i am a little frustrated with the view of conflict i am being presented with in my pre marriage counseling. i get the impression that any trouble my wife and i encounter will be “conflict”. i am not sure i agree with this view. in my world conflict is very different from trouble. i see trouble as an external event and conflict as an internal event.
consider driving a car through a storm. high winds, hard rain, slick roads… trouble. now consider driving the same car and seeing the check engine light come on. or the gas light… external vs internal. consider now if we extend the picture to our own bodies. being hot is dif. from having a fever.
obviously i see the connection between the external and the internal. but they are not the same thing. it is possible to have lots of trouble and very little conflict.
O)—
February 17, 2010 at 8:00 pm |
Cool to see you’re blogging. I’ll read.
I love how you distinguish between trouble and conflict. Knowing the difference is the best thing I can think of for unity in a marriage. I’ve known that but never really had a good way of articulating it.
One of my biggest frustrations with marriage counseling was the “you’re going to argue pretty often so get used to it and love each other anyway” advice. Terrible. It seems to me that you argue when you let trouble become conflict.
What do you think? How are you and Andrea handling that?