Can You Fix Your Marriage Without Dredging Up The Past?

This is a great question! Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just leave all the past behind, turn over a new leaf, and start afresh?  Most couples have problems and difficulties that they’ve been through and are trying to put behind them. Some of you might even have serious issues in your past that are still causing you pain and affecting your marriage today. And so you may be wondering if it’s possible to move on from difficulties in your marriage without bringing up all these issues again. Is it possible to leave past conflict unresolved and still have a happy marriage? Turns out it’s not a simple “yes” or “no” answer. For those of you that are new to the site, we speak to marriage issues out of a Christian worldview but what makes our approach unique is that there’s a ton of research in psychological journals that becomes part of our content. So when we come to a question like this we aim to give you a very balanced, reliable recommendation that is going to truly help you move forward in your marriage. Because that’s our goal: to help you create thriving, passionate marriage. And if you are reading this it is probably because you don’t have that but you want it. And we want to help you get there! How Unresolved Conflict Impacts Marriage A good starting question is: can you have a happy marriage while leaving past arguments or differences unresolved? It turns out that unresolved conflict does not appear to impact the duration of your marriage. But: it is negatively correlated to relationship satisfaction. Meaning that as the amount of unresolved conflict increases, it might not lead to the complete breakdown of your relationship but you’re probably going to become less satisfied with your marriage[i]. What is interesting is that this researcher then factored conflict out of the equation. You can do this with multifactorial analysis to pinpoint what exactly is causing the effect that you’ve observed. And when the amount of conflict (or frequency of arguments) was removed from the equation, the satisfaction still went down. Meaning that it truly is about the fact that things are left unresolved: this is the key factor, not the conflict itself. But the researcher did have something to conclude about conflict styles: the more unresolved conflict, the more negative conflict styles were present. When higher levels of unresolved conflict were present in couples he observed more things like withdrawal during arguments, escalating small issues into arguments, etc. Which makes sense. Not dealing with stuff causes a buildup of pressure so that when things do spill over into an argument it’s going to be more extreme and all these other unresolved issues are going to get thrown in as well. Poor communication strategies are likely to follow. As another researcher put it: "To leave conflict unresolved is a risky course of action. An unresolved conflict could fester to the point of causing an explosion.[ii]" So the evidence says: resolving conflict is better than leaving it unresolved. And I think most of us know that on an intuitive level: we have to deal with the things that just aren’t going away. But: there is also some research to indicate that avoiding conflict (and even leaving things unresolved) may be a good idea if your conflict style is very negative and volatile. If you really do not have any functional, adaptable ways of resolving issues then you may need to contain the fallout. In that case, leaving things unresolved may be the lesser of two evils[iii]. That’s fine for the research to point out but I would still contend that if this is your situation it would be better to learn those skills. Read a book, get some counselling: do something to help you guys learn how to resolve conflict. I just cannot see this working out well in the long term even as I understand and acknowledge why it may be helpful in the short term. Avoiding conflict because your way of dealing with it is so destructive doesn’t sound like a healthy, sustainable marriage, so if you find yourself doing this then get help with learning new conflict-resolution skills. Of course, I’m assuming we’re not talking about an abusive marriage here. Avoiding conflict becomes a whole new topic when any form of abuse is involved. Remember that abuse isn’t always as obvious as physical violence; verbal and emotional abuse resulting from conflict are serious issues that need to be identified and addressed. We’ve written a series of posts on abuse and part 1 was all about how to tell if you’re in an abusive marriage, so give that a read if you’re concerned this may be an issue in your marriage. 3 Ways to Avoid Conflict There’s three avoidance strategies that we probably all use at some point or another. They can actually be helpful but they can also be quite unhelpful too! Withholding Complaints Withholding is simply not mentioning it when your partner does something that you find aggravating. This solution works best for minor grievances and when used to avoid raising minor day to day issues was positively correlated with relationship satisfaction. However, the offending spouse still has no idea they have done something to upset the other spouse and so the behavior will likely persist[iv]. This may work best for concerns that aren’t worth addressing right now. Or, maybe it’s something that you feel just happened as a one-off situation. But generally, for bigger issues or recurring problems, simply refraining from mentioning them isn’t a great idea as it just leads to that festering low level of dissatisfaction that’s liable to blow up. Suppressing Arguments Suppression is avoiding talking about the past issue or withdrawing once your partner has initiated the discussion. This can be done by pretending to agree with what your spouse is saying so as to stop the argument, minimizing the importance of the issue they have raised, or outright avoiding/leaving the conversation (stonewalling). Personally I find this hard to take in the moment because I feel disconnection from myself and the other person. I prefer to put something on the table. However, the researcher noted that minimizing the importance of a past issue and focusing on "shared values which tied them together which overwhelm the importance of the past conflict" was a trait observed in some happily married couples. So it does appear to work for some couples. I think there’s value in the idea that sometimes we do need to declare a truce over an issue and then maybe agree to leave it until we feel like we are more equipped to come back to it. If used with restraint, it can be a way to remind yourself about the positive, get unstuck, and move forward. However, if you’re doing this constantly it becomes the elephant (or herd of elephants) in the room that nobody wants to mention. Declaring a Topic Taboo This is the next notch up from suppressing arguments. Declaring a topic taboo happens when you mutually decide not to ever talk about a certain issue for the good of the relationship. Deciding that a certain issue is totally off limits is probably something you’ll only consider for major issues, maybe after having tried and failed to come to any kind of resolution. But as a strategy for dealing with these major problems, it isn’t always successful. Explicitly agreeing that you aren't going to talk about an issue is problematic because it means acknowledging that there is an unresolved issue that you are unable or unwilling to solve. On the other hand, deciding not to argue about something can be done based on selectively disclosing your position to your spouse without attempting to persuade them of your point of view. In our post about why it’s important to stop bottling things up we created a guide for how to approach irreconcilable differences; issues that aren’t going anywhere and are unlikely to ever get solved. There was a similar idea there about continually sharing your own perspective without trying to change your spouse’s mind or persuade them. This ongoing discussion might be a better idea than simply making something taboo. Declaring topics or past issues as taboo was negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction in terms of both the number of taboo subjects and the extent to which they were made explicit[v]. However, relationship commitment moderated this effect to the point where taboo topics did not significantly affect relationship quality in high-commitment couples. Implicit decisions to make some subjects taboo were less linked to low marriage satisfaction and were present in some happily married couples. So you can see many of these strategies kind of work and kind of don’t. It is a mixed bag. It is probably very nuanced from couple to couple and even issue to issue with that couple. Sometimes you can both live with designating a subject as taboo and loving everything else about being married to each other. Sometimes you cannot. So these are examples of how you may be able to fix your marriage, or parts of it, without dredging up the past. On the other hand, the research is also showing this likely isn’t going to work for everything in your past. And I’m guessing: the larger the issue, the less likely it is to work out for the benefit of your marriage. Starting Over Without Resolving the Past So what about the whole turn-over-a-new-leaf thing? Can you just put everything behind you? Personally, I think this is pretty unlikely to succeed. The reason being is that your relationship is a matrix of perspectives and behavior. You act and react towards your spouse. You perceive and interpret and make meaning out of each other’s words and actions. These form a matrix defined by your experiences of each other over the years. So you can decide to put all history in the past and close that book but you still have this matrix. And the next time your spouse repeats some problematic behavior,...