Conflict Resolution In Marriages

The Importance of Conflict Resolution in a Marriage Relationship In interpersonal communication, there is great importance in, and benefit to, acknowledging the force for conflict that occurs within relationships, and deriving an effective resolution technique from such. The high divorce rates within American society today demand for a light to be placed on this growing societal epidemic. From the research collected for this paper, the focus is placed on three specific aspects of conflict and conflict resolution within marriages: conflict patterns, similarity and understanding, and repair strategies. Conflict, defined in the article by Dunleavy, Goodboy, Booth-Butterfield, Sidelinger, and Banfield (2009), is “the interaction of interdependent

In their article, Acitelli, Douvan, and Veroff (1993) examined the relative importance, to marital well-being, of partners’ similarity and understanding of conflict styles. The researchers classified similarity into two separate categories – perceived similarity and actual similarity. According to this classification, and following research, perceived similarity was found to be higher than actual similarity within marriages, and was a stronger positive predictor for the well-being of the marriage relationship. Perceived similarity is defined as when one person’s perception of the self and the perception of the spouse are congruent. Within both contexts of constructive and destructive conflict behaviors, the results of Acitelli et al.’s (1993) research indicated that perceived similarity between spouses was greater than the actual similarity which existed. This was explained by the false consensus effect, that people overestimate commonness to assure themselves of the appropriateness or correctness of their own response, to protect their self-esteem and to validate their own preference. In this case, the response behavior in regards to conflict experienced with a spouse in a marital relationship was what individuals were attempting to positively “save face” for the relationship, your spouse, and for yourself (Adler & Proctor II, 2011). It was found that as

In every article, and commentary, which was presented to for this paper, the researchers admitted to the importance of conflict resolution and the increasing need among Americans to develop healthy relational conflict resolution habits. Yet, as a collection of this research was obtained, an inconsistency, or rather apparent variation existed. In their scholarly journal, authors Dunleavy et al. (2009) provided the reader with the least effective repair strategy and the most harmful conflict response, yet they did not describe helpful results from which the reader could withdraw a specific resolution strategy. In another scholarly communications journal, Karahan (2007) describes the positive results for couples who partake in a specific ten-session communication program which was developed by his self, the researcher. This ten-session couples program was based on Karahan’s (2007) research on passive conflict tendencies among married couples. The researcher boasted high success rates for such a conflict resolution technique, yet this research became a limitation to the furthering of the thesis for this review. Without the ability, or opportunity, for ordinary marital couples facing conflict to partake in Karahan’s ten-session couple communication program, the benefit of his article for this review’s secondary angle on effective conflict