FamilyLife Today®

Dave Willis: If you're approaching any disagreement like something one of you is going to win, one of you is going to lose, you've both lost. Because in marriage you're on the same team, you're in the same huddle. You're going to win together or lose together.

We had to really realize that. This isn't one of us winning, one of us losing. We need to find a way that both of us can win every time.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Every marriage, every family has something they bring in, and it's called conflict. Every relationship at some point has confrontations and conflict, right? That's why you're here. You're the experts on this. We've deemed you the experts. We chose you out of everybody in the world.

Dave Willis: You two are our experts. We just learn from you guys, and then we plagiarize what you say and we go out into the world and we try to say it in a slightly different way. And we do the same thing. That's pretty much what we do.

Dave Wilson: Dave and Ashley Willis are friends here and we're going to have a great conversation because every couple needs to know: what do we do when we're in this rut? Every couple has conflict; very few know how to resolve it.

Dave Willis: One of the first things that we learned, and we didn't learn until after we were married and we should have known this before, but you bring in a style, you bring in a pattern of how you do conflict into your marriage. What are yours?

Ashley Willis: I put Dave to the ringer out of the gate. What's so funny is Dave and I met in a communications class because we both were communications majors.

Ann Wilson: You guys have a lot of similarities.

Ashley Willis: We really do. We're basically the same person. No, we have a lot of differences too. We have a lot in common, but there are a lot of differences. But we met in communications class. Dave's a couple years ahead of me. We were naive in thinking, "Oh, well we have degrees in communication, we don't need to pay attention in our pre-marital class on communication."

God burst that bubble real fast because very soon into our marriage, I realized that our dynamic wasn't working. What I would do is play mind games with Dave. I was of the belief that if he loved me enough, he would figure out my cues and just know what I needed and wanted.

Ann Wilson: Look at Dave's face. He's like, "Wary."

Ashley Willis: It was horrible. I blame Hallmark for this because in all of the Hallmark movies, the girl falls in love with the sexy lumberjack from her hometown, and that guy always knows what she's thinking. It's like he just knows. Then girls watch the Hallmark movies and they're like, "Well, Chad from the Hallmark movie would know what I'm thinking."

I thought he'd be like Chad. Dave would be very sweet and coming to me. Let's give an example. He would be like, "Hey, the guys are getting together to watch the game on Thursday night. Are we doing anything? I just wanted to check in with you to see if that would be okay."

I would just look at him. I would give him this weird look, and I totally repent of this, but I would give you a weird look and I'd be like, "Do what you want to do."

Ann Wilson: It's the kiss of death.

Dave Willis: So I would. I would do what I wanted to do. I took it as an invitation. He said it! It wasn't an invitation; it was a test.

Ashley Willis: And he'd come home from the game and I'd be so mad. And he's so happy. He had so much fun. "Thanks, sweetie, for letting me go. That was great."

Ann Wilson: So Ashley, were you just cold?

Ashley Willis: Yes, I was totally cold. Then eventually, of course, because he's like, "What in the world is going on?" we'd end up in a little tiff and I would be like, "You went to the game!" And he's like, "You said do what you wanted to do. We didn't have anything." And I'm like, "But you didn't choose me."

It's basically what I was saying without actually asking for anything I actually needed and wanted. So we realized very quickly we need to handle this differently. I can't use Jedi mind tricks on him. I need to actually say what I need from you and actually use words and not just have him play this guessing game all the time.

Dave Wilson: Are you more of an avoider of conflict?

Ashley Willis: Oh yes. Oh my goodness, yes, to a fault. And really looking back, I was that way in my own family. Really the way my family often would handle conflict was the cold shoulder. It was the punishing. That was just how it was.

So I just thought, "Well, this is what you do. The more somebody figures it out, the more they love you." And it's just so silly.

Ann Wilson: You're doomed to fail.

Ashley Willis: Exactly.

Dave Wilson: Now what did you bring in?

Dave Willis: I married into this family and I'm just like, I don't know, because I came from a family where everything was very literal. If you said you're fine, it was all boys. There was no nuance.

Ann Wilson: Dave, this is my family.

Dave Wilson: We already said it. I said I was fine, I'm fine.

Dave Willis: I was so literal that she would say things like, "We need to mow the yard."

Dave Wilson: Yes, "we."

Dave Willis: It would confuse me because I would think, "How are we going to mow the yard? I mean, that's a one-man job." But I thought maybe she wants us to do it together. Maybe she wants us both to have one hand on the lawn mower and to have this bonding time.

So I would wait. I would just wait and the grass would get taller. She would say, "Why isn't the yard mowed?" I was like, "I thought we were going to do it." She said, "No, when I say we need to mow the yard, I mean you need to mow the yard." Just say it! Just tell me! That makes much more sense. But if you say we, I'm going to think you meant we.

Ann Wilson: And then Dave, are you okay with bringing up something if it needs to be talked about?

Dave Willis: Well, this is the problem. Early on, I would say both of us were avoiders. That's not a great recipe for dealing with stuff because both of us kind of got in this habit where we just would try to avoid stuff that needed to be addressed.

Neither one would take the lead. It would just come out in these passive-aggressive ways. Essentially we both had the same unhealthy communication style when it came to conflict resolution until it would just come to a head and then it was emotionally charged.

Over time we've gotten a lot better about just being clear, addressing stuff before it becomes a big issue. We've gotten better with time, but early on, we were just bad at it.

Ashley Willis: Something I would do also that was not being totally honest with you and trying to have you figure out things, I would tell Dave—he would be ready to leave to go to work in the morning and I would be like, "Have a great day, and by the way, we need to talk later." That's what I would leave him with.

Dave Wilson: Does that mean you're in trouble?

Dave Willis: He didn't know. You would ruin the day.

Ann Wilson: What did you mean by that?

Ashley Willis: Sometimes it would be good, sometimes it would be not so good. We didn't have cell phones to text and give a hint.

Dave Willis: What could that possibly mean? "We need to talk, we need to talk." And he would think about it all day, sweating. Sometimes it was nothing, and sometimes it was something, but I said just tell me! Give me a heads-up, give me time to process what it is going to be about.

Ashley Willis: Then we would get to the point where he'd finally come and he would look sweaty and worried. We'd sit down and talk, and then I would talk about something serious that had been really on my mind and I'd bring it to him. At the end of it, he would just look at me with this blank stare.

I would be like, "Do you have anything to say about that?" He'd be like, "I don't know." I'd be like, "Do you even care?" He's like, "Of course I care. I just need time to think about this." Then I would get really upset because I'm like, "Well, you don't even care!" Then he would walk away and I would walk away. It was just a mess.

What I realized, though, is that I'm more of a verbal processor and Dave is more of an internal processor. I just wasn't giving him the time. First of all, I'm giving him this terrible buildup and not a clue of what we actually need to talk about so he could come up with something to say and to really process it and pray about it.

But also when I would say something, I just didn't realize that he needed time. He's not me, right? Even just as a woman, I have more neurons for language and learning than a man does. It's a real thing. It's not intelligence, it's just a wiring. Most men need to take a minute to maybe go on a walk and think about it or go on a drive and think about it or just have some little inkling about what it's about.

Once I realized that, we found a language to really bring out the best in each other. Nowadays, it looks like us saying—I don't do the "we need to talk." I'll be like, "Sweetie, hey, XYZ happened. I really want to talk about that later. Can you be thinking about that because I want us to come to some solution or resolution, whatever it is."

He'd be like, "Yes, sounds good." We'd pick an actual time and we would talk about it at that time. If we couldn't do it at that time, we would make sure that we set another time so we don't leave each other hanging.

Dave Willis: She was helping me play to my strengths because I could process. Then StrengthsFinder stuff, strategy is one that I enjoy. If I have a problem and have adequate time to really think about strategic ways to meet that problem, then I feel like I can actually win here.

Instead of all at once being thrown something and having in real time to process it and the emotion of it and everything else, it's just helping your spouse win. If you're approaching any disagreement like something one of you is going to win and one of you is going to lose, you've both lost.

In marriage you're on the same team, you're in the same huddle. You're going to win together or lose together. We had to really realize that. This isn't one of us winning, one of us losing. We need to find a way that both of us can win every time. We want to help each other win. We want to help each other be at our best. When we started taking that approach, we started winning.

Ann Wilson: I like that because we went through that same thing where I'm a verbal processor. I'm sharing every single thing that's going on in my head. I look at Dave like, "So what do you think? What do you think about that? What do you feel?"

There's nothing. And I say the same thing, Ashley. "Do you feel anything?" He says, "I didn't know what I felt yet."

Dave Wilson: I hadn't been able to process.

Ann Wilson: To me that felt like, "Well then you're not even listening or you don't care," which isn't fair at all. I had no idea about the processing thing because the next day he'd come in and he has all kinds of thoughts, all kinds of ideas.

Dave Wilson: Usually took me a night. Me too. Not always, but usually it took me a while. I'd think and think and then I'd come back.

But she's a verbal processor, so anything she thinks is just out. And I'm also, I didn't know I brought it in, but I brought into our marriage a fear of conflict. I grew up in a home with two alcoholic parents. Dad had affairs. Fights were ugly and it ended in divorce.

Ann Wilson: And abusive.

Dave Wilson: Again, I never processed this as an eight-year-old, ten-year-old, or fifteen-year-old, but my belief was conflict's bad. You avoid it because it ends like that. So I didn't know I brought that in. I bring it in and she's like, "Let's talk about this and let's talk about that." I'm literally getting scared.

Dave Willis: PTSD from the trauma you lived through.

Dave Wilson: What do you mean talk? I'm literally walking out of rooms because that's what I do. She came from a family where they just got it out, sort of like your family, Dave. They talked about it. So it was a journey for me to realize conflict's not bad. How you handle it determines bad or good. I was just an avoider and I had to learn no, you got to sit in the seat, roll up your sleeves, and learn how to communicate.

Ann Wilson: This Valentine's Day, what if you skipped the roses and you dove into conversations meant to draw you closer, the ones you were secretly too scared to have?

Dave Wilson: Marriage After Dark is FamilyLife's newest podcast where a real married couple talks openly about healthy, God-honoring intimacy. Yes, the stuff you never ask your pastor or your friends.

Ann Wilson: For more, go to familylife.com/marriageafterdark because intimacy shouldn't stay in the dark.

Let's give couples some strategies or questions along the way. One of the questions would be, how do we process? How do we deal with our anger? What do we do? What are the options? You shut down, you want to talk about it immediately. What are some other things people do?

Dave Willis: I think there are ones that are just clearly unhealthy where you just go in attack mode, yelling, cursing at each other, just venting rage. That's always out of bounds. But then a lot of it's nuanced; it's personality-based.

Do you want to process it right then? Do you want to take some time, go for a walk, and think about it? Do you want to sleep on it? Do you want to have a specific time when you're going to address it? I think avoiding it altogether is always bad. But then there's some nuance about different ways that can work based on the personality of the two people involved.

Ashley Willis: I think there's even a place too where it's good to take a pause and really bring it to the Lord and say, "God, is this just a problem inside me that I need to just bring to you and deal between God and me? Or do I need to actually address this with my spouse?"

Sometimes it's more of an internal issue. I've really had to learn this because my avoidant conflict personality, which I do think is also rooted in fear of conflict and how it was handled growing up, led to every little thing feeling like I had to talk to Dave about it.

I was so scared that if we didn't, it was never going to be resolved. I remember there was one time along the way that you were like, "Sweetie, not everything is an issue between us. Some of this I feel like is insecurity in you."

Ann Wilson: Oh.

Dave Willis: I thought that was pretty nice.

Ashley Willis: However he said it, he wasn't trying to avoid whatever it was I was trying to address, but it made me take a pause. As he said that, I was like, "Oh my goodness, you're right. Some of this is just my own insecurity."

In working with people in the counseling space, they'll often ask me, "How do I know the difference?" I always tell them, and I've done this myself: take a week and journal about it. Journal about the thoughts that are swirling in your head and you will see a pattern of what you're dealing with.

You're going to see some things that are really more internal, that are just a you-and-God issue, and you'll see some things that are actually relational that you need to address with your spouse. But you don't really know until you take a pause and assess it and really ask the Lord to reveal it.

Ann Wilson: Ashley, I'm the same way because I would bring everything up. I must have been extremely exhausting. Our kids too, like, "Mom, just chill it."

But I think that going to God in prayer and asking him that is brilliant to do. I would say, "Lord, if this is something between me and you, then let me know that. Let's just us talk about it." But if it keeps coming up with Dave over and over, I'm going to surrender this to you.

I don't need to bring it up if we can just figure it out. But if this keeps coming back up with Dave, then give me wisdom to know when to talk about it and how to talk about it. He'll do that. Haven't you found that he does that over and over?

Ashley Willis: Yes, and I love how you said when, because timing is everything. This is something I learned the hard way because I'm a night owl and Dave is not. Dave's really a midday person. I didn't know it existed until we got married, but some people really peak at 3:00 PM.

Dave Willis: He's good in the morning, he's good at night. Midday, he has about a thirty-minute window around 3:00 PM where he is ready to change the world, but that's about it. He really is. He's so thriving.

Ashley Willis: My lowest capacity energy level of the day is midday. It's 4:00 o'clock. As a mom, at 4:00 o'clock we can barely make it. It's so true. God has a sense of humor. So I don't try to change her by saying, "Let's go mountain climbing at 3:00 PM."

And she's learned at 10:00 PM not to initiate a deep conversation because we're in two completely different places. She's in peak mental capacity and she's been grinding on this. She's ready.

Dave Willis: Early in the marriage, she would start in and I'm laying there in a coma, and she's wanting to solve these massive issues. I'm just like, "Sweetie, I love you, I cannot think right now." At first she'd be offended, like I didn't care.

Ann Wilson: How can you fall asleep? I'd even say, "God wants us to resolve this."

Dave Willis: I want to be fully rested for this. It's not that either of us is wrong. One's like, "This is so important we need to deal with it now." The other one's like, "I can't think straight, I want to be rested when I deal with this." Both those are legitimate.

Dave Wilson: Do you think it's okay to go to bed with an issue? Maybe mad, maybe angry, maybe just unresolved? Can you go to bed and talk about it tomorrow?

Dave Willis: The Bible does say don't let the sun go down on your anger. I don't see that so much as a commandment that every issue has to be resolved before you're allowed to go to sleep because we would never sleep.

What I think more that's doing is saying our anger is meant to have a very short shelf life. We're not meant to live in a state of anger.

Ashley Willis: You need to agree. You can go to bed, but you need to agree and actually write it down and say tomorrow at 11:00 AM, we're going to talk about this. We're going to have coffee and we're going to be mentally ready for that. We're going to prepare, say a prayer before, and we're going to be ready to talk about it.

Right now, we're going to go to sleep. I think that alone can bring peace to the person who really wanted to discuss it right then because they know it's not just going to get thrown under the rug. That's the fear, is that oh, it's just another thing we're adding to the list of things that never go resolved.

A lot of couples live this way. I've been really surprised in working with couples through counseling how many couples will go a week, a solid week without barely talking. It happens all the time.

Ann Wilson: I've seen the same thing. I just saw a couple the other day and you can tell that there's this simmering frustration and resentment. You can feel it. These guys have had ongoing unresolved issues.

I don't think a lot of people know what to do with it because there's so many that they haven't resolved. How would they even begin and where would they begin? What do you think?

Dave Willis: I kind of look at it, to borrow a Dave Ramsey metaphor from the finance world: debt snowball. Pay off the smallest debt and then work up to the next smallest debt and all that. I think that that same principle can apply for these unresolved issues.

When you look at financial debt that has gotten so big and you look at it all at once, it just seems overwhelming and you think, "What's the point?" With the issues you're facing in your marriage, look at the smallest ones first maybe and say, "Let's tackle this one and get a win under our belt."

Then let that snowball, and then let's tackle the next one and get that one under our belt and keep moving forward little by little, chipping away at this and celebrating the wins along the way. Knowing that some of these issues don't even have to do with each other—maybe trauma from our childhood, issues that are deeply rooted within us that took years for them to get where they are and it's going to probably take years for them to fully find healing. But we're going to keep moving in that direction and not beat ourselves up. We're going to say hey, we're taking steps up that mountain today and tomorrow we'll take some more steps and we're going to celebrate those wins little by little.

Dave Wilson: We don't have a lot of time left, but a big issue in conflict is a word we all know: forgiveness. Discuss that. Have you had to forgive? How do you forgive?

Couples are carrying bitterness, maybe for days, weeks, months, decades. At some point you've got to bring God in and say, "I've got to forgive her, I've got to forgive him." You've talked about even the porn issue before in your marriage. How does a couple get to a place where they can forgive one another?

Ashley Willis: One of my favorite quotes on forgiveness is from St. Augustine. Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. I look at unforgiveness the same way—holding on to these things because in some way I think we're convinced, and this is a lie from the enemy, that if we let it go, then we're letting them off the hook.

But we have to remember that God is a just God and we have natural consequences in place. We have to give it to the Lord and say, "God, you deal with my spouse and whatever it is that they did. I am hurt, but I'm going to let this go in the sense of knowing that you're dealing with them personally and it's not my job to have to hold this over their head."

In fact, it's not a burden I'm even meant to bear, right? Because we can't walk freely and we can't even love freely in the way that our spouse really needs us to in order for them to get the healing they need and to make amends.

As a culture we misunderstand that forgiveness and trust are two different things. A lot of times we don't fully forgive because we can't trust yet. Forgiveness is only given because God first forgave us, but trust has to be earned. We don't just willy-nilly give trust; it has to be earned over time with consistency where our words and actions are consistent over time. Dave did that with the porn issue that we've talked about on here before.

Even in smaller things, like being willing to say, "Yeah, you know, that didn't go right and that hurt me, what you said hurt me, but I'm going to give this to God and I just want us to do better." When we show each other that we believe we can do better, you can rebuild that trust slowly over time.

But it's just important that we try to seek forgiveness and we try to apologize quickly and then accept that forgiveness because it's important that we don't allow things like that to come between us. I do think couples live for decades like this, almost kind of holding it over each other's head and keeping tabs and it's just not healthy and it creates that undercurrent of resentment you talked about, Ann.

Ann Wilson: Yes, and I think that as people get older, they just don't really care to be around each other or like each other because we all drift toward isolation, but we can all move back and it's never too late to do that. This has been rich. We should just do this together every time.

Dave Willis: We love you guys. Thanks, I think this has been really helpful. Thanks, you guys.

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