Soul Sculpting Project: Loving in Conflict

Roll back to the 1970’s. You and your spouse enter the lab room. There are comfortable chairs, recording equipment, and health monitors (heart rate . . . ).

Your assignment: For 15 minutes work on solving a conflict in your relationship.

When you finish Dr. John Gottman and Robert Levenson review your tape and make a prediction. Will you still be married in 9 years?

Roll ahead to the 1980’s. Gottman and Levenson have a 90% success rate of predicting divorce.

How did they do it?

It turns out that there is a mathematical ratio that successful marriages use in conflict. The ratio is between positive and negative interactions.

• Couples who stay together have at least 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction.
• Couples who do not stay together have .08 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction.

That means that a near 1-1 ratio is not enough to maintain a stable, happy relationship. It takes 5 positives to neutralize 1 negative.

Positive interactions in the midst of conflict? How do we do this?

Here are a few simple actions that successful couples do to up their ratio.

• affirming body language, like making eye contact and head nodding
• showing interest
• expressing empathy
• making gestures of affection
• expressing humor
• laughing, gentle joking

Which of these actions can you imagine using in the midst of a difficult conversation? What additional actions or gestures could work for you?

Conflicts are normal.

The question is how do we do them well? One of the answers is to fill our times of conflict with positive expressions of love.

Sculpt Sculpting Project: Loving in Conflict

• In your next time of conflict display many positive interactions to neutralize the negative interactions. (Make your ratio at least 5 positive to 1 negative.)

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another. . . (Colossians 3:12-13a)