So I’m sitting here at SFO right now, trying to write my new blog entry, but I can’t concentrate on it because there’s a couple sitting across from me fighting like cats and dogs. They are frustrated as all get out! Their hands are flailing, veins are protruding from their necks, and their voices are raised. In fact, I’m sitting about 20 feet away from them and I can clearly hear their conversation.
And I’m frustrated too, but not because they are disturbing me. I’m frustrated because I’m itching to go over there and sit down with them. I so wish they were members of my church . . . If only they would give me the chance to sit down with them and share a few things with them, I think their experience of each other would shift. What do you think? Shall I go interrupt them and walk them through their conflict? If I did, what would I say?
Well, the first thing I’d do is help them reduce the anxiety level of the conversation. Right now they are both so heated that they are physiologically incapable of hearing and understanding one another. If you could look inside their brains right now, you’d see a virtually non-functional prefrontal cortex and a sizzling hot limbic system. What does this mean? Their mental capacity for empathy and understanding has been vanquished in a sea of toxic emotion. This conversation is going nowhere!
Uh oh. He just looked at her and said, “Will you shut up!?!” Not a good move! Man, I really want to go sit with them now!
When an argument gets that heated, both parties begin listening to refute, rather than listening to understand. Right now this man is not interested in understanding the woman sitting in front of him, and neither is she interested in understanding him. Frustration and anger have created an internal precondition of dissent; before she says a word, he’s already in disagreement with it, and vice versa.
So my first step would be to diffuse the anxiety level between them. If they were my church members, I’d simply stop the conversation and ask if I could take the man for a walk. We’d walk for ten minutes or so without saying a word (to give him time to cool down), and then I’d begin to address his heart.
I’d tell him that I know how he feels. My wife and I have had many very similar interactions over the years, and we have had to struggle to learn to live together as man and wife. I’d tell him that I understand the frustration of feeling like no matter what you say, your spouse simply will not hear you. But then I’d tell him what I’ve had to learn (more poignantly this year than in any previous year): my marriage has no chance of getting any better as long as I’m fighting for my needs to be met. My role as a husband is to lay down my life for my wife, and that means that I put her needs before mine every day, without complaint or bitterness.
And I’d tell him to fight the feeling that this is unfair, and to fight the fear that his needs will never be met, or that he will never be heard. That is the lie that keeps us fighting when we should be listening, and keeps us wrestling when we should be resting.
And I’d tell him to trust that his wife is not evil; her desire is not to drain him and leave him with nothing. “She wants to give you her love,” I’d say. “She wants to give you her all. But she needs you to take the first step. Lay down your life. Listen to your wife, and give her your understanding. And then just embrace her and take responsibility for what she is feeling. You cannot lose if you take this approach!”
We like to think of marriage in egalitarian terms; marriage is 50/50. But that is not God’s order. God commands husbands to lay down their lives for their wives the way Christ laid down his life for his church. But the sad reality is that in most marriages it is the wife who lays down her life for her husband. I would tell this man that this must not be the case in his marriage.
After talking him through these things, I would come back and sit down with him and his wife, and begin walking them through it. Of course, so much would need to go into that talk. I’d teach them about love languages (Gary Chapman), and styles of conflict resolution (John Gottman), and how to maintain a 5-1 ratio of positive to negative interactions (Gottman), and I’d teach them about the dynamics of pain and pleasure, good and evil, and how to navigate through all of this effectively. And I’d teach them how to negotiate timeouts and how to E-listen and E-share (Edward Santana-Grace). We’d have a wonderful talk!
But, alas . . . they have finished their fight. No resolution was reached; they just got up and walked away in silence. I wasn’t able to help them after all. But perhaps God simply wanted to help me? Perhaps God simply wants me to take to heart the things that I would have shared with them as a means of provoking a renewed commitment in me to love my wife the way Christ calls me to love her.
Thank you, Lord, for the vivid reminder!
