I am much better at saying “no” now—as well as trusting my convictions and beliefs. And ironically that has made it easier for me to trust that my husband is trustworthy, even though he didn’t necessarily change one way or the other on this particular issue. I just realized that it was really my problem of not trusting him, when I should have taken him at his word.
3. I needed to learn to express my concerns apart from the “heat of the moment.”
This has been a game-changer in our marriage. Whenever my husband or I try to deal with a perceived problem in the “heat of the moment,” things go sideways fast. If I had waited until much later in the day, when my husband wasn’t tempted to feel “blindsided” by my emerging worries in a public venue, I think it would have gone over much better. Especially, if I had owned my feelings instead of putting them on him like I did.
4. I needed to learn to ask good questions at that later time of reflection with my husband.
In addition to communicating my concerns and owning my feelings, I could have easily solved the mystery by asking him good, open-ended questions about his feelings regarding the Today Show activity. Instead, I played “counselor” to the dysfunction I
perceived in him—slapping him with the diagnosis of “his” problem as I saw it. No one wants to be in that counselor’s hot seat!
Solomon with all the mistakes he made in marriage still knew better than I did on this one,
“The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out” (Proverbs 20:5 NIV).
Point taken, King Solomon!
The Argument with my Husband Autopsy
Now, I’m still a work-in-progress on all of these fronts, but these principles are becoming more and more integrated into my life and mindset since that fateful day. And I attribute that to learning to do an “Argument Autopsy” after every conflict. In fact, as a counselor and life-coach, I try to teach my clients to do this with the conflicts they have in life and marriage because of all that it has taught me. There is just such a wealth of information to be found after an argument, not necessarily to understand our mates and loved ones better, but to understand ourselves better.
My hope is that you will take the time after your next conflict to do an “Argument Autopsy” like I did and continue to do whenever conflicts arise in my marriage. That means praying and asking for God to reveal what you were thinking or doing wrong before or, better yet, instead of examining what your mate did wrong. Give them the opportunity to figure that out with God, if they are willing. And if your spouse is not, then a big way you can move forward is to commit to pray for your mate—leaving them in God’s capable hands. Believe me, God is so much better at revealing what we—and this includes our spouses—need to see and acknowledge than we are on any given day!
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This article originally appeared at To Love, Honor, & Vacuum.
