CHAPTER 13
COMMUNICATION AND MANAGING CONFLICT
IN MARRIAGES AND FAMILIES
I. Family Cohesion
A. Family cohesion is defined as the emotional bonding between members.
B. It is the existence of positive feelings that is the most significant determinant of marital and family happiness.
C. Family strengths contribute to family cohesion. (Stinnett)
1. Members often communicate appreciation for one another.
2. Members arrange personal schedules so that they can do things together.
3. Members have a high degree of commitment to promoting one another's happiness and welfare and to the family
group as a whole.
4. Members have a spiritual orientation, having a sense of some power and purpose greater than themselves.
5. Members are able to deal positively with crises.
6. Members demonstrate positive communication patterns, taking time to talk with and listen to each
other, conveying respect and interest.
D. Let Your Partner Know You’re Listening
1. Really listening is basic to an emotionally bonded relationship
2. Thinking about what listening does may help a person listen as well as talk.
3. What About “Active Listening”?
a. Over the past several decades, psychologists and marriage counselors have taught and encouraged the
“active listening” communication model.
b. Active listening involves paying close attention to what the other person is saying, coupled with giving
feedback and checking-it-out.
c. Social psychologist John Gottman’s research emphasizes each partner’s attitudes and motivation to show
caring and affection.
E. Communication and Couple Satisfaction
1. Scholars of marital communication find that happy families do share some common qualities, especially the
expression of positive emotions and affection.
2. The happiest couples are those who negotiate personal and couple boundaries through supportive
communication.
II. Conflict and Love
A. Marital anger and conflict are necessary forces and a challenge to be met rather than avoided.
B. Denying Conflict: Some Results
1. Reluctance to argue may have destructive effects on the partners as individuals and on their relationship.
2. Another substitute for directly expressed anger is passive-aggression.
a. Examples include chronic criticism, nagging, nit-picking, and sarcasm.
b. In sabotage, one partner attempts to spoil or undermine an activity or interest of another.
c. In displacement, a person directs anger at people or things that someone else cherishes.
3. Psychologists Nathaniel Branden and Robert Sternberg have developed ten rules for nourishing a romantically
loving relationship.
a. Express your love verbally.
b. Be physically affectionate.
c. Express your appreciation and even admiration.
d. Share more about yourself with your partner than you do with any other person.
e. Offer each other an emotional support system.
f. Express your love materially.
g. Accept your partner’s demands and put up with your partner’s shortcomings.
h. Make time to be alone together.
i. Do not take your relationship for granted.
j. Do unto each other as you would have the other do unto you.
III. Supportive Couple Communication and Conflict Management
A. The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse
1. Social psychologist John Gottman’s research on marital communication showed that conflict and anger
themselves did not predict divorce, but four processes that he called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse did.
2. The Four Horsemen include four destructive patterns:
a. Contempt
b. Criticism
c. Defensiveness
d. Stonewalling
3. Later, after more research, Gottman added belligerence.
B. What Is Supportive Communication?
1. Gottman and his colleagues discovered that the only variable that predicted both marital stability and marital
happiness among stable couples was the amount of positive affect in the conflict.
2. The researchers found no evidence that anger is the destructive emotion in marriages. Instead, they found that
contempt, belligerence, and defensiveness were the destructive attitudes and behaviors.
C. Gender Differences in Couple Communication
1. Deborah Tannen’s book You Just Don’t Understand argues that
men typically engage in report talk, conversation aimed mainly at conveying information.
2. A review of research on couple communication in the 1990s
strongly suggests that men and women differ in their responses to negative affect in close relationships.
3. Early in his research, Gottman concluded that wives and
husbands have different goals when they disagree.
4. What wives can do.
a. Use a positive strategy can help overcome stress
b. Use humor
c. Express anger
5. What husbands can do
a. Share power with wife
b. Talk problems through
6. What couples can do
a. Partners, especially wives, need to gently raise complaints.
b. Partners, especially wives, can help sooth their partners by communicating care and affection
c. Partners, especially husbands, can learn self-soothing techniques.
d. Partners, especially husbands, need to be willing to share power.
e. Both partners can use humor, kindness and other signs of affection to de-escalate arguments.
D. Stonewalling
1. Avoiding a fight is stonewalling.
Partners refuse to discuss sensitive issues.
2. Typical techniques in stonewalling.
a. Leaving house to avoid fight.
b. Refusing to talk.
c. Derailing arguments by saying “I can’t take it when you yell at me”.
d. Flatly stating “I can’t take you seriously when you act this way.
e. Raising issues, then leaving and refusing to discuss them.
f. Giving up, refusing to argue but not discussing problem.
3. Stonewalling may encourage one’s partner to engage in
gunnysacking: keeping one’s grievances secret while tossing them into an imaginary gunnysack that grows heavier and
heavier over time.
IV. Bonding Fights--Some Guidelines
A. Overview
1. Tactics that bring people closer rather than push them away is called "bonding fighting".
2. The key to a bonding fight is to build up a partner's self-esteem while fighting.
B. Level with Each Other
1. Partners must be explicit in how they feel, especially concerning the more hurtful aspects of an intimate
relationship.
2. Research indicates that underlying conflicts go unresolved because partners fail to voice their feelings,
irritations, and preferences and neither is aware the other is holding back.
C. Use I-Statements to Avoid Attacks
1. Insults toward another person are destructive to relationships.
2. I-statements are more effective because they are usually perceived by receivers as attempts to recognize and
communicate feelings, unlike insults, which are perceived as attacks.
D. Avoid Mixed, or Double, Messages
1. Research shows partners seldom understand each other as they think they do.
2. Partners must seek to ensure complaints and other messages are clearly understood.
3. Partners can help to receive messages accurately by repeating in their own words what the other has said.
E. Choose the Time and Place Carefully
1. Fights can be non-constructive if a partner raises grievances at the wrong time.
2. Partners should try to negotiate "gripe hours".
F. Focus Anger Only on Specific Issues
1. Constructive fighting aims at resolving immediate specific problems.
2. Self-esteem of partners is enhanced when each one feels they can do something to help resolve conflict.
G. Ask for a Specific Change, but Be Open to Compromise
1. Partners should be ready to propose solutions to the problem.
2. Conflict resolution will involve bargaining and negotiation.
3. Research indicates that happily married couples usually reach agreement rather quickly either by compromise or
by one partner giving in to the other without resentment.
H. Be Willing to Change Yourself
1. Partners need to be willing to change themselves, to be changed by others, and to be influenced by their
partners' feelings and rational arguments.
2. Defensiveness and stubbornness are associated with deterioration of a marriage over time.
I. Don't Try to Win
1. Research shows that tactics associated with "winning" conflicts are associated with greater marital unhappiness.
2. Bonding fights do not have winners and losers; instead both must feel like winners.
J. Remember to End the Argument
1. Sometimes, when partners are too hurt or frightened to continue, they need to stop fighting before they reach a
resolution.
V. Changing Conflict Management Habits
A. Generational Change
1. Research suggests that families assume consistent patterns for facing conflict and these patterns are passed
from one generation to another.
2. Young married males, however, are found to most likely reject these established patterns in their own marriages.
B. Couple Change
1. Couples who receive training in expression of feelings, constructive conflict, and communication skills report
greater levels of marital happiness.
2. For couples to change on their own, they must accept the reality of marital conflict and use the guidelines for
bonding fighting.
VI. The Myth of Conflict-Free Conflict
So much attention has been devoted to the bonding capacity of intimate fighting that it may seem as if conflict
itself can be free of conflict. It can’t. Moreover, some spouses are married to mates who don’t want to learn to fight
more positively. Even when both partners develop constructive habits, all of their problems will not necessarily be
resolved. Moreover, not all negative facts and feelings need to be communicated.