It was 2008 when my husband, Paul, and I went to Uganda for our first mission trip. It energized me in a way that I hadn’t experienced in years, loving everything about the rural village that served as our base of operations. As I walked the lush footpaths with the laughing children, I felt God’s presence in a profound way. I was so moved by the experience that as we gathered with the villagers on the last day of our trip, I publicly promised that we would return the following year – and every year thereafter.
Unfortunately, Paul’s experience differed vastly from mine. As a family physician, he had been asked to serve in a one-room roadside “clinic” with no other doctors, no electricity, no running water and no medical supplies other than what he had brought in his suitcase. What he did have in abundance was an endless number of patients – many of whom had walked for miles to seek help – with long lists of symptoms and serious medical problems. Paul would work late into the night using a flashlight and then get up the next day and do it again. He felt like he was confronting a forest fire with a squirt gun.
My husband likes infrastructure, supplies, order and predictability. I am an aging hippie who never met an adventure she didn’t like. Let’s just say that Paul didn’t appreciate that I committed us to returning to Uganda for the next several years. Indeed, he was pretty upset with me (and rightfully so).
When Paul and I got home and could finally review what had happened on the trip, it became clear that we had both a solvable problem and what felt like an unsolvable problem.
The solvable problem was straightforward because I had clearly violated a basic ground rule in our marriage by making such a major decision without talking it over with him first. I offered my profound apology and he forgave me. That part of the struggle was over.
The other problem was far more complex. Paul had spent two of the most miserable weeks of his life feeling ineffectual and frustrated. He had a less-than-zero desire to return to Uganda. We both had strong feelings about our positions. What on earth were we going to do? For 33 years, we had run our marriage on the conviction that there would always be a win-win solution to a disagreement if we worked hard enough to find it. But here we were in a situation where each of us felt equally passionate about our need to return, or not return, to Uganda.
The Reality of Unresolvable Marriage Conflicts
In my practice as a ily therapist, I have encountered many couples with disagreements, both trivial and profound, that they could not resolve. Examples of their unresolvable marriage conflicts include:
When Couples Have Unresolvable Marriage Conflicts
- He feels that their children should be home-schooled, but she embraces public education.
- She wants to spend every Thanksgiving with her extended family, but he finds their conversations loud and boring.
- If some unexpected money comes their way, he wants to spend it, while she wants to save it.
- She likes music in church played by a worship band, but he wants to sing from a hymnal, accompanied by a pipe organ.
Dr. John Gottman, a well-respected researcher on the dynamics of marriage, has estimated that nearly 70% of all marriage conflicts are what he calls “perpetual” and essentially unresolvable. Why is that? Because the two individuals who pledged to become one are actually different people with different temperaments, family backgrounds, life experiences, opinions, likes and dislikes. As a result, when you marry, you are choosing a particular set of perpetual disagreements with your spouse. If you had married someone else, you would have chosen a different set of perpetual disagreements. Unresolvable conflicts are inherent in all relationships, so if a husband and wife appear to agree on everything, it is likely that one has dominated the other to the point that he or she is afraid to https://brightwomen.net/es/mujer-arabe-saudita/ speak up (or has forgotten how).
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