By Ruth Purple

Marital conflict is an unavoidable element of any marriage. A marital union that has not been afflicted by discord is like a teabag that has not been dipped in hot water—you really don’t know how strong a tea it would make to make. While conflict is often seen negatively, not all conflicts are detrimental.

In the work environment, for example, clashes in opinions allow two people to see things from the other’s point of view, resulting in a fresh perspective. This leads to a dialogue that provides a venue for brainstorming which, in turn, could lead to resolution of the disagreement. Change can take place, and with it, growth.

Similarly, marital discord is essential to keep the marriage from stagnating. The manner in which a couple handles dissension spells the difference between a shaky marriage and a sturdy one. What are some constructive ways to approach marital conflict? First, recognize that your spouse is a unique individual with a different set of values, needs, styles, perceptions, and goals.

When some of these are not met, dissatisfaction sets in; dissatisfaction, when not addressed, is a breeding ground for quarrelsome thoughts. Whenever a conflict arises, perceive it as your partner’s way of communicating his or her discontent. Strive to see beyond the tantrum and really listen to what is being said.

By doing this, you gain an understanding of the situation and avert irreparable damage caused by fighting fire with fire. Second, let the steam out. While mulling it over can be helpful in organizing your thoughts and expressing them better, letting conflict simmer for too long is just asking for trouble.

A pot left on the stove, even on the lowest of fire, will eventually boil over and the resulting spillage may burn seriously. A helpful strategy is to set an agreed moment to sit down together and tackle the problem. On the other hand, take care not to let every single differences in opinion escalate into discord—that would just be a waste of precious time and effort.

Third, do not bury it. Most women—ok, some men too—take the silent treatment into new depths. They loathe confrontation and would rather wallow in their resentment preferably in the sanctuary of the marital bed. Asking them what the matter is will only be met with a blistering “nothing”, or worse, dagger looks.

It would be best for the reasonable spouse to let a ‘tomb-er’ lie in the grave for a while; any effort to draw her out will prove futile if she is not ready to be resurrected. After a while, try coaxing her out with little acts of kindness—a cup of tea usually does wonders.

Fourth, learn the art of compromise. Giving up the prerogative to be always right is better if it means harmony between spouses. When you take time to really listen to your spouse, you might be astonished to find that his point of view is just as valid as your own.

Seeing things from a different angle can foster new ideas and makes you more receptive to various ways of resolving the issue at hand. So, now and again, try getting off the moral high horse—you may just like the view from the ground. Last, resist the temptation to be a chronicler.

It is so easy to resort to mucking around with the muddy past. Nit-picking on your spouse’s previous shortcomings will only complicate matters and postpone resolution of the current marital conflict. Stick to the problem at hand, seek to resolve it, and once resolved, put it in the bin—reduce but don’t recycle.

As we can see, conflicts can do good for a marriage. Handled right, it can cultivate honesty and understanding between spouses which deepen the relationship. So, the next time you feel like boiling over, boil the kettle instead and see how strong a tea your marriage makes.

Ruth Purple is a Relationship Expert who has been successfully coaching individuals and couples in their relationships. You can get more info from Ruth at http://www.relazine.com

Even though resolving issues can be hard, it is better than trashing a relationship, job or friendship. Here are ten tips to help you work things out.

1. When you’re having a difficult discussion, put your angry emotions aside. You can’t be logical when you’re mad. If you can’t contain your ire, it may be best to put talking on hold until after you calm down.

2. It’s not about who’s right or wrong. If you try to blame your partner or make him or her wrong, you won’t find an answer. You both have to take responsibility for getting your relationship back on a positive track.

3. Look for the high road and discuss what’s best for both of you. Don’t settle for anything less than equality and the knowledge that you are doing the right thing for yourself and your partner.

4. Be humble and don’t rub your partner’s nose in a misstep. If you gently share you feelings, whichever of you is the offending party will learn from his or her mistake much easier.

5. Agree to disagree (without being disagreeable). But don’t settle for less than a complete acceptance of each other’s point of view. If you walk away disappointed, you have not resolved your issue. For a relationship to work, you both have to feel like you have your partner’s support.

6. Always have difficult conversations in private. If you have kids, you don’t want them to pick up the negativity; it can make them feel insecure. Remember that you can be heard behind closed doors, so keep the volume low and the vibe as calm as possible.

7. Before making a decision about how to handle a problem, make sure you consider all of your options. This requires some brainstorming and working together to create a positive solution. If done correctly, this process alone can heal the difficulty.

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By Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S.

Boundaries are essential to healthy relationships and, really, a healthy life. Setting and sustaining boundaries is a skill. Unfortunately, it’s a skill that many of us don’t learn, according to psychologist and coach Dana Gionta, Ph.D. We might pick up pointers here and there from experience or through watching others. But for many of us, boundary-building is a relatively new concept and a challenging one.

Having healthy boundaries means “knowing and understanding what your limits are,” Dr. Gionta said.

Below, she offers insight into building better boundaries and maintaining them.

1. Name your limits.

You can’t set good boundaries if you’re unsure of where you stand. So identify your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual limits, Gionta said. Consider what you can tolerate and accept and what makes you feel uncomfortable or stressed. “Those feelings help us identify what our limits are.”

2. Tune into your feelings.

Gionta has observed two key feelings in others that are red flags or cues that we’re letting go of our boundaries: discomfort and resentment. She suggested thinking of these feelings on a continuum from one to 10. Six to 10 is in the higher zone, she said.

If you’re at the higher end of this continuum, during an interaction or in a situation, Gionta suggested asking yourself, what is causing that? What is it about this interaction, or the person’s expectation that is bothering me?

Resentment usually “comes from being taken advantage of or not appreciated.” It’s often a sign that we’re pushing ourselves either beyond our own limits because we feel guilty (and want to be a good daughter or wife, for instance), or someone else is imposing their expectations, views or values on us, she said.

“When someone acts in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, that’s a cue to us they may be violating or crossing a boundary,” Gionta said.

3. Be direct.

With some people, maintaining healthy boundaries doesn’t require a direct and clear-cut dialogue. Usually, this is the case if people are similar in their communication styles, views, personalities and general approach to life, Gionta said. They’ll “approach each other similarly.”

With others, such as those who have a different personality or cultural background, you’ll need to be more direct about your boundaries. Consider the following example: “one person feels [that] challenging someone’s opinions is a healthy way of communicating,” but to another person this feels disrespectful and tense.

There are other times you might need to be direct. For instance, in a romantic relationship, time can become a boundary issue, Gionta said. Partners might need to talk about how much time they need to maintain their sense of self and how much time to spend together.

4. Give yourself permission.

Fear, guilt and self-doubt are big potential pitfalls, Gionta said. We might fear the other person’s response if we set and enforce our boundaries. We might feel guilty by speaking up or saying no to a family member. Many believe that they should be able to cope with a situation or say yes because they’re a good daughter or son, even though they “feel drained or taken advantage of.” We might wonder if we even deserve to have boundaries in the first place.

Boundaries aren’t just a sign of a healthy relationship; they’re a sign of self-respect. So give yourself the permission to set boundaries and work to preserve them.

5. Practice self-awareness.

Again, boundaries are all about honing in on your feelings and honoring them. If you notice yourself slipping and not sustaining your boundaries, Gionta suggested asking yourself: What’s changed? Consider “What I am doing or [what is] the other person doing?” or “What is the situation eliciting that’s making me resentful or stressed?” Then, mull over your options: “What am I going to do about the situation? What do I have control over?”

6. Consider your past and present.

How you were raised along with your role in your family can become additional obstacles in setting and preserving boundaries. If you held the role of caretaker, you learned to focus on others, letting yourself be drained emotionally or physically, Gionta said. Ignoring your own needs might have become the norm for you.

Also, think about the people you surround yourself with, she said. “Are the relationships reciprocal?” Is there a healthy give and take?

Beyond relationships, your environment might be unhealthy, too. For instance, if your workday is eight hours a day, but your co-workers stay at least 10 to 11, “there’s an implicit expectation to go above and beyond” at work, Gionta said. It can be challenging being the only one or one of a few trying to maintain healthy boundaries, she said. Again, this is where tuning into your feelings and needs and honoring them becomes critical.

7. Make self-care a priority.

Gionta helps her clients make self-care a priority, which also involves giving yourself permission to put yourself first. When we do this, “our need and motivation to set boundaries become stronger,” she said. Self-care also means recognizing the importance of your feelings and honoring them. These feelings serve as “important cues about our wellbeing and about what makes us happy and unhappy.”

Putting yourself first also gives you the “energy, peace of mind and positive outlook to be more present with others and be there” for them.” And “When we’re in a better place, we can be a better wife, mother, husband, co-worker or friend.”

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by Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D.

No matter who you marry, there’s one thing you can count on. Unless you’re able to create an opposite-sex clone of yourself, then walk down the aisle with it (and the technology doesn’t exist yet!), the person you wed will bring with them a reality that at times will feel alien—even unacceptable—to you. Inevitably, your reaction will include disappointment, frustration, and an unsettling anxiety. In some instances, you’ll experience not only disenchantment with them but downright betrayal.

However unconsciously, in courtship you tend to hide, minimize, or ignore your differences. After all, the whole process of falling in love embodies the myth of blissful compatibility: the illusion that your dreams of a relationship where your deepest needs for empathy, understanding, validation, and support are finally to be fulfilled. And also that your (idealized) partner is going to view things the same way you do, that they’ll gladly commit themselves not only to you but to your unique reality.

But (as, sadly, many of us have already learned) few things in life are more likely to deceive than courtship. For starters, when you’re in love you’re somehow “gifted” with the ability to intuit just how to present yourself to maximize your attractiveness to the beloved. Additionally, in your desire to see the other as “the one,” you blithely disregard various hints that substantial differences do exist between the two of you. Marriage’s rude-awakening stage relates mostly to the growing realization that your significant other really is other than you.

Therefore, the central (eternal?) challenge in committed relationships is to learn how to appreciate, respect, and even embrace the other’s reality as being just as legitimate, justified, and sincerely held as your own. If despite your dissimilarities you’re to live together harmoniously, it’s imperative that you don’t sit in judgment on them when they express a perspective that clearly diverges from yours.

The main thing to grasp here—and this takes a great deal more effort (and evolution) than most people realize—is that your viewpoints toward people and situations always feel valid to you . . . as do theirs to them. Unless they’ve become mentally and emotionally unhinged, their perspective logically connects to the sum total of their personal learning. An educational history involving both what they were taught in growing up—informally through family and friends, and formally through schooling—and also the interpretations their nature and temperament predisposed them to make about all this “life instruction.” In short, they came by their subjective reality exactly the same way you did. So, of course they’d experience it as every bit as authentic, or valid, as you do yours.

Consequently, trying to talk them, or argue them, out of this reality (for it may well feel threatening to your own) is not only futile but guaranteed to generate greater distance between the two of you. Which is to say a distance incompatible with the romance and intimacy both of you originally established during courtship—and precisely through tacitly agreeing not to let your dissimilarities stand in the way of becoming united (i.e., one) with each other.

The ultimate reality of marriage is that it involves two realities. To the extent that both you and your mate can appreciate this, you can begin to repair whatever damage may have been done to your relational intimacy.

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By Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D

It’s a problem that is probably as old as time. Adult children don’t always choose the mate their parents want for them. Shakespeare immortalized it in Romeo and Juliet. A central theme in the Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof, and the current TV drama, Downton Abbey, is the struggle of the parent generation to accept their adult kids’ choices. For all I know, a Neanderthal woman had a fight with her dad about her choice of her Cro-Magnon guy. (“But Daddy: He’s real smart and he’s so tall!”) But however timeless and universal the theme may be, when it comes home, it’s painful. Here are only a few examples from our “Ask the Therapist” service:

“I’m caught between my mother and my wife,” says a 25-year-old man in Boston. –“ My Chinese mother expects my wife to obey her and wait on her when she visits, just as she did for her mother-in-law. My American wife works all day and doesn’t see why my mother can’t start dinner or help out when she visits. My mother constantly complains. My wife cries. What do I do?”

A young man in Florida writes: “My wife is Latina and I’m white. My father goes on and on about illegal immigration whenever we visit. My mother can’t shut him up. My wife tries to smile through it. We fight when we get home because she says I should stop him but I know nothing I can say is going to change him. Help!”

“My boyfriend and I want to marry but we’re from different ethnic groups and we know our parents will never agree. We’ve been secretly seeing each other for 4 years now.” –- from a young woman in Serbia.

Like the writers of these letters, you’re in love. Like them, you want your parents to love and admire the person you’ve chosen. Instead, they can’t see past their own traditions, values, or prejudices. They don’t see your sweetheart or spouse for the wonderful person he or she is. All they see is something Wrong – with a capital W. You feel caught between them. You love and, yes, respect your parents but you also love and admire your partner.

Bridging the divide is important. If you and the person you love aren’t clear about your commitment and the compromises you are willing to make to be together, the constant disapproval, whether stated or seething under the surface, can undermine your relationship. The child of the disapproving parents is caught in a terrible bind. Listening to and responding to either side makes the other feel abandoned, unloved or disrespected. The partner who is the focus of dislike may feel constantly under pressure to prove her or himself to be worthy. If unrewarded, the efforts can soon turn to resentment and anger that spills into the relationship.

Fortunately, there are less drastic solutions than the romantic death scene in Romeo and Juliet. Like Tevye in Fiddler or Robert in Downton Abbey, there are parents who eventually accept their adult children’s choices and even give their blessing. But it takes work and willingness. It doesn’t happen by magic or by argument.

Don’ts and Dos for closing the gap:

1.  Don’t meet criticism with criticism.

Your parents’ values, traditions, and feelings have helped make you who you are. They have been the guiding light for perhaps generations and have been central to your family’s identity. Putting down your family history isn’t honest or helpful.

2.  Do be compassionate.

The older generation clings to their attitudes and opinions because it helps them feel safe in a changing world. Their intentions are probably good. Find ways to reassure your family of origin that you appreciate and honor your past while you are also becoming part of the global community that includes people from other walks of life.

3.  Don’t meet parental disapproval with defensiveness and argument.

Defensiveness implies that there is something to defend. Arguing implies you can be argued out of it.

4.  Do respond to their concerns with respect and clarity. Acknowledge that a cross-cultural marriage is going to be difficult. Express your sadness that they feel the way they do. Affirm your love for them and your general respect for their opinions but be clear that you have made your decision. Quiet certainly is far more effective than angry words.

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