While it is true that your husband or wife is the culprit behind any marital conflicts, identifying the reasoning behind why the person did what they did is the critical question we need to ask and answer for long term solutions. There is a proverb in the Yoruba language that says “Ti ko ba ni di, obirin ki je Kumolu” (women are not named Kumolu without a good reason).

As you read this article think about the biggest conflict issue in your marriage and start to imagine “why” your husband or wife is reacting the way they are doing, with the hope of seeking help in that area and to stop personal attack on that spouse.

Let me help your imagination with some scenarios

Scenario 1

Mary wants to remodel her Kitchen to have granite top, but John has continually said no without explanation. Feeling her greatest need is not being adequately considered, Mary starts to distance herself from her husband emotionally without realizing it, saying no, more and more to sex and in many other subtle ways rejecting him.

He brings the issue to her, but she denies it and blames it on stress of her job and the kids. She took sometime off, but the subtle rejection continued. It was only in counseling that the real reason for her rejecting her husband emotionally came out, when he explained that the family cannot afford a new Kitchen for at least another two years based on their budget.

Scenario 2

Kemi is an aggressive female who believe in planning ahead and getting things done, she is also a partner in her accounting firm. She met Femi in college and immediately fell for this quite young man, studying Management Information Service. For Femi, there is no hurry in life everything can wait and the future is too way out to be planned. With this personality also comes procrastination (waiting for the last minute to do something and most times paying more for it).

While courting, Kemi loved Femi because she was able to get her way in the relationship (he was very friendly too) and his demeanor then worked for her. Three years into marriage this personality that Kemi loved in Femi is now the problem. As she wants things done on time, she wants him as the head of the house to come up with their family vision and other expectations she had.

Kemi resorted to yelling, nagging and calling terrible names to make Femi the person that she wants (all of which pushes him further into his shell), forgetting that she was endeared to him because of the same attitude and that she cannot change his personality, so she is mightily frustrated in her three years of marriage and starts to wonder if she married the right man?

Scenario 3

Ade is the last of five children and the only boy. His mom and sisters were all tough women who pampered him and catered to his needs. In college, he was attracted to Nike another tough woman studying medicine and also the first child of four children.

Things took a nose dive almost immediately after marriage, as Ade’s sisters came into the marriage wanting to be available for their baby brother, while Nike another strong woman wanted no part of her sisters-in-laws influence in her marriage.

Rather than focus on the problem at hand, which is both their background and working together to build healthy boundaries, the attack was fierce and was totally personal, as Ade and Nike attacked the integrity of each others families, the intrusion and the people involved.

Scenario 4

Olu: Anike, I went to the bank today and saw that you spent $100 at Wal-mart when I told you that I’ve sent out checks for the home bills and now we might have some checks bouncing. Why do you useless woman always do this to me? I’m sure you just don’t like me and you want us to file for bankruptcy.

Anike: Who is useless? Me? I have three children for you; I contribute to the finance of this house? And you never give me allowance money for my self and you call me useless? If you were half the man other men are you would be taking care of all the bills in this house without complaining.

Walking away from her husband, Anike said under her breath and Olu could hear her “Oloshi Oloriburuku, Oko Iranu (Idiot, stupid and useless husband)”.
 

Consequences of personal attack

Depending on the personality of your spouse, attack on their person rather than dealing with the issue can bring about different but equally bad results

1. Self-Esteem problem – more than likely a passive husband/wife might develop low self esteem when constantly barraged with demeaning words about his/her person. Someone with weight or other physical problems might also become very self conscious and go into depression.

2. Physical Attack or Verbal aggression – an aggressive husband/wife might resort to physical attack when provoked. I know a wife who jumps up in the husband’s face and yells at the top of her voice when he provokes her (he deliberately pushes her button). The provoking and the yelling are both bad.

3. Hinders communication – when one of the two is depressed or emotional unstable, communicating becomes very difficult and conflicts issues take longer to resolve. 

4. Hinders all levels of Intimacy (maintenance of the marriage) – A husband that directs attack on his wife personally might have to deal with Physical intimacy. Husbands and wives not in good talking terms will definitely have spiritual intimacy issues. When spouse shoot each others ideas down rather that validate and politely disagree, such home will lack emotional intimacy.

The Solution

Realizing that personal attack achieves nothing, instead it complicates conflicts resolution, then it makes no sense attacking your spouse personally. Whenever there is a conflict in your home, the first question to ask yourself is why? Why is this man or woman behaving this way?

Take the time to understand your spouse (personality and family of origin) and not trying to change the other person goes a long way in a marriage. Earlier in our marriage, Ola and I took the differences caused by our family of origin dynamics personally. I thought her family called each other too much, while she thought my family did not call enough and we took that frustration out on each other. Also, my way of dealing with my first-born-female and aggressive wife was to stand toe-to-toe with her on who the head of the house is (in my passive-aggressive way), which in-turn brought lots of conflicts in our home (including personal attacks). Learning the leadership style of Jesus has helped me greatly (servant leader).

Today, we recognize who the other person is, and accept each other for who we are, pointing only to what God would want in the situation. When my wife gets into her telling me what to do mode, I simply say “yes mummy” and she backs down. When I get into my loud voice mode she “stop talking” which is my cue to reduce my voice and apologize, then continue the conversation.

Resolving the Scenarios

Scenario 1

John should have explained in details to Mary why the family can’t afford a new Kitchen at the present time and perhaps give a timeline for when the budget can accommodate such huge demand the very first time she brought it up. What he did was assume that his wife was a “credit card happy, mall hopping maniac” who deserves no answer for her thirst of putting the family into debt always.

Mary on the other hand dealt with her disappointment in a passive-aggressive way by taking out her frustration of being ignored always by her husband, in the bedroom and areas that she knew would hurt him.

Scenario 2

Kemi should understand that she cannot change a human personality, that her husband’s attitude while stupid to her is sometimes needed by all of us. That the best way of dealing with Femi’s attitude is to learn how to work with him, setting timeline for projects (not her timeline but his timeline), see her husband’s attitude as an asset rather than a liability, and by not setting unrealistic expectation (her expectations) on him.

Femi also, need to know that he is married to someone who plans hundred years ahead and who wants things done like yesterday. That part of loving his wife is going out of his comfort zone to do things for her. He also must see Kemi’s knack for getting things done as an asset rather than “time wasting”.

Scenario 3

Ade and Nike need to understand the family of origin dynamic of each other, understand that they cannot do anything about what other people do, but they can do a lot about what both of them decide to do.

They need to understand that Ade is used to being pampered and wait on, he also must learn to draw boundaries for his family with his wife and more importantly stick to the boundary regardless of how much his sisters want to penetrate the boundary. Nike need to let Ade take the lead at home (encouraging him), ask for God’s help so that she does not control her husband. Set reasonable boundaries with her husband realizing that Ade still needs some level of relationship with his sisters (that cannot just be cut out).

Scenario 4

A big problem for Olu and Anike is that they don’t have a budget or a good budget that gives both of them allowance (women need to have their allowance, even if you as the husband don’t take one). It could be that communication on the state of the family account has not been adequately spelt out, Olu might be juggling the bills but he is not bringing his wife in on what he is doing because he doesn’t think his wife need to know details. It could also be because Anike sees Olu spend money on frivolous things while telling her not to spend money.

My prayer is that everyone that reads this article, stop personal attacks on your spouse and start to ask why he/she is behaving the way they are doing. The solution to the problem might be something immediate based on distorted views or lack of communication, it might take time and counseling based on family of origin pattern or personality and worse still it might be a situation that needs medication to correct. Whatever the situation in your home, deal with the reason and don’t attack the person.

Remain Blessed