By Pastor Okokon Ating

We have seen that marriage has been an institu-tion created by God at the beginning of the world. The Bible stipulates of oneness, fellowship and togetherness till death comes. There is a secret that seems hidden in marriage which was not re-vealed to humanity early concerning marriage and such secret is “Conflict”.

The big question to be asked is this, “Where comes the idea of conflict in marriage”? The answer is not far-fetched from the teachings of the scriptur-es about “The fall of man” or “The utter depravity of human nature”.

wedding ring

Conflict comes as a re-sult of the sinful nature of man beginning from the Garden of Eden. Though the Bible has not stated whether Adam and Eve had any conflicts in their marriage, but as human beings with fallen nature there might have been dis-agreement, anger, failures or despair between them as husband and wife. An example speaks of Cain who nursed hatred against his brother Abel which re-sulted in murdering him.

In this discussion, we will look into the following two areas with regards to resolving conflicts in marriages:

PART ONE: Definition of terms; Types of conflicts and; Reasons for conflicts

PART TWO: How to re-solve conflicts in marriage; Result of unresolved con-flicts in marriage and Con-clusion

CONFLICT

The Oxford Advance Le-arner’s Dictionary defines Conflict as a situation in which people, groups or countries are involved in a serious disagreement or argument, also it is a sit-uation which there are opposing ideas, opinions, feeling or wishes, a situat-ion in which it is difficult to choose. To buttress this definition, Dr. Olajide Olagunju (2007) defines Conflict as “a situation in which the needs of parties in a relationship are not being met”

According to him; “Con-flict protest unmet needs.

Many people may see conflicts as being evil in nature. It is only evil when it is not resolved amicably.

1. Conflict can be on a good-time: This can be when peace is raining in the house and suddenly there comes serious arg-ument between couples that leads to conflict, this conflict is usually to co-rrect some wrongs and amend some terms and conditions in the marriage. This clearly states that not all conflicts are for destruction if the couples are intelligent enough to handle it amicably.
2. It can be symptomatic in nature: this type of con-flict shows that there may be a big problem ahead so couples must be vigi-lant and stay alert at all time because some of this quarrels and argu-ments are signals that things are not totally right and quick adjustment should be done to avoid bigger problem in future.
3. It can show the daily signal of deterioration in relationship: When there is conflict between couples it shows that the cordial relationship between them will not be as strong as it used to be, there will be distance between cou-ples, when the conflict per-sist couples should know that the marriage is in dan-ger so husband and wife should not be too busy to notice.