IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERVENTION
It has been widely shown that it is not the presence of conflict in relationships but rather the conflict processes couples use that matters. One of the most widely documented dysfunctional processes is the demand/withdraw pattern of marital conflict.
In this pattern, the demander, more often the partner who wants some kind of change, pressures the other through the use of emotional requests, criticism, and complaints. In contrast, the withdrawer, often the person who does not want change, retreats through defensiveness and passive inaction (Christensen and Heavey, 1990). As in the case of Deutsch’s couple, the partner who wants change is more likely to be the wife. This is particularly the case in conflicts of gender equality, which are often defined in terms of the costs to men. These costs include interference with their ability to meet career demands, loss of the power and privileges associated with being the sole provider, loss of the services of a nonemployed wife, increased stress, and demands to participate in family life in unfamiliar ways that conflict with masculine identity. Since simply being employed often reflects some element of increased power and independence, any movement in the direction of equality is often viewed as beneficial to women. As a result, women disproportionately bear the burden of initiating change. Even in a sample of dual-career respondents who indicated no differences in terms of the importance they placed on equality in their own relationships, 90 percent of wives and 55 percent of husbands reported that the wives were more likely to raise the issue of equality in their relationships (Rosenbluth, and others, 1998). Both the demand and the withdraw strategies are generally viewed as weak and ineffectual. In fact, implementation of these strategies is associated with one of the strongest predictors of divorce—a pattern of husband defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling, and the thought that it is better to work out problems alone. Thus, the result is living parallel rather than intersecting lives (Gottman, 1993).Another widely studied process differentiating the distressed from the nondistressed is couples’ attribution styles. Partners in distressed relationships spend a great deal of time focusing on negative events that they explain in terms of internal, stable, and global negative traits of their partners (for example, “my partner does not contribute to household work, he never does, he is too selfabsorbed”). Nondistressed couples, by contrast, tend to place more focus on positive events, which they explain in terms of internal, stable, and global positive traits of their partners. In these couples, negative events are seen as occurring because of fleeting situational causes. As a result, nondistressed couples engage in relationship-enhancing attributions, whereas distressed couples engage in distress-maintaining attributions. These attribution cycles become self-sustaining. Partners in the negative cycle are unable to disconfirm the negative attribution by positive acts because they are attributed to fleeting situational causes (for example, “yes, he did take our son to the park yesterday but it was because it was a beautiful day and he happened to have nothing else to do”) while negative acts are attributed to stable traits (Gottman, 1993).
In describing further his work with the distressed couple, Deutsch notes that the conflict seemed nonnegotiable to them. From the wife’s perspective, accepting her husband’s terms would mean betrayal of her feminist values. At the same time, the husband perceived the idea of becoming deeply involved in housework and childcare as violating his sense of male adult identity. Yet this nonnegotiable conflict became negotiable when the husband and wife were able to listen to and really understand the other’s feelings and the ways in which their respective life experiences had led them to the views each held.
In this instance, therapeutic intervention set the context in which differences were discussed and defined, and the therapist likely set limits on the kinds of strategies that could be used. Yet, without intervention, partners may bring limited skills to bear in addressing the conflict.
Individual Factors. Family of origin is the primary setting in which children and adolescents learn both adaptive and maladaptive interpersonal repertoires— including physical aggression, positive and negative affect, and effective and ineffective problem solving. For wives, divorce in their families of origin predicts higher levels of aggression in their newlywed marriages. Similarly, couples in which the woman’s parents had divorced, relative to those in which the women’s parents had not, evidenced higher rates of conflict, invalidation, withdrawal, and negative nonverbal behaviors. Experiences in a family while growing up appear to shape the interpersonal repertoires that newlyweds display. Such experiences are predictive of marital outcomes several years later (Bradbury and Karney, 2004).
Conflict, as Deutsch (1973) points out, can have many positive functions. It prevents stagnation. It stimulates interest and curiosity. It is the medium through which problems can be aired and solutions can be arrived at. It is the root of personal and social change. Yet, developing the capacity to engage in constructive conflict is a skill. When husbands resist wives’ attempts at change, wives often defer. With this, wives pay a heavy price including a devaluation of themselves. “Keeping quiet” “to keep the peace” promotes resentment, undermines intimacy, compromises affection (Deutsch, 1999), and leads to a deterioration in the level of relationship satisfaction over time (Gottman and Krokoff, 1989). Conversely, when wives do not comply, husbands often withdraw and turn away. Yet, systematic research consistently shows that conflict avoidance whether through compliance or withdrawal is equally dysfunctional. Indeed, Gottman (1998) has identified withdrawal, also called stonewalling and disengagement, along with criticism, defensiveness, and contempt as the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse in dysfunctional relationships.
Couples who are struggling to achieve more equal relationships are often doing so in the face of little support.
Yet, relational conflict is interpersonal. Therefore, for the outcome to be constructive, the conflict must be defined as a mutual problem that requires constructive engagement, empathic listening, and resolution through cooperative efforts, and it must be defined as a situation in which there are no individual winners and losers, only mutual gains for women, men, and relationships. Conflict involves sequential interaction and for the interaction to be successful there must be validation such that both partners feel their perspective is understood and valued. Understanding and affirmation need not imply agreement, but for the process to move forward, exchanges must occur in a context of empathic understanding. And finally, couples who engage constructively engage positively. They are five times as likely to make a positive as a negative response (Gottman and Krokoff, 1989).The difficulties should not be minimized. Yet, studies show that spouses who are able to infuse their problem-solving discussion with humor, show genuine enthusiasm for what the partner is saying, find common ground, and, either verbally or nonverbally, express feelings of warmth and affection can overcome limited skill levels (Bradbury and Karney, 2004). Finally, while the difficulties should not be minimized, neither should the rewards. Returning to the precursors with which we started, the findings are strong and consistent. Gender equal relationships are associated with that which couples most desire—greater intimacy, greater respect, greater satisfaction, and greater wellbeing for both partners.