Marriage

Fighting Fair - continued...
This material appears courtesy of Covenant Keepers

You are unfair when you personally attack your spouse.
Personal attacks upon your spouse with harsh words, innuendoes, exaggeration, or blame are incredibly destructive to your entire relationship. The chief problem with such attacks is that they fail to resolve anything with reference to the conflict itself. In fact, they usually only intensify your differences. Paul warned, "Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption" (Eph. 4:29-30). Corrupt communication is not only swearing or foul language, but any words that tear someone down instead of build someone up.

Saying such things as, "You are such a slob. I hate you," "You are so pigheaded," or "If you don’t like it, why don’t you divorce me?" only serves to grieve the Holy Spirit of God and corrupt and destroy what’s left of your relationship. You need to stop this kind of language today while there is still time to repair your relationship. The worst thing about attacking your partner is the fact that you never get around to attacking the problem. Failing here only assures you that this conflict will come up again very soon.

How can you keep yourself from getting into the attack mode? One of the simplest ways is to use wisdom in your choice of words. When communicating with your spouse you might say, "John, I am very frustrated with these clothes on the floor. Can we talk this over?" Or, "Honey when I come home and have to step over toys and shoes just to get to the kitchen, it sets me off before I can even say hello. Can we talk about this?"

In addition, controlling your anger will greatly help you to refrain from personally attacking your spouse. Anger always begins to boil inside your heart when you hold on to an offense day after day without resolving it. Resolving issues quickly will keep you from those volcanic eruptions where you spew out the resentments from several previous conflicts. You must learn how to "stop contention before a quarrel starts" (Prov. 17:14).

Controlling your anger can also be accomplished by simply asking God to fill you with His Holy Spirit. It’s not enough to simply want to control your anger, you need a power beyond yourself to help you do it. Paul said if you would "walk in the Spirit" you would not fulfill the desires of the flesh (Gal. 5:16).

It all comes down to a matter of choice when you are dealing with the issues of conflict. Do you want to resolve the issues or allow them to continue to fester? Do you want to discuss the problems in a controlled way or explode and resolve nothing? Do you want to do it God’s way or try and handle it your way? It’s your choice.

• How do we define what is fair?
  
• You are unfair when you are dishonest
  
• You are unfair when you hold on to things from the past
  
• You are unfair when you fail to do what you require of your mate
  
• You are unfair when you fail to respond equally

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