03:28:19 – 00:03:30:09
Yeah, yeah, Emily and I.

00:03:30:16 – 00:03:32:16
We never have conflict.

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Know. Right? It’s, denial is is a river in Egypt.

00:03:36:16 – 00:03:48:28
The secret is. You know what I mean? It gives you a little insight into our relationship. When I asked your mom, as you remember. Yeah. What was her best advice for 50 years of marriage? She said learn to cry out to God. Yeah, okay. Ouch.

00:03:49:00 – 00:04:08:15
Well, I mean, it’s it that’s a reality that. So there’s different styles, right? And so much of what we learn about how to navigate conflict came from our families. I know with mom’s dad, I knew him well, loved him, one of my favorite people in the whole world. But he was so passive. It wasn’t even passive aggressive.

00:04:08:15 – 00:04:16:17
It was just like he’d asked me to do something and that I wouldn’t do it right away. And he’d, like, pace around the house going,

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So just said it’s just aggressive. Aggressive.

00:04:18:18 – 00:04:32:29
I don’t know what it was, but I’d be like, Papa, what’s the deal? And and he said, well, I just wonder, you know, I can’t do this on my own. I just wonder, are you going to leave me to have to do this on my own? And I be like, I’m going to do it eventually. But he would pace around until.

00:04:32:29 – 00:04:49:29
And I realize what mom, mom must have grown up into that. What would have been like to do to deal with the tension of that? There’s this constant underlying tension of conflict that nobody talks about. Emily and I, we just yell it out and, much to the consternation of our poor daughter, she’ll often stop and stop. We all love each other.

00:04:49:29 – 00:04:57:19
She’d say that all the time. Like we do love each other. Like, yeah, yeah. So let’s talk about that conflict in relationships.

00:04:57:19 – 00:05:03:09
Yeah, well, I say I grew up in a family that was loud, too. And I remember my mom saying, boys, take it out in the backyard. You know, it’s.

00:05:03:10 – 00:05:04:01
Right it out.

00:05:04:08 – 00:05:12:14
You fight it out in the backyard, you know, and I found real quickly with your mom, but she didn’t come from a family, right? Yeah.

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They never talked about that.

00:05:13:21 – 00:05:35:05
If I would even raise my voice or something, it was like, you know, it just. It would just melt her. So. So, yeah, I had to learn a whole different style of, dealing with conflict and, and I think part of the part of our problem is, neither of us, your mom nor I, as you may have noticed, are terribly insightful.

00:05:35:05 – 00:05:41:15
We don’t, give a lot of, you know, we don’t do a lot of the navel gazing, as you might say. You know, we.

00:05:41:20 – 00:05:42:24
Introspective.

00:05:42:27 – 00:05:47:14
Introspective? That’s a better word for it. Yeah. We don’t really typically know what’s happening.

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Navel gazing makes it sound.

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I know that’s the only thing I could think of. You know? And, I couldn’t think of the big word. Introspective.

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Introspective.

00:05:56:18 – 00:05:57:12
Very interesting.

00:05:57:12 – 00:06:00:09
Or is it or is it self self-aware?

00:06:00:09 – 00:06:24:15
Self-Aware? That’s. I couldn’t think of that word either. Navel gazing was the one that came to mind. Virginia. Right. Yeah. So neither of us are really that way, but but you know, you’re right that usually the issue isn’t the issue. It’s usually and you know that. I’ll tell you one thing that did help me, and I think I shared this probably before, was when I discovered like anger or frustration is a secondary emotion.

00:06:24:18 – 00:06:44:28
Because that did give me, a reason to. Okay, let’s slow down and let’s think about this and see if you can rewind the tape to figure out, okay, what went wrong caused me to feel this anger. What was the emotion there? Yeah. Because frankly, I didn’t I didn’t grow up. I did not grow up in touch with my emotions at all.

00:06:44:29 – 00:07:04:18
Didn’t even, in fact, I don’t know if I may have told you that story. Went to a marriage conference one time where, the whole focus was on emotions, you know, and getting in touch with your emotions, and, and, they it was just you and your wife, and then you went to a hotel room. You go to these conference, you go to these sessions together, and then you go back and talk about it.

00:07:04:20 – 00:07:06:01
And the first session was our.

00:07:06:01 – 00:07:07:03
Worst nightmare, right?

00:07:07:03 – 00:07:28:09
Yeah. It really was, you know, I didn’t know what I was getting into, but it was like, they said, okay, we were given the assignment. You have to go back and you talk about this particular issue that they brought up, and you can’t use the word. I think you have to use feeling words. And so I went back and I think we had like an hour to work on the session.

00:07:28:11 – 00:07:50:07
I had nothing to say. I didn’t know any feeling words. I, I would start well, I think, oh wait, I can’t use her. Well I don’t know. And I’m clueless. I have I got nothing. So on the second session we went back, they gave us a list of feeling words. Oh wow. It really helped. Oh I do have some feelings because yeah I felt that one once in a while.

00:07:50:10 – 00:08:07:06
Yeah. Hey that’s a good one. You know I literally it was not in my vocabulary any of these feeling words. And so that helped them. Then we were sent back again to do the same thing. And it really helped. And all of a sudden I realized, oh my goodness, I do have some feelings in there somewhere, you know?

00:08:07:06 – 00:08:13:21
And that was like the beginning of opening up Pandora’s Box. Yeah. I wish I could put them all back in there.

00:08:13:24 – 00:08:41:20
I remember in counseling, learning that, that they’re basically these six kind of basic emotions happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, which is actually a thing. And actually there’s a lot of research that shows much, much, much of our perspective on the world is driven by disgust sensitivities. What’s our sensitivity? Disgust. They show conservatives have really, low tolerance of disgust.

00:08:41:22 – 00:08:49:21
And liberal folks have a little more, openness to kind of the, lack of order with chaos craziness. Right. So they actually.

00:08:49:22 – 00:08:51:06
Be a liberal then.

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Maybe, I don’t.

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Know, I have a high tolerance for ambiguity.

00:08:55:15 – 00:09:12:00
Well, then they say the other emotions anger is. I don’t agree with that. I think anger and fear tied together. But anyways. And then surprise. But those they say those are the basic motions of pride. But it is amazing how how many people, especially men. I think we just don’t know how to put words to our thing. Yeah, I mean, the thing, whatever it is, it’s like, yeah.

00:09:12:04 – 00:09:19:19
So it’s really that we find ourselves either happy or it eventually devolves into anger. So you’re you got two emotions. I’m happy with this. This makes me angry.

00:09:19:19 – 00:09:39:10
Yeah. And when I realized that, oh, something happened between happy and angry. And I don’t know if I didn’t know that when I was going to school or they didn’t know that before and they just somehow discovered that because but it was such a revelation to me that, okay, now I’m angry because the thing about it, when you’re angry, I realize your mom can’t do anything.

00:09:39:15 – 00:09:42:25
Well, I’m mad, okay? I can’t do anything with that.

00:09:43:01 – 00:09:43:14
Right?

00:09:43:14 – 00:09:53:20
But if it’s like, well, I felt hurt or I felt belittled or I felt, not listened to. Oh, then she can do something with that.

00:09:53:20 – 00:10:00:14
Yeah. Which, which. So I think that’s where the conflict, navigating conflict is. First of all, we have to articulate what is the problem.

00:10:00:14 – 00:10:00:24
Yeah.

00:10:00:29 – 00:10:09:24
Like until you can figure out what the problem is, you’re not going able to resolve it. And I think that’s one of the biggest problems is I think a problem in our world today is we can’t even agree on what’s happening.

00:10:09:27 – 00:10:10:29
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

00:10:11:02 – 00:10:29:12
That’s wrong. What have we agreed on actually what the core issue here is and we don’t even know what we can’t even agree on terms anymore. We can’t even agree on what’s happening. And that’s one of the challenges in conflict is taking the time to first of all, feel out, feel out. What happened? How do I feel about it?

00:10:29:12 – 00:10:36:14
And then you can actually have the conflict, right? Yeah. I mean, are the the you can address the conflict better said.

00:10:36:17 – 00:10:51:13
When you figure out what the conflict is because if it’s not the issue. Yeah. Again, if I’m angry, there’s nothing you can do about that. Right. Well okay. You’re angry, but that doesn’t. How do I un anger you? Well, I don’t know unless I know what caused me to be angry.

00:10:51:13 – 00:11:03:09
And so many times the anger has built from something that happened a long time ago that wasn’t addressed because there wasn’t time to address it. It’s like, you know. Yeah, in the moment or you just hear, like there’s no point. What’s the point?

00:11:03:15 – 00:11:23:24
Yeah. Weird thing I’ve noticed too, is when you’re anticipating something’s going bad is going to happen, it makes you more angry when it happens. Like if something just goes sour. And it wasn’t anticipating it then I go oh that’s frustrating. But if I knew if I, if it happens and I was expecting it, there’s like I knew that was going to happen.

00:11:23:27 – 00:11:29:09
Yeah I was just like let me maybe but I think that’s kind of common. Like when you’re expecting it and it happens.

00:11:29:09 – 00:11:29:26
Right.

00:11:29:26 – 00:11:33:18
You’re kind of already the fuze is already lit and boom, now you’re ready to go with it.

00:11:33:18 – 00:11:38:27
Which is the challenge with marriage is there’s this long series of grievances that slowly build.

00:11:38:28 – 00:11:39:27
And you would say that.

00:11:39:27 – 00:11:59:24
I knew she’d do that. She always does that. Yeah, I always tell people, those are trigger words for when you’re dealing with resentment. And resentment is really just it’s unresolved. It’s it’s unforgiveness, but it’s unresolved issues is resentment where like, you feel the pain of it over and over again. Recent sentir is the word in Spanish and French to feel real feel.

00:11:59:24 – 00:12:14:14
So you’re feel it. When you resent it. You go, oh, here’s that feeling again. Of when she shuts me down. Here’s that feeling again. Of when she belittles me. The word meaning yeah, yeah. Have you not read my book of you? I go into that whole thing in there. Really? It’s probably been years. You probably forgot.

00:12:14:15 – 00:12:17:18
I forgot that I’ve. I’ve forgotten more stuff. If I remember this.

00:12:17:18 – 00:12:28:23
Yeah, I talk about that how it’s really a refueling again. And then when you anticipate what it’s going to be like to feel that again and then you feel it, you’re just like, even matter yourself. Like I let them get pretty raw.

00:12:28:23 – 00:12:30:29
So like you’re you’re already expecting it. Yeah.

00:12:30:29 – 00:12:37:12
And you’re like, happened to me again. I let them get me again. For me once, you know, shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me.

00:12:37:15 – 00:12:37:26
Yeah.

00:12:38:03 – 00:12:39:04
That’s so.

00:12:39:10 – 00:12:40:28
So what’s the answer?

00:12:41:01 – 00:12:57:29
Well, I think the answer is is really taking the time. That’s right. Counselors. You know, psychologists say you need 90 minutes a week just to talk about stuff going on in life. Not even how you feel about it. You know how the kids need to get where thing where they are. This is we have this on our schedule, this and that.

00:12:58:01 – 00:13:08:09
Counselors say you need at least 90 minutes to just talk about the details of life, and that’s not even talking about how you feel about it. You need another at least 90 minutes to talk about how you feel about it, which is why date nights are so important, which I’m.

00:13:08:10 – 00:13:11:22
Horrible if you just talk to yourself about it. No, that doesn’t.

00:13:11:22 – 00:13:26:27
Work. Yeah, that’s not community. That’s not. Which is a I think a lot of the problem is a lot of people think you just talk. You’ve rolled over too much in your mind. You assume the person you’re living with also got it in their mind. But no, it did not translate by osmosis.

00:13:26:27 – 00:13:33:02
Yeah. Especially if you’re talking about the guys. Because those guys, man, we we we literally can be thinking about nothing. Yeah.

00:13:33:07 – 00:13:53:04
Yeah. So I think I mean, gosh, we’re already running out of time here. We could talk about this for hours. But I think the most important thing is to figure out, first of all, what is it that the issue actually is. And that takes a little while to process. Sometimes you literally have to talk it through, which can be frustrating because that time of talking it through, you go, I don’t I don’t have time for this.

00:13:53:10 – 00:13:53:26
Yeah.

00:13:53:29 – 00:14:10:01
I don’t have time to sit there and listen to her ramp. You know, she’s rambling all the time. Actually, the greatest gift you could give is probably giving her time to talk it out and listen and say, okay, what’s the real issue here? And that’s that’s the core to figuring out the conflict is what is the real issue here.

00:14:10:01 – 00:14:31:00
So you say it usually goes back to something either usually emotional or relational, like, an insecurity or like with a guy, you know, a guy. Biggest thing with a guy is to feel like he’s valued, he’s competent. And so a disrespect, something that’s disrespectful is a big one. No guy. But I know in my case, it was hard to say that we hurt my feelings.

00:14:31:02 – 00:14:50:17
Oh my gosh, I feel like such a baby saw. I realized that’s what happened. I go, I’m not gonna say that, you know, but that’s what caused. And then so. So figure out what are the emotions, the fear, pride, whatever’s under that’s causing that stress. And that’s I guess that’s the first place to start is much less.

00:14:50:17 – 00:15:00:02
You know what the problem is? It’s pretty hard to fix it, isn’t it? You, you know.

00:15:00:04 – 00:15:03:21
Thanks for listening to episode six. Consider sharing this with your friends and family.

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Your choice.

00:15:04:24 – 00:15:17:03
For more from Joel mom, visit Joel mom.com. For more from Rick mom visit Rick mom.com. Our podcast music was produced by Alex Burleson.