8 Steps to Disarming Anger and Conflict - 221 - Marriage Life and More

Episode Transcript
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Daniel Moore (00:05):
times that I went to bed at anger in the early
years of our marriage, michelleand I had our fair share of
sleeping on the couch, while theother one stayed in the bed
because we were mad at eachother.

Michelle Moore (00:15):
I'm not gonna say that we never did that,
because we did and I canremember a lot of times you
would come down there and waslike, are you not coming to bed?
And it was like, no, I'm not,and it would make you mad.
And then it made you know I wasalready mad and and was like,
are you not coming to bed?
And it was like, no, I'm not,and it would make you mad.
And then it made you know I wasalready mad and it was like it
just it really wasn't healthy atall, not at all.

This week on Marriage Life and More.
We continue our study on thefour laws of love, as we
continue the law of purity.
We'll be back with that rightafter this.
Welcome to Marriage Life andMore.

(01:23):
This is a podcast aboutmarriage, Bible and book studies
.
We also interview people withinspiring stories.
I'm Daniel Moore, your host.
I have Michelle Moore here withme this week once again, hey
guys, as we're continuing thisstudy.
Thank you guys for joining usthis week.
If you're not familiar with ourshow, you can check out our
website atwwwmarriagelifeandmorecom.
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(01:44):
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(02:05):
as that helps our podcast togrow and helps us reach the
masses out there that may needto hear messages like this or
maybe need some restoration intheir marriage, and we hope that
maybe one of these episodes werelease will do that.
Well, this week, as I said,we're going to be continuing our
study that we've been in for acouple of months now and we are
now in the law of purity, andthis week we're going to be

(02:29):
talking about disarming angerand resolving conflicts.

The objective of marriage is to cultivate a
relationship that is bothintimate and harmonious.
However, this does not implythe absence of negative feelings
or occasional conflict.
A successful marriage does notentail never experiencing anger.
Rather, it involves effectivelymanaging and resolving anger.

(03:05):
This episode aims to provideinsight into handling anger
appropriately and navigatingconflicts with your spouse to
achieve resolution.
Adherence to the principles ofpurity involves conscious and
accountable conduct, includingowning up to our errors.
However, despite our bestefforts, we may still

(03:27):
inadvertently hurt and provokeeach other.
During such moments, it isessential for our relationship
to provide a safe space where wecan engage in open and caring
communication with our spouses.
To help do this, we're going tobegin by using a text of
scripture from the fourthchapter of Ephesians, where the

(03:49):
Apostle Paul gives us fourdirectives concerning anger and
conflict resolution Be angry anddo not sin.
Do not let the sun go down onyour wrath, nor give a place to
the devil, and that comes fromEphesians 4, 26, 27.

So this week's episode is going to be almost a
little bit of a rehash of someof the previous episodes that we
have put together already, andI think one reason that this is
repeated is this is probably anissue in marriage that's very
difficult to navigate, but it'salso an issue in marriage that
happens a lot.

(04:28):
I mean, it's real easy to getmad at your spouse and it's real
easy to have conflicts, andespecially if you get into the
blended family scenario, or evenif you're not in a blended
family.
But when the kids start comingaround, we always start finding
out what our differences arewhen the kids show up,

(04:48):
especially how we think weshould handle things, and it
seems like that every timesomething new is introduced into
a marriage, it's a whole newset of rules that we have to
apply for that scenario, andwhen you're married, you have to
be on the same page with that,or you have to figure out some
way to come to an agreement tobe on the same page with that.

(05:09):
So as we start off this week,we're going to first of all talk
about disarming anger, andthere are four don'ts of dealing
with anger.
The first one is to not denyyour anger.
The Apostle Paul begins in verse26 by telling us to be angry.
You know, in all realitythere's nothing wrong with anger

(05:32):
, because even God gets angry,if you remember the Bible, the
story there where he came intothe temple and all of the people
were there selling the chickensand had the tables, you know,
changing coin and all that kindof thing and Jesus got extremely
angry over that and he flippedall of those tables over and
dumped them and told them to getout of the house of God.

(05:52):
That's not what the house ofGod was for.
So we do know that there is aplace to have, I guess, what you
would call godly anger.
I guess is the way to put that.
But there are many families,you know, just like the one that
I grew up in, that doesn'tallow anger, and the reason in
most cases is because they fearit.
They don't know how to dealwith it and they just deny it

(06:15):
and hope it will go away.
And as we look at that, wouldyou say that when you're around
someone that has a blow up,would you say that when you're
around someone that has a blowup or, you know, has really
angry things to say to you orconfront you on, is that
probably a way that you handlethat is, to work around and try
to ignore it and get past itwithout having confrontation, or

(06:38):
do you confront that?

Well, I don't mind confrontation.
So I would definitely be, Iwould take it and just like,
okay, let's talk about this,let's see what the problem is
and let's talk.
And you know, but first in mymind I'm going to be praying for
the right words to say, becauseobviously the other person, if
they're angry, probably whatyou're going to say they're not

(07:02):
going to listen to, Right?
So, but I don't mind addressingthings if I need to.
Yeah, only if God wants me to.

Right, do it in a godly manner, absolutely yes.

So I know when— If you did that to me, I'd punch
you.

So we need some anger resolution here.

That's one of my favorite lines.
I'm going to punch you and Idon't punch anybody, I just I'm
going to punch you.

As I've said many times, she's very violent, but I
noticed we let our kids grow up.
I do recall a lot of times whenwe probably we suppress the
anger more than we let them ventand probably in some cases we
should have let them vent andprobably in some cases we should
have let them.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

Like a controlled venting is probably a good way
to put that, because definitelywhen you're angry, you don't
want it to be out of controlanger.
You need to have some kind of aprocess there that you can vent
that anger, work through theanger and come to a resolution
at the end and try to resolvethat anger and fix the issue to

(08:11):
the best of your ability.
That doesn't always mean you'reprobably going to still in the
same conversation on the samepage, Right?
I mean you may still have yourdifferences and disagreements
and all of that, but to do it ina godly way, we have to find
that level, equal groundsomewhere so that that anger can
stop, because you can't letthat continue.
On the flip side of this, ifyou're the person that doesn't

(08:35):
like confrontation and you justwant to hold that inside of you
which would be my personality,because I'm the type of person
that I don't mind confrontationbut you got to push me to my
limit before.
I'm the type of person that Idon't mind confrontation, but
you got to push me to my limitbefore I confront, and that's
dangerous because when I getpushed that far, I'm so mad at
that point that it is not.

(08:56):
I could literally just decksomebody.
I'm way beyond my limit ofwhere I should be, and so I've
had to kind of reprogram myselfa little bit to start earlier in
the issues to try to get theanger out quicker so that it can
be resolved before I get tothat bomb stage.

And I think you've done really well because
you recognize it.

Yeah.

You recognize it and so you start addressing it
immediately.
You say a little bit later, butyou really do, you address it
kind of right.
Then it's like you can tellit's starting to bother you and
you address it.

And that's because I've come to realize that if I
internalize my anger and I keepit inside of me, it actually
causes health problems, mentalproblems, depression, emotional
problems, problems in yourrelationship.
Yeah, because when you denyanger, it doesn't go away.
It just sits there and hoversover you like a dark cloud.

Yeah, when you deny anger.

it doesn't go away .
It just sits there and hoversover you like a dark cloud,
waiting to just unleash and justsoak you and all that it has
inside of it and it accumulates.
And this is where dangerousanger comes from, because people
with anger issues almost alwayshave years of unprocessed
conflict that they don't knowhow to resolve.
They've got it all pent upinside of them and they don't
know how to approach it.
They don't know how they needto unpack all of that in a safe

(10:11):
environment with somebody andtry to get past all of it and
resolve all of those issues.
And we've even seen that even inour kids, sometimes when they
were growing up, especiallybeing in a blended family, I
don't feel like a lot of timesour kids felt like they had the
liberty to speak out, like theyprobably should have had the
opportunity as a child, becauseas a child in your home, they do

(10:31):
have a voice and you need toallow them to have that voice.
That's how they learn andthat's how they grow.
But more often than not, as wejust stated, michelle and both
of us, we would probablysuppress that a lot more than we
should have as our kids grew up.
But that's a whole otherepisode.
But the first step to resolvinganger is that we've got to

(10:52):
admit it and allow everyone elseto admit theirs.
It reminds me of the story ofthe dad that had a son that had
a really bad short trigger andhe would get mad at the drop of
a button, and they were havingproblems getting the child to
overcome that and resolve thatissue and they were constantly
having to try to correct him.

(11:14):
So finally the dad came up withthe idea one day that every
time the son got mad, he had himgo out there and get a nail,
and he had him hammer that nailinto the fence.
And so from that time forwardthis would happen multiple times
a day.
I mean, the fence was justgetting filled up with nails,
but the longer that it went,they started noticing that there

(11:34):
was less and less nails thatwere being hammered, until it
came to the point where the boyreally didn't have much, very
many nails to hammer anymore.
He was starting to understandthe issue and so the dad came
back to the boy finally andtalked to him about that, said
you know, see, you've startedout really bad here, but as
we've worked through this overtime, you see that your nails

(11:55):
have become less and less.
So we're making some progresshere.
And the boy's like so that mustmean that I'm good.
Then the dad says no.
He said now you got to go backand take all those nails back
out.
So the boy's like okay, so hegoes back and he starts pulling
all the nails back out.
Well, when he got done, theywere standing there looking at
the fence and the dad looked atthe boy and he said so what do

(12:17):
you see?
And he said well, he said I seea fence full of a whole bunch
of holes.
He said it doesn't look good atall because there's holes
everywhere.
And the dad told the boy.
He said yeah, he said, andthat's what anger does?
He said whenever you lash outat people, you say hurtful,
hateful things to people.
He said that has a lastingresult.

That's so good, he said you can't pull that back
.

Once you've unleashed that, you can't take
that stuff back it.
You've left a spot there thatthat person then has to deal
with and everywhere you go youleave a track or a trace of
things you said and things thatyou've done, and it ends up
looking like that holy fence.

(13:01):
And I think that if we look atit that way, to understand that
we can bottle ourselves up in abottle and keep this anger
inside of us all we want to, orwe can just fly off the handle
and just tear people a new onewhenever they tick us off and
make us mad.
We've just got to be carefulbecause those things can be a

(13:21):
permanent, eternal wound tosomeone if we're not careful.
And so we have to learn how toresolve those conflicts when
that happens and to get thatanger out when that happens.
And to get that anger out.
So you know, in marriage wemust make anger legal in our
relationships.
So we need to say something toour spouses, like if there is
anything I'm doing that isbothering you or making you

(13:43):
angry, please tell me.
I won't reject you or make youpay a price.
I really do want to know and Iwant to do whatever I can to
make it right.
Be sincere about it.
Yeah, to know, and I want to dowhatever I can to make it right
, Be sincere about it.
You know, and that changes thewhole atmosphere and the whole
attitude of the whole thing.
Because if I come to you and Isay you know, I know there's an
issue here and I truly I want toknow what it is, because we

(14:05):
need to fix this, and doesn'tthat make you feel like that?
I actually care.

Yeah.

And you know that I want to fix that and I think
that's how I would feel aboutyou as well, and that creates a
warm and like an open customerrelations type counter that will
ensure that negative issues andemotions can be resolved.
You know we go to the store todo a return.
We want to know that thatcustomer service department is
going to take care of our issueand they're going to fix all of

(14:32):
that, and so that's the samewith us.
You know when we come to eachother, we have to come up with
the mindset that you know yourcustomer relations and you want
to make me happy.
You know the customer is alwaysright to an extent, yeah, and
to know that by the time we'redone going through the back and
forth, that we'll have all thatstuff fixed.

Aria (14:52):
Yeah.

So so we do have to allow anger to be expressed
in our marriages, but justbecause we allow anger doesn't
mean that our anger is valid.
There's many reasons for it.
You know, I might be angrybecause I'm ignorant.
It may be something that Itotally misunderstood that made
me angry.
But we're not going to know ifI misunderstood something unless
I ask.

That's right.

So we're going to have to be able to have that
space there.
And sometimes we're angrybecause we're immature or we're
stressed or we're hormonal.
Sometimes we get angry becausesomeone legitimately violates us
.
But when we allow anger we arenot saying it's always right,
but we're saying that it's realand it needs to be dealt with.
So good.
So we have to make sure that weacknowledge that we do have some

(15:33):
anger there.
Secondly, don't sin or justifybad behavior, and that pretty
much speaks for itself.
Yep, whenever we, when Paultold us that we could be angry,
he also told us not to sin.

Right.

So there's obviously definitely a
difference there between the two.
You know, so many husbands andwives justify their bad behavior
because of the bad behavior oftheir spouses, and I think we
talked about this last week alittle bit how just because one
spouse does something bad to youdoes not open that door for you
to come back and do the same.
So the third thing is don't goto bed on your anger.

(16:08):
And this one.
You get different responsesfrom the worldly view versus the
Christian view, and I wastalking to Michelle here the
other day.
I read this article that we'regoing to probably go through it
sometime here on the podcast,but it was the 12 myths of
marriage, and one of the mythsthat they spoke about was not to

(16:30):
let yourself go to bed angry.
That they spoke about was not tolet yourself go to bed angry.
Well, according to this article, they were saying that it's
okay to do that occasionally,because sometimes you just have
to have some time to cool offand think about things before
you say stuff or whatever, andso you have to allow yourself
that space to be able to do that, and I know a lot of people
would probably agree with thatarticle, but in all reality.

(16:54):
That's not biblical, to justput it out there bluntly.
The Bible tells us that we arenot to let the sun go down on
our anger.
That is not how God wants us toresolve that, and he doesn't
want it to go down on our wrath.
And the reason for that isbecause any time that there's an
issue going on between Michelleand I and the pot's been

(17:16):
stirred, guess who's trying tojump right in the middle of that
.

Yeah, Satan.

It's Satan.
He's in there already with hislittle spoon trying to whip up
the batter.
And if we do not fix thoseissues and we go to sleep on
that, we all know that our mindis Satan's playground.
He loves to get inside thereand just put thoughts upon us.
And it doesn't mean thattomorrow we wake up, that we

(17:42):
can't fix it.
It does not mean that at all,but it's just a fact towards of
having a healthy marriage anddoing it the biblical way.
God does not again, does notwant us to have an anger within
each other that we can't resolvewhen it happens.
He wants us to take care ofthat.
And so you know, there's timesthat I went to bed in anger.

(18:05):
In the early years of ourmarriage, michelle and I had our
fair share of sleeping on thecouch, while the other one
stayed in the bed because wewere mad at each other.

I'm not going to say that we never did that,
because we did and I canremember a lot of times you
would come down there and like,are you not coming to bed?
And it was like no, I'm not.
And it would make you mad.
And then it made you know I wasalready mad and it was like it
just I mean, it wasn't, itreally wasn't healthy at all,

(18:34):
not at all.

And what's funny is, even though we was mad at
each other, I didn't like thefact you were sleeping on the
couch downstairs.
I wanted you up there where Iwas at, which is kind of odd,
because usually when you get madat somebody, you want to be as
far away from them as youpossibly can be.

And just to tell you guys, I never slept all
night on the couch.
I would always go upstairs.

Yeah, and both of us did.

Yeah.

We both had our times.
We'd get mad and storm offdownstairs and I'm just sleeping
downstairs tonight or whateverbut that wasn't healthy.
No, that was not something thatwe should have done and you

(19:18):
know the deep love and passionthat I had for you was destroyed
, one drop of resolved anger ata time, and on multiple
occasions.
You know I went to bed angryand stood over issues that I had
with you and in the end,because we both did that, it
almost cost us our marriagebecause we didn't fix it the way
that we should have Right.
So the fourth thing is don'tgive the devil a place in your
marriage.
Yep, and this reminds me, I'vegot a book here that is in my
bookshelf.
It's called Don't Give theEnemy a Seat at your Table.
And this was written by LouisGiglio and if you go online, he

(19:42):
actually has a sermon that hedoes with this, where he sits
down at a table and has food andit just blows your mind as you
visually go through that sermonand watch that scripture play
out in real time.
It really helps you get anunderstanding of how the table
that we have whether if it's ourspiritual life or if it's our
marriage, whatever it is all ofthose tables have been put out

(20:06):
there and have been set up byGod.
He is inviting us to His tableto commune with him in our
relationships, in our life, inthe different things that we do.
And here on the back of hisbook it says you don't have to
let negative thoughts controlyour life.
You don't have to allow theenemy to influence your thinking

(20:27):
.
You have power through JesusChrist to take control of your
thoughts and emotions.
Jesus invites you to a tablethat he has prepared for you, a
table where the enemy is notinvited.
And I think that if we flipthis around to our marriages,
you know Jesus has invited us tothat table, just as I have

(20:48):
invited you to the table of ourmarriage and you have invited me
to your table of marriage.
And again, that marriage tablebetween me and you has two
chairs Yep, it's for me and you.
Yeah, and never was Satan, neversupposed to be invited into
that.
I guess you could say threechairs, because God's there with
us as well, but there is nochair for Satan, there is no

(21:11):
chair for him to be a part ofthat.
And if you look at the Gardenof Eden, whenever Eve, when she
was tempted to take that fruitand to eat of that fruit the
word for devil that's used therein Genesis, in the Greek
language is the word diabolos,which means slanderer, and what

(21:35):
happens is is whenever we allowSatan to come in and we have
those moments of anger and westorm off in fury and sleep on
the couch at night or whatever,that opens the door for the
devil to slander our spouses tous.
What are you thinking?
The whole time that you'relaying on the couch downstairs
mad at me?
What are you thinking about me?

Well, not so great stuff.
No, I'm thinking about all thethings you did and that weren't
right I never once gave myself athought of what.
I did.
It's all about you and what youdid and how you need to change
and you need to acceptresponsibility, and just how

(22:16):
angry I was with you.

So, basically, you're slandering me as your
husband and when I'm the one onthe couch, I'm sitting there
thinking all the ways thatyou're a horrible wife.
You know why you don'tunderstand me and all this, it's
all.
Everything's focused towardsyou, just like you said, I'm not
even thinking about myself inthat equation, and what's crazy
about that is the whole timewe're laying there, we're

(22:38):
thinking that, we're thinkingthose thoughts, but it's really
Satan in there in stealth mode.
He's the one that keeps feedingall this stuff and we're taking
it hook, line and sinker.
You know, we're just sittingthere allowing it to go on, and
whenever that happens, then wecan literally sit there and
think ourselves into divorceright on the couch, because

(22:59):
we're so mad, you know, andthat's not a healthy place to be
at all.
And the reason that this isgoing on is because the devil
and all his little demons thatrun around, they want our
marriages to fall apart.
They want our marriages to fail.
And ever since the Garden ofEden, whenever he was able to
get in to that relationship thatAdam and Eve had and destroy

(23:23):
what they had between them andGod, where it just changed the
whole process of the future foreverybody, they've been in an
all-out campaign and an all-outwar ever since then to try to
destroy every other marriage.
That they can do and this isone way that they can do that is
to try to get that anger inthere, because if they can cause

(23:43):
division between me and you,then they can, in essence,
eventually break up the familyunit.
Yeah, so in our marriage, whenwe finally came to the point
that we asked the Holy Spirit tocome in and to change both of
us and to change us and to helpus understand each other better
through the lens of Christ andto fix the marriage that we had,

(24:06):
that booted Satan out.
At that point, yeah, and westarted working on making sure
that we didn't let him back inAbsolutely.
In their book, the UnexpectedLegacy of Divorce, authors
Judith Wallerstein and SandraBlakeslee document their
sobering findings concerningchildren of divorce, and here's
an excerpt of their book.
It says because children ofdivorce don't know how to
negotiate conflict, well, manyreach out for the worst

(24:29):
solutions when trouble strikes.
For example, some will sit ontheir feelings, not mentioning
complaints or differences, untiltheir suppressed anger blows
sky high.
Others burst into tears and areimmobilized to retreat into
themselves or the next room andclose the door.
But the most common tendency isto run away at the first
serious disagreement and wrestlewith unconscious demons.

(24:50):
This is because, from theperspective of a child of
divorce, any argument can be thefirst step in an inevitable
chain of conflict that willdestroy the marriage.
So remember that not only are wemessing around with our
relationship between me and you,but if there's kids involved,
they've already seen onemarriage dissolve because anger,

(25:11):
because the spouses the dad andthe mom got so mad at each
other and couldn't fix it thatthey ended up getting a divorce
and split that whole family up.
And now the kids are being druginto a new whole family
scenario to get to know a wholenew parent.
And kids don't completelyunderstand everything in the
marital relationship.
So the first time they see momand mom and stepdad or dad and

(25:34):
stepmom fighting there, theystart trying to process this.
And now they're thinking, ok,well, this is what broke up the
first marriage, a part of it isthis where this one's headed.
Am I going to be stuck nowagain having to move, being
uprooted and whatever?
So remember that as parents wehave a lot more responsibility
than just ourselves when there'skids involved as well.

(25:57):
So we need to figure out how tokeep Satan out the mix of all
of that and remember that we'renot a prisoner of our past and
we don't have to repeat thosemistakes that took place in our
families even.
And we can break that and weneed to.

(26:24):
So now we're going to talk aboutresolving conflict in marriage,
and we all know that when we'remarried to someone we've
already talked about how we'redifferent.
Women have different thingsthat they need, guys have
different things that they need,and so that's a perfect recipe
to have some conflict if we'renot careful.
But the first thing that weneed to do when we have conflict

(26:45):
is to confront it in a lovingand positive manner, and in
Proverbs 15.1, it says a softanswer turns away wrath, but
harsh words stir up anger.
So what will happen?
Many couples make the mistakeof stuffing their anger for
weeks and months at a time, andduring that time, the devil is
accessing their unresolved angerand injecting it with

(27:05):
slanderous thoughts about eachother.
Finally, something comes alongthat will trigger an argument
and the vicious words andthreats begin to fly, and this
is a very dangerous scenariothat ends many marriages.
So here again we see that theanger if we don't fix it, it can
create these conflicts andguess who's right in the middle

(27:27):
of that still.

Satan.

Satan.
He's still in there causingthat slander.
You know, you and I just talkedabout a while ago about how we
slander each other and I don'teven feel like we have to have
an extensive vocabulary.
I think Satan gives us thewords sometimes to throw at each
other, just like you said Ithink it was last week's episode

(27:52):
how you don't feel like youwere you sometimes.

Oh, I know.

I wasn't Because of the things that you said, and
so you feel like Satan was theinstigator behind a lot of what
you said, even oh yeah, did heplant those seeds?
Oh, I think so.

I have no doubt.
I mean, I think the enemy knowsexactly what he's doing.
And when it comes to those whenyou don't really realize what
you're saying and spouting, Ithink the enemy has a hold on
that and that's exactly where hewas at with me.

And sometimes those are the harshest words
that are so hard to fix, it's sohard to take those back and
that can cause a lot of damagefor some people that they
sometimes can't get over.
And then that's when yourrelationships deteriorate and
fall apart.
So just remember that softaffirming words begin successful

(28:50):
conflict resolution.
Harsh threatening words startfights that go absolutely
nowhere.
If your emotions are out ofcontrol, then we need to take a
break.
We need to go somewhere andcalm down for a minute, and this
is good parenting advice aswell, Something that I didn't
really follow very well when wewere raising our kids.

(29:10):
It's real easy, it seems like,no matter what scenario you're
in, if you become extremelyangry.
If you automatically try to fixthat problem when you're that
mad, that a lot of times you'regoing to cause more problems
than good.
Yeah, you do need to get awayfrom that.
Sometimes you have a moment tojust calm down, pray a little
bit and ask God for peace in thesituation, and then come back

(29:31):
to it once you feel like you'reboth in a spot where you can
actually talk about it.

I like this and I'm just going to read this
right quick.
It's talking about when.
I'll just read it.
The opposite of what isdescribed is a marriage where
anger is legal and both spousesare free to share.
When sharing begins, it doesn'tstart with screaming, threats
and cursing.
It starts with words like thisHoney, I'd like to talk to you

(30:01):
about something that isbothering me.
I want you to know before Ibegin that I love you and I'm so
glad we're married.
I know we will work throughthis and we are on the same team
, but I have something to sharewith you.
When you start with that, howwould that make you feel if I
would have actually started withsome of that?
Instead of just comingscreaming and saying some of the

(30:22):
things?
It actually it takes down oneyou know we're on the same team
and we both want to worktogether but it kind of takes
that anger away, you know of hey, let's work this out, you know.

Yeah, it definitely redirects the thought
process.
Yes, because when we're soangry at each other, we're
really looking at each other asan adversary at that point
You're somebody that I'mfighting with.
We forget that.
Yes, at that point You'resomebody that I'm fighting with.
We forget that.
Yes, you are my love.

(30:57):
You are my soulmate.
Now that stuff's in my mind.
When I'm red and the veins arepopping out of my head, smoke
coming out of my ears, that'sthe last thing I'm thinking is
how much I truly love you.
I'm just furious at what you didto me, and I think that when
you do start that way, that'sperfect, because it
automatically starts a defusingat that point and you come at

(31:17):
that conversation a completelydifferent way.

And it says soft and affirming words begin a
successful conflict resolution.
And so I mean, I feel like thatis very, very important that if
you are having some kind ofargument that, hey, let's start
this out positive and let's workthrough this.

Yeah.
So it's going to end badly ifyou don't approach it the
correct way, right, and so weneed to make sure that we do
that Absolutely.
The second thing to resolvingconflict is complain and don't
criticize, and we've talkedabout this a little bit before.
Yes, we have.
There's a huge differencebetween the two that most people
don't understand.
Complaining is helpful andconstructive, but criticism is

(31:59):
negative and destructive.
The difference betweencomplaining and criticizing is
the focus.
Complaining focuses on me andcriticizing focuses on the
spouse.
So when I am complaining, I saysomething like this Michelle,
you said something this morningthat bothered me and I would
like to talk about it.
I'm sure you didn't meananything by it, but I would just

(32:20):
like to tell you how I'mfeeling and talk it through.
So that's a complaint.
It doesn't attack you or judgeyou.
It just basically tells you howI'm feeling, and it's going to
give us the opportunity to clearthat air and try to get that
stuff out of the way.
Now, if I'm going to criticizeyou instead, I'm going to say
Michelle, this morning you saidsomething to me and it really

(32:40):
hurt me, and I know why you saidit.
You said it to pay me back forwhat I said to you yesterday
because that's just how you are.
You are so spiteful and mean tome all the time.
I resent how you treat me and Iam not going to take it anymore
.
Well, the focus of thosecomments aren't on me or how I'm
feeling.
That focus there is criticizingyou.

(33:03):
We also have to notice that incriticism, how it doesn't want
input, it wants confession andrepentance.
So when I criticize you, mynext thing is I'm just waiting
for you to say okay, I'm sorry,I did it wrong, I'll never do it
again.
I'm taking full responsibility.
That's, in all essence.
That's really what I'm askingfor when I criticize you.

(33:24):
But when there's just acomplaint, that's there.
That takes that out of theequation, yeah, because then
it's not necessarily that I'mwaiting on you to apologize to
me or whatever.
I think when we complain, itstarts off the process for both
of us to maybe take some of theblame and to work out the
differences between the two ofus and come to a peaceful

(33:46):
resolution, at the same timeshowing that we still love each
other enough to try to fix theproblem.
Yeah, and resolve it.
It's good, and so that'ssomething that I feel like you
and I have made major progressin.
So don't come at them with yourguns blazing and focusing on
their faults.
You need to come to them reallyin an attitude of, hey, what's

(34:10):
going on here?
Can we fix this and make sureit's better?
So, number three listen to yourspouse and believe them.
It's better.
So, number three listen to yourspouse and believe them.
So, again, when you have gone tobed on anger for a long period
of time, you're under theinfluence of toxic thoughts
regarding your spouse.
This almost always results inmistrust and deeply held beliefs
about your spouse that keep youfrom receiving their

(34:32):
communication at face value.
So, basically, what this issaying here is if Michelle, if
she goes to the couch a lotbecause she's mad at me and she
chooses to, we have thesearguments and fights or whatever
and she chooses to go to thecouch and does that repetitively

(34:53):
over a period of time, the morethat that happens, the madder
you're going to get at me.
Yeah, right, yeah, it's notgoing to get any better, it's
just going to make that getdeeper and deeper down inside of
you to where you know, like yousaid, you came to a point where
you finally hated me.

So much bitterness.

Because you let that go for so long.
So then what happened when Iwould try to come in and say
constructive things to fix stuff?
Did you believe a word I said?

Absolutely not.

So why do you think that was the case?

Because of what you said previously and it never
took.
I mean, honestly, if you wereto say something to me and I was
angry about it and then you'recoming back to criticize me or
try to change it, I'm not goingto believe anything you say
because of what you previouslysaid.
Yeah, and my heart is shut offto anything you're going to say

(35:44):
anyways.

Yeah, it kind of comes back to that saying that
we talked about many episodesago, that trust is lost in
buckets and regained in dropsYep, regained in drops.
And I think we have to rememberthat when that damage has been
done and those scars are thereand they're so deep, you stab
that knife in so deep and causeso much issue that it's going to

(36:06):
take some time.
It's not going to be just anovernight flip of the switch if
this has been something that'sbeen festering for a while and
so we have to understand that.
And that's not going to saythat sometimes the spouse is
still just going to lie to yourface.
I know it says to listen to yourspouse and believe them for
what they're telling you, but Ithink in most cases most spouses

(36:27):
have been around each otherlong enough.
They can usually tell whenone's lying to the other one and
I think that there's somediscernment there that can be
seen.
But if you're both actuallytrying to fix the issue and your
spouse is truly repentant andthey're truly trying to fix the
issues they caused or whatever,then you have to put some trust

(36:48):
into them and try to workthrough that, still probably
having some guards in place.
You don't want to open yourselfup for a bad situation to take
place within your own self, butyou still.
You're going to have to havesome trust in each other as
you're rebuilding this.

Aria (37:02):
Yeah.

And just similar to what you and I finally did In

(37:25):
1 Corinthians 13, 4-7,.
It says the spirit of ourmarriages should reflect the
words of that passage.
In some cases, it might be agood idea to write that
scripture text down and tape itto your mirror or your
refrigerator as a reminder,because true love acts with a
Christlike ethic that treatsothers with dignity.
So we need to make sure thatyou know, as we're talking these

(37:49):
things out, you're going tohave to have a little bit of a
moment there where you're goingto have to put some belief into
what the other spouse is sayingand work off of that.
Number four is forgive and letgo.
And you know, just likeMichelle and I, you and your
spouses are both imperfect andwill be making mistakes for the
rest of your lives.
You know you don't want to livecarelessly and do bad things on

(38:10):
purpose, but we are all humansand we all make mistakes, and
Jesus is good with it.
That's the way that we werecreated.
But he wants us to get better.
He doesn't force us to stophaving problems, or else he
patiently washes us in the waterof his word.
And, husbands, we're directedto emulate that sacrificial love

(38:31):
we have to be patient with ourspouse and forgive them over and
over and over, just like Jesusdoes for us.
There are many times in marriagewhen you're going to need to
forgive your spouse, even whenthere hasn't been a big fight or
confrontation.
But especially in those timeswhen you've had a spat, you must
put it in the past and goforward.
We all have issues.

(38:52):
We all need lots of mercy.
Our sin put Jesus on the crossand no one loves us more than
Him, and I think when it comesto this issue in marriages, we
really need to look at it likeJesus did there.
We're going to have to nail allthat stuff to a cross and we're
going to have to put it behindus and offer that full

(39:15):
forgiveness for the other spousethat they deserve if they're
asking for that forgiveness.
And, of course, as we talkedabout last week, you know both
of us, we both shared, you knowsome pretty bad things we did to
each other.
But, yeah, we chose to forgive.
Have I forgotten it?
No, you haven't forgotten whathappened either, and obviously

(39:37):
we're here using it as atestimony now to what God's done
in our life.
But the fact that we can usethis as a testimony, what does
that speak about?
Where we're at with thoseproblems that we had?

Yeah, definitely .
I mean we're past that, that isour past and God's using it as
a testimony.
I mean it may have taken—I meanGod's healed our hearts
completely.

Yeah, you know, we've got to remember that the
Holy Spirit is the Spirit oftruth.
We must remember that if whatwe are saying to our spouses is
true, the Holy Spirit willenforce it and we don't have to.
But if what we are saying isn'ttrue, the Holy Spirit's not
going to come in there and helpwith that.
We need to be open to thepossibility that we could be

(40:23):
wrong, and this is anotherreason that we must forgive and
keep our hearts tender towardeach other.
In marriage, both are equalsand can say anything to each
other, as long as it is donewith love and respect.
The fact that you know, you andI we had some harsh moments
between the two of us, because Iwasn't patient like Jesus
wanted me to be, and alsobecause I didn't trust the Lord

(40:44):
to change you.
The entire spirit of ourrelationship changed when I
began to lovingly share how Ifelt and trusted God in those
results.
And so, when it comes down to,I think, probably with marriage
problems, probably and you mighttell me if you agree with me on

(41:04):
this or not but I feel likeprobably the most powerful thing
that we ever did that actuallycaused our marriage to work was
that we forgave and we forgotabout things.
Because if you can't forgivefor stuff that you've done to
each other, how do you moveforward?
You know, we can sit there andrun all that stuff, rehash it

(41:27):
all we want to and keep it overeach other's heads and, you know
, use that to beat each other up.

Right, right.
And I think the most importantthing for me was I mean it was
that, but I really I mean it wasgod like coming to god and
accepting the fact that I hadmade a lot of mistakes and
letting him be my first love wasprobably my biggest thing for

(41:56):
me because of what I had did,was probably my biggest thing
for me because of what I had didand what I had done.
I think it had to be thatbecause we hadn't put God in our
marriage at all.
It was an afterthought.
So that was the first andforemost thing, because I feel
like you have to have that inorder to be able to forgive.

Yes, I totally agree with that.

So I mean it was really because I had to accept
responsibility of what I haddone.
And you know and you have tounderstand, when you do
something like that and you havean affair or something, there's
a lot that comes with that andyou know, god had to really work
on me and I mean it's been upuntil last year, I think I mean
on some other things that camealong with that, but for our

(42:47):
marriage it definitely to me itwas God.
And then the forgiveness,because you know I have forgave
you but I had to also forgivemyself.
I mean, if I didn't forgivemyself, I would have never been
able to work past it.

Yeah.

And same as you, I mean.

If you're constantly beating your own self
up, it's still hard to work onthe marriage and the
relationship that you have withyour spouse?
Yeah, because you're going toconstantly feel like you're not
good enough.
Right, you're going to feellike you deserve this or you
deserve that.
Yeah, going to constantly feellike you're not good enough.
You're going to feel like youdeserve this or you deserve that
, yeah, and you're going toconstantly go through that whole
cycle over and over and over.

And still you're not going to find that true
happiness Because even if youforgave me, it wouldn't have
been.
I mean, and I think that's thereason why it was so important
to bring God back in, you knowto it, because I had to forgive
myself.

Yeah, that's some good stuff.
So anybody out there, if youguys are having issues with the
anger, the conflicts, you mightbookmark this episode Because
there's a lot of truth here,just biblically, on how you can
resolve all of that and get pastthose anger moments.
Because, like we said at thebeginning of this episode, this

(43:53):
is probably one of the biggestthings that will tear a marriage
apart Is the anger and theconflict that you're going to
have and not being able toforgive and forget that.

And I think with anger too, it comes with that
pride.

Yep.

And so if you cannot get rid of that, that
pride is going to be there andyou cannot allow pride in the
marriage.

Right, yeah, pride comes before a fall, as the
Bible says, and that's very truein marriage as well, because
it's not just you by yourself inthe relationship, it's you and
a spouse, and so you have to beable to open up to that spouse,
as the law of purity says here,and allow God to work through
both of you.

(44:38):
The law of purity is theuniversal law of love and
marriage.
You know we must be careful andresponsible in our behavior,
but even with our best efforts,there's going to be problems
that we need to deal with.
So as we close today, whereveryou are in your journey, we
encourage you to get current andstay current with your issues.
Don't keep pushing that stuffoff until a year later.
You're so stinking mad youcan't stand it because you've

(45:01):
not brought nothing up in thatwhole year.
Keep that stuff current as ithappens.
Take care of it Right then andthere.
Don't wait.
It'll keep your heart andmarriage pure and, best and
foremost, you're going to beblessed by God.
God's going to bless yourmarriage if you make sure to
keep that stuff taken care of.
Well, I think that's going todo it for this week's episode.

(45:22):
Did you have anything else toadd to it?
I think we're good.
Next week we're going to becontinuing with the law of
purity and we're going to betalking about everyday intimacy
and we're going to be talkingabout the four lives of intimacy
.
It's going to be another greatepisode here in our series on
the four laws of love.
But if you're not subscribedyou may miss it.

(45:43):
So please subscribe to be sureyou don't miss that episode.
And that's going to end thisweek's episode.
I'm Daniel Moore and my wife,michelle has been sitting here
with me this week.

Bye guys.

I want to thank you guys for listening this.
Bye guys.
I want to thank you guys forlistening.
This show really wouldn't bepossible without you.
If you're a fan of the show,please leave a review on Apple
Podcasts.
If you'd like to help us out,just take a few seconds and give
us a five-star click and pleasesubscribe to us on your
favorite platform.
The links for those are in theshow notes.
Well, that's all for this week,and we pray that your marriage
is stronger and your walk withGod is closer after this episode

(46:15):
.
This is an extension ofConnecting the Gap Ministries.
We pray that you have a blessedweek.

Aria (46:21):
You've been listening to Connecting the Gap Podcast.
In this world, there are manydisconnects that cause chaos in
our lives.
This podcast is birthed fromthe desire to share hope and
restoration of the power of thegospel by being transparent and
open in our biblical walk withGod.
Each week, we take a fewmoments as we navigate God's
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(46:42):
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(47:03):
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8 Steps to Disarming Anger and Conflict - 221

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}8 Steps to Disarming Anger and Conflict - 221