On Dealing with Differences

“How do marriages grow?” The answer is “in many ways.” But, most importantly, couples learn to deal constructively with their differences. “How do marriages get in trouble?” The answer again is “in many ways.” More often than not such couples have denied their differences, become very judgmental about them, and not grown from them.

Let’s look at several couples. He is an extrovert and loves to get together with other couples. She is an introvert and loves quiet time, especially during her summers off from teaching. In another couple she comes from a large family with several older brothers and a tradition of rowdy family dinners. He is from a small family with quiet dinners and plenty of space for conversation. He wonders why she doesn’t help him get into dinner-table conversations when they visit her family. A third couple: he came from very humble beginnings in a family with a strong work ethic and a motto of “don’t complain, many people have worse situations.” She doesn’t see herself as a complainer but does find parenting two young children a handful and needs to talk about her day with him. A final couple with differences in their styles of communication. She is very organized and detail-oriented while he thinks and expresses himself in “broad strokes.” At times she feels like he is not taking her seriously while he believes she is preoccupied if not controlling. What do these four couples do with their differences?

Marriage is so much about give and take. This requires that we know what we need and want, can express this to our spouse, and can listen to him or her express the same to us. Easier said than done? When we deal with differences we are forced to look at what is important to us. Popular author Steven Covey in First things First notes that it is often the case that “urgent” overtakes “important” in our lives. Others would agree that the culture conspires to determine what is important. Self-awareness is not easy but is essential to begin to negotiate our differences. Have we listened to our hearts, minds, and even our bodies? Next, have we listened to our partner and do we understand what is important to him or her? “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” Can we allow for silence and space for these two sets of “important” to speak and listen to each other? Can we invite God into the conversation and listen to what is important from God’s perspective?

How do couples deal with differences? Typical styles include: a) conceding, deferring, accommodating to the other, often in the name of keeping the peace; b) compromising, which may mean that neither party gets what is important to them; c) dominating such that only one party prevails; or d) collaborating, which is implied in the above process of give and take, and includes asserting and listening, taking time, going back and forth, until we reach a sense of what is right. What helps this process? Two thoughts. Again, I think the body is much underutilized resource. Our bodies give us a “felt sense” of rightness when we take the time to listen to them. Try it. Secondly, how do our decisions look from a broader, long-term perspective, i.e, “what really matters in the long run, in the bigger picture?”

Our differences may well be God’s gift to expand our hearts and to be God’s presence in the world. “God said, ‘Let us make them in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves…” (Genesis 1:26). As we move from awareness to acceptance and even nurturing our differences we embrace the us-ness or we-ness of our divine creation. Embracing and learning from our differences would seem to be a divine imperative and central life task, beginning with our spousal differences, then extending to our role as parents with children who surely will stretch us, and continuing in a world that is in sore need of reconciling its many differences. As we learn to deal with differences in personality and temperament, communication and conflict management styles, expectations and preferences from our families of origin, and in our respective hopes and fears, then we grow and are more fully ourselves. As we embrace and not deny or judge our differences we manifest the spiritual “us-ness” described in the Genesis narrative.

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