Marital Conflict: Expect It and Cope with It.

In any marriage, even the most supportive and agreeable, there are disagreements, and the way the couple resolves conflict affects the welfare, vibrancy and staying power of the marriage. Many couples mistakenly believe their marriage has no chance of success if they experience disputes, which may be due to the old-school belief that conflict should be avoided to ensure family unity. The result of conflict avoidance is often simmering anger and deep-seated resentment about unresolved issues.

Ironically, voicing differences can actually foster growth and closeness in a relationship if the conflict is handled constructively. Conflict is normal and inevitable, and in blended families, issues of transitioning kids, ex-spouses, financial problems and parenting differences can increase the scope of disagreements with negative outcomes.

Although one of many experts in relationships and conflict resolution, Dr Scott Haltzman offers unique insight and practical advice in his best-selling book, The Secrets of Happily Married Men: Eight Ways to Win Your Wifes Heart Forever. Dr Haltzman has distilled on-going research from thousands of married men into a helpful guide that highlights eight useful strategies that make marriages thrive.

Strategy # 4, "Expect Conflict and Deal with It," helps couples gain a better understanding of conflict by illustrating how men and women are biologically hardwired to deal with it, the moods and motives that drive disagreements, the patterns of conflicts and how to diffuse them. Everyone wants to feel listened to, cared for and respected, and understanding this goes a long way to helping couples put the brakes on conflict and patch things up before they spiral out of control.

This is what Dr Haltzman wants us to know about conflict:

1. Happy and unhappy couples argue about the same amount of time and about the same basic issues: money, sex and housework being the three most common.

2. 69 % of clashes in a marriage are never resolved, and thats an acceptable level.

3. Both men and women can learn constructive ways to argue, and to agree to disagree.

4. Conflict often surfaces due to the inherent differences in how the sexes perceive conflict and ways they deal with it.

Dr Haltzman describes the 4 common ways that fights accelerate. See if you can spot yourself or your partner in any of these descriptions:

Feeding the Fire: We all know the situation where a criticism or complaint is voiced, the response being more hostility, and so on, until its a free-for-all that includes ancient history from arguments past. An escalating, major argument cannot just be shut down like an out-of-control video game, but keeps accelerating. Strategies for calming out-of-control "fires" include softening your tone, looking for areas of agreement, focusing on the positive and "holding that emotion," which essentially means stopping yourself from escalating into a higher gear with hateful comments.

Withdrawal and Avoidance: Men are more likely to withdraw from and not deal with a complaint than women are, and this sends a dismissive message to women that makes them very irritated. Women dislike avoidance because the act of engagement makes them feel better, even when the issue may not be resolved. Men avoid and withdraw for understandable biological reasons but these behaviors fuel the fire of conflict with the women in their lives.

Negative Interpretation: Assigning unintended negative meaning to things a spouse does or doesnt say can incite major conflict that can escalate easily, since each person is responding to something that was neither voiced nor intended. Clarifying one's meaning and active listening can help reduce this.

Finger Pointing: This is the classic criticizing that requires a response, which turns into defensiveness and more blame. The effective technique is to use I statements that refer to personal perception rather than accusing the other person. The most important element of a conflict is how its resolved or "patched up" when a quarrel is over. Both men and women must decide whether being right is more important than preserving a healthy marriage. Among recently wed couples that could not reconcile after a contention, the divorce rate was 90 %, versus an 84% successful marriage rate of those who could make up.

Couples can have fun trying out many kinds of strategies to get back on track after a fight; this puts the conflict behind them so they can move past that and focus on the goal of enjoying a happy marriage.

Sheena Berg lovingly writes articles for the StepHeroes stepparenting tips newsletter at http://www.About-Blended-Families.com. To discover more about happily married men, there's no substitute for reading "The Secrets of Happily Married Men" by Dr. Scott Haltzman (See our video review at http://www.youtube.com/user/blendedfamilynews). You can also join our conversation with Dr Haltzman when he will be our Ask the Expert guest on http://www.BlendedFamilyExperts.com.

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Conflict is normal and inevitable, and Dr Haltzman has authored a useful guide that highlights 8 useful strategies that help marriages work in spite of it.

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