How to Fight Fair (Part 2 of 2)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Focus on the Family with Jim Daly – "How to Fight Fair (Part 2 of 2)"

Introduction In the July 9, 2025 episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, hosts Jim Daly and John Fuller delve deeper into managing conflict within Christian marriages. Building upon the foundational principles discussed in Part 1, this episode features esteemed marriage experts Dr. Les and Leslie Parrott, who provide actionable insights and tools to help couples navigate disagreements constructively.

Understanding Common Sources of Conflict The episode opens with Dr. Les Parrott highlighting common sources of marital disputes. Starting at [00:01], Les humorously engages listeners by asking, “What do you guys fight about? Money.” He identifies money as the primary source of conflict among couples, followed closely by disagreements over children and time management. These everyday issues underscore the importance of effective conflict resolution strategies in maintaining a healthy marriage.

The Four Horsemen of Conflict At [02:02], Leslie Parrott introduces the concept of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” a term coined by Dr. John Gottman to describe destructive communication patterns that predict the demise of relationships.

1. Criticism ([02:30]): Leslie explains that criticism goes beyond expressing dissatisfaction; it attacks a partner’s character. She shares a personal anecdote: “If I walk in the door and he says, where have you been? You always make a scene. That is a critical comment right there.”

2. Defensiveness ([03:22]): Following criticism, defensiveness is a natural but harmful response. Les describes it as “a reflexive defensive response” that escalates arguments instead of resolving them.

3. Contempt ([03:52]): Contempt intensifies criticism by adding elements of disgust and disrespect. Leslie differentiates it by stating, “Contempt is like criticism, but it’s deeper and even more injurious to the relationship.”

4. Stonewalling ([04:16]): Stonewalling occurs when one partner withdraws from the interaction, emotionally shutting down. Les notes, “Men tend to get to stonewalling quicker than women do.”

Effective Communication Techniques Transitioning to solutions, the Parrots introduce the XYZ Formula at [05:04], a tool designed to restructure complaints into non-confrontational statements:

• X: The situation (e.g., “When we’re driving down the road”)
• Y: The behavior (e.g., “you turn the radio station without asking me first”)
• Z: The feeling (e.g., “I feel like I don’t even matter to you right now”) Les emphasizes the importance of expressing feelings without casting blame: “That’s very different than saying, who made you king of the radio? Right. That’s contempt.”

Sharing Withholds Exercise ([06:27]) Leslie and Les then present the Sharing Withholds exercise, a method to prevent small grievances from festering into major conflicts. This preventive strategy involves:

1. Each partner writes down three withholds experienced in the last 48 hours—two positive and one negative.
2. Partners take turns sharing these without delving into the negative withholds immediately.
3. The exercise includes a 30-minute cooling-off period before addressing any unresolved negative issues.

Les asserts, “This is a preventive exercise, and it’ll keep those landmines at bay from your marriage,” highlighting its role in maintaining peace and understanding within the relationship.

Stages of Relationship Development ([11:16]) Jim Daly and Les Parrott explore the four stages of relationship development:

1. Pseudo Relationship: Superficial interactions without deep connection. Example: Casual greetings in the church foyer.

2. Chaos: When relationships become more genuine, leading to potential conflicts as true selves emerge. Jim illustrates this with a scenario where a misunderstanding over a golf invitation creates tension: “I really don’t understand what’s going on with you.”

3. Emptiness: Reaching a stage where partners let go of the need to change each other, embracing acceptance. Les recounts a humorous yet poignant story about learning to accept his wife’s unique way of cutting carrots, emphasizing, “I just like that about her. That’s the way my Leslie cuts carrots.”

4. Genuine Relationship and Friendship: The pinnacle of marital relationships where both partners accept and love each other unconditionally. Leslie shares a touching moment when they laughed together during a stressful situation, reinforcing the safety and comfort of their bond: “It is the safest place on earth to be in a relationship.”

Personal Reflections and Encouragement Jim Daly reflects on the parallels between marital relationships and the divine relationship with Jesus, underscoring the unconditional love that sustains long-term marriages. John Fuller echoes this sentiment by sharing his own experiences of forgiveness and acceptance within his marriage, emphasizing its role as a model for their children.

Support and Resources The episode concludes with an appeal for support and engagement. Jim and John encourage listeners to utilize Focus on the Family’s resources, including counseling and the Hope Restored Marriage Intensives. They share a heartfelt testimonial from a listener, Kim, who overcame marital challenges through the ministry’s support: “Although I would never have chosen this journey, it is worth all the pain to see my husband loving God, me and our children.”

Closing Thoughts Leslie Parrott delivers a final message of hope, urging couples facing unbearable conflicts to seek help through the Hope Restored Marriage Intensives: “If the fights with your spouse have become unbearable, if you feel like you can’t take it anymore, there’s still hope.”

Notable Quotes

• Les Parrott at [00:01]: “Money is actually the number one thing that couples fight about more than any other topic.”
• Leslie Parrott at [02:30]: “That is a critical comment right there. That’s a destructive thing to your marriage.”
• Les Parrott at [05:04]: “The X, Y, Z formula in situation X, when you do Y, I feel Z.”
• Les Parrott at [11:16]: “Conflict, chaos is the price you pay in order to get there and enjoy that experience.”
• Jim Daly at [21:05]: “He still loves us. Even though he knows our flaws and our sins, he’s still in our corner.”

Conclusion This episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly offers profound insights into managing marital conflict through understanding destructive patterns and employing effective communication strategies. By sharing personal stories and practical exercises, Dr. Les and Leslie Parrott equip couples with the tools to transform conflicts into opportunities for deeper intimacy and genuine friendship. The hosts reinforce the message of unconditional love and the importance of seeking support, ensuring that listeners feel encouraged and empowered to strengthen their marriages.

Transcript

[Les Parrott]

We're here to talk about conflict. How do you fight a good fight? In fact, we might as well ask you, what do you guys fight about? Just holler it out. What do you fight about? Money.

[Leslie Parrott]

Money.

[Les Parrott]

That is actually the number one thing that couples fight about more than any other topic. Money. What else? Kids? All right. I'll identify with that time, how we spend our time. Isn't it true we fight about anything and everything? I mean, you know, how you drive, you know, get in the left lane. I am in the left lane, you that kind of stuff.

[John Fuller]

What a great example of the humor and insight that doctors Les and Leslie Parrott offer in their seminars. And you're going to hear more from them today on FOCUS on the Family with Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller.

[Jim Daly]

John, you know, being able to fight well, or as we say in the daily household, disagreeing well is really the key to all relationships. Gene and I try to do that in our marriage. We don't always succeed. I can say that honestly. We try to fight fair or disagree fair and make sure that when we get into conflict, we have good tools to resolve it. And that's what we want to talk about today because a lot of couples struggle in this area. A lot of marriages do. Let me be clear. We're not talking about physical abuse or even verbal abuse. We're talking about the normal things that married couples disagree about and how they can resolve that conflict.

[Les Parrott]

Yeah.

[John Fuller]

And if you missed part one of this presentation from the parents, please get in touch. We can send the entire message on cd. You can get an audio download or listen on the app. We've got the link in the episode notes or call 1-800-the letter A in the word family. Well, let's go ahead and begin with a quick recap from the parrots of the four bad types of conflict behavior. And then we'll hear some ideas for better communication. Hearing out doctors Les and Leslie Parrott on FOCUS on THE family.

[Leslie Parrott]

There are four things, elements in our conflict in the way we fight that if we have these, they are very destructive to our relationship.

[Les Parrott]

They call them the four red flags, or actually Dr. Gottman calls them the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

[Leslie Parrott]

That's a powerful picture.

[Les Parrott]

These are four things that kind of usher in doom for a marriage relationship. If he sees these in a marriage, then that's what he bases his prediction on. Would you like to know what they are? All in favor say aye.

[Leslie Parrott]

All right. Number one, the first Horseman of the Apocalypse is criticism, just simply criticism. You Know, Les said we had one of our fights right before we were speaking at a marriage seminar, and I happened to be about 30 minutes late. Now, you know, you wouldn't think we had a genuine marriage if he wasn't going to complain if I'm 30 minutes late when we're speaking at a marriage seminar. And so what do you do in those moments, you know, and it's so easy to criticize. If I walk in the door and he says, where have you been? You always make a slate. That is a critical comment right there. That's a destructive thing to your marriage. The second Horseman of the Apocalypse is the natural progression after you receive a criticism, and it's defensiveness. Defensiveness. And, you know, you just can feel yourself going into that reflexive defensive response. Gottman said that always escalates an argument. It never helps priority resolve. Defensiveness is really lethal to a couple.

[Les Parrott]

And it's just a natural response. Once you've been criticized, you're going to do that. In fact, some of us get so entrenched in that it becomes such a habit that we. It's almost like any response. I mean, it's just, have you seen my car keys? Well, I didn't, you know, I didn't take them. We just defend ourselves against anything. And we can become what some have called jellyfish in armor, you know, and we're so tough on the exterior, but inside we're just dying because we're so well guarded. Criticism. Defensiveness. And the third of these red flags is contempt.

[Leslie Parrott]

Contempt. Now, contempt is like criticism, but it's deeper and even more injurious to the relationship. Contempt is now. Not when you're just saying something like, you always make a slate. But now you're engaging in what we would call character assassination. You're assigning a negative motive to them.

[Les Parrott]

So criticism, defensiveness, contempt. That leads to the fourth of these, which is stonewalling. Stonewalling. Let me tell you something about stonewalling. This is the experience of, you know, you just shut down emotionally. You no longer. It's just like you're talking to a stone wall. And let me just tell you something. Men tend to get to stonewalling quicker than women do. All right? Now also, women tend to.

[Leslie Parrott]

Right. More frequently tend to have a critical comment that they spark an argument with. So you can kind of see how cyclical our fights can be sometimes as couples.

[Les Parrott]

Well, we want to help you kind of short circuit this whole thing. If this is what bad fights are made of. How do we spin out of this, you know, cycle. And we want to give you some new tools for doing that. And the first one's real quick. That has been very helpful to us over the years. It's what we call the XYZ formula.

[Leslie Parrott]

And this is simple and yet we feel very profound. When you're in the heat of a conflict, you need something that your memory can grab onto that protects you from doing something that's destructive to each other. And so if you can remember this, the simple formula, the XYZ in situation X, when you do Y, I feel Z.

[Les Parrott]

Right, The X, Y, Z formula in situation X, when you do Y, I feel Z. When we're driving down the road and you turn the radio station without asking me first, I feel like I don't even matter to you right now. That's very different than saying, who made you king of the radio? Right. That's contempt. Get that subtle difference in situation X, when you do Y, I feel Z. So that's a good way to kind of circumvent the criticism.

[Leslie Parrott]

Simple way to protect you from the. And the critical comment which starts the.

[Les Parrott]

Whole thing rolling and make a complaint rather than a criticism. Well, that's one thing we want to toss out there. Should we teach them the withholds? Yes, let's do it. We have another exercise we want to teach you that we've literally taught to thousands of couples. We get such a good response to this. It's worked for us for at least the last decade of our own marriage and in lots of other couples lives. It's called sharing withholds. Every day, in every marriage, there is information that we withhold from one another. Not because we're being secretive or because we're private or whatever.

[Leslie Parrott]

It's just the pace of life and the way things go. I mean, we can be out to dinner with some friends and we're all having a great time. He might say something, though, that kind of hurts my feelings. I'm not going to bring it up with everyone. I'm going to laugh. Then we get home and it's like midnight and I'm too tired to bring it up, don't want to talk about it. We go to bed, we're up at 6 the next morning, and life takes off and those things happen. You just have moments where, where you felt something and you just couldn't. You couldn't get it in, you couldn't share it. And those become negative withholds, you know, just feelings.

[Les Parrott]

Can we have negative withholds as well as positives? What happens by the way to negative withholds, when you never express those, what happens to them? Yeah, that's right. We bury those and they pop up. They have a high rate of resurrection.

[Leslie Parrott]

Yes, they do.

[Les Parrott]

They will pop up through the surface and wonder, where did that come from? Right. Yeah. Well, we also have positive withholds, things that register in our minds, and they somehow never get expressed. And so I see Leslie. She's coming down the stairs, and we're headed to church. And I'm thinking, oh, she has that new dress on. She looks great in that new dress. And I'm just ready to give her that compliment. And then I think, oh, where's my Bible? Where's that Sunday school lesson? Where are my car keys? Or whatever it is? And I get sidetracked. And I never do give her that verbal appreciation and compliment. She misses out on that because of the speed of life.

[Leslie Parrott]

And we do that all the time, both positive and negative withholds. Now, this exercise, sharing withholds, is so powerful in helping you cope with conflict in a marriage, because what it does is you engage in this, and it really then takes the tension out of your daily life together as a couple.

[Les Parrott]

Absolutely. Here's how this goes. One of us will just simply initiate this exercise by saying, would you like to share with holds? The other person agrees. We both get out a piece of scratch paper, and we write down three withholds that have happened within the last couple of days, the last 48 hours. Three withholds. The way we do this is two of them need to be positive, one of them is negative. Two positive withholds, one negative withhold. Right. Y' all with me. Well, we both have these jotted down, and then we take turns in sharing them.

[Leslie Parrott]

So, you know, I'll take my turn and I'll start with the positive withhold. One of the things I wanted you to know. I was so. I was just so overwhelmed when I came down yesterday morning and the kitchen was clean. And I couldn't believe it because I went to bed at midnight. It was a wreck. Dishes everywhere. I was exhausted. I could not get it together. And so I was dreading that and leaving town and the whole thing. So I woke up, went in the kitchen. It was beautiful. And I wanted you to know how much that meant to me.

[Les Parrott]

I respond, by the way, that never happened. I was a little startled there. I knew she was. Is sending me a message, that's all. We have our own little seminar going on up here right now. Thanks, Les. But if it had happened, I would respond with two words. Those two words are, yeah, thank you. That's all. I'm not going to explain it or anything else. I just say thank you. And then she would share a negative withhold.

[Leslie Parrott]

You know, I have to tell you that I had fun with Kevin and Kathy last week when we went to dinner. But at one point we were laughing. I mean, I did laugh so hard. But you made that comment about me talking to my mom on the phone and how big the long distance bill is. And I gotta tell you, it hurt my feelings because, you know, I'm so worried about her. I live far away from her. I don't feel like there's much I can do except talk to her. And I just got my feelings hurt and I wanted you to know that.

[Les Parrott]

So in this exercise, I just simply respond to the negative withhold by saying, lighten up. I can't believe you take this so seriously. Every fiber in my body wants to respond that way. Right. But in this exercise, I respond with two words. And those two words are, no, not I'm sorry, because I may not be sorry yet. Okay? Those two words are simply thank you. That's all right. Not going to explain it. It's not going to be a coerced kind of apology. This is an exercise in sharing information. So I say thank you. Alright? And then she would share another positive withhold and then it would be my turn to share my three withholds. And by the way, if you're the second person to share your three withholds, one of the things we've discovered is that you need to stick with the three original withholds you wrote down. You're way ahead of us. So we do this. And then here's the caveat for this thing. For the next 30 minutes, the negative withholds are off limits for the next 30 minutes. We don't talk about those now. What happens in 30 minutes time to the human system when we have that we've received negative information? What happens after we've held onto it for about 30 minutes without responding to it? Yeah, that's right. A little sanity begins to seep into that cortex of ours and we come to a place where we can respond rather than react. And most of the time we don't even come back.

[Leslie Parrott]

Honestly, that's surprise for me that I feel so confident that he heard my feelings, he knew me, we didn't have to have a big argument about it. We didn't have to process it for an hour. He knew my feelings and listened to me respectfully and I know that it impacted him. And so the anxiety about it dissolves. That's been the amazing thing about this. Now, there are times when issues are big enough and you do need to come back to those. And, you know, after that time when you've had a cooling off period, you do that. Occasionally it may be even a larger issue where you need more time, and that's okay.

[Les Parrott]

But that's how that works. Does that make sense? Sharing withholds? Is that something you can do? If we had more time, I'd have you share a pause or withhold with each other right now. Maybe you can do that over lunch or something. But this exercise, if you'll do this a couple times during the week, this is not something to do in the midst of conflict. Right. You're not having to fight and go, well, let's share with holds. Well, I thought we were just doing that, right? No, this is a preventive exercise, and it'll keep those landmines at bay from your marriage. But we still haven't really answered the question, how is conflict the price we pay for a deeper level of intimacy? And let me see if I can do this very quickly before we wrap things up. I think the answer is found in understanding how relationships work. Every relationship begins at a level that we might call pseudo relationship or false relationship. You know, it's about that deep. There's just not much to it. In pseudo relationship. It's the kind of relationship we have with somebody. Oh, you might see him in the church foyer, you know, and you see him once in a while in the church foyer, and it's like, what's your name? Mac. Mac. How you doing, Mack? It's good to see you, man. Isn't this a wonderful day? And I can't believe that message. It was fabulous. Hey, how's the golf game going? Still going well?

[Jim Daly]

Not bad.

[Les Parrott]

Oh, that's great. Hey, it's good to see you. All right, you take it. You're the man, Mack. You are the man. You take care, all right. You know, Mac and I, we do that every so often. The church foyer. We happen to see each other. If you thought, you know, somebody asked you, hey, are Mac and Les friends? You'd say, yeah, I think they might even golf together. I'm not sure, but I know they're friends. I see them talking together, but that's all we ever do. Just an inch deep. You know, that's pseudo relationship. Now, if Mac and I got in an automobile and we drove from California to Washington D.C. starting this afternoon, you Think that relationship might get to a different level? Yeah, you bet. Eventually it would get to the second level that we call and put your seatbelts on. The second level of relationships is called chaos. Chaos. What happens in chaos? Well, this is where you start to get real, and that's what creates the chaos. When you start to get genuine, and it's like, hey, Mac, man, it's good to see you. How you doing, brother? Wasn't that a good message? And I can't get over this weather's bad. Been fabulous, hasn't it? And, hey, how's the golf game? Hey, I wanted to ask you about your golf game. You know, I was at the cafe the other day. I saw John there. He said, oh, yeah, Mac and I, we just got back from plane 18. I thought, well, that's strange, because you keep saying, yeah, well, I'm going to invite you. Next time we go, we're going to invite you. I know. You got my phone number. I've given it to you 23 times. And yet you haven't invited me. And I'm just not sure what this is all about. Now you got that smirk on your face. I really don't understand what's going on with you. I used to think you were the man. You are no longer the man. And Mac's going, yikes, back off. All right, you can come golf. Okay. You know, and what's he going to do the next time he sees me in the church foyer? That's right. Yeah. Come on, kids, here comes Les. Let's get out of here. He's crazy. Well, that's chaos. A lot of times we stay in chaos a long time, but if we have the maturity, we can move to the third stage of relationship, which is emptiness. Emptiness. And we're not talking about an existential void here. We're talking about the capacity to empty yourself of your need to change another person, even your spouse. The capacity, everybody in this room and around the country listening in on this seminar today has to empty themselves of their need to change another person. That's a tough thing to do, isn't it? Yeah, it's a tough thing to do. It goes against everything within us. If you're like most people, if you're like me, you walk around this planet going, if people are more like Les Parrott, this would be a great planet to live on. Right? If people out here on this freeway would just drive more like me, this would be a great freeway to be on. Right. If people on this church board would just see things the way I see if this person I'm married to would just do things the way I want them done, you know, we could really have. I remember Leslie and I first got married. We're in our tiny little kitchen, we're making a salad together. I don't know why, we just thought that's probably something married couples do. And so we're making a salad together, and I look at Leslie and she's cutting carrots. And Leslie's left handed. I can't begin to tell you how she was holding that carrot and that knife. I just. And I said, leslie, what are you doing? And she says, I'm cutting carrots. I said, well, that's not the way you cut. And I taught her the right way to cut carrots. I left the room, I came back in a few minutes, and she was back to her way of cutting carrots. I said, les, what are you doing? Oh, yeah, yeah, I forgot. So she goes back to my way of cutting carrots. Week later, I come into the kitchen, she's cutting carrots by herself. How do you think she's cutting them? Yeah, Les, how many times we got to cover this ground? Well, we've been married for 16 years. How you think she cuts carrots today? Here's the goofy part. I was in our kitchen, we were having. I was answering mail and stuff on the phone and sitting at this little island that we have, and Leslie was making a salad 16 years into our marriage. I look across the way and all of a sudden it dawns on me. There she is cutting carrots the exact same way she's cut them ever since we've been married. Right. Never cut her fingers, amazingly, but she's still cutting those carrots that same way. And here's the funny part. I would have been disappointed if she was cutting them any other way. For some reason, I just like that about her. That's the way my Leslie cuts carrots. I like that. I must have, somewhere along the line, emptied myself and said, hey, I'm going to be married to a crazy carrot cutting fool the rest of my days. I don't use this right. Emptiness. It's a remarkable experience, you know, And.

[Leslie Parrott]

I've got to just tell you that it is an amazing thing when you're on the receiving end of that gift from your spouse. In fact, you know, every marriage, I'm pretty sure every marriage like us, has ongoing issues. One of the things we've struggled with for all 16 years of our marriage is this expectation when we're on the road, when Les is Driving that I might help with the maps and kind of be a navigator in the front seat. Now, when we got.

[Les Parrott]

That's because I grew up in a home where mom always did the navigating. She did the maps just like a loving wife should do.

[Leslie Parrott]

I gotta tell you, I was unprepared for this in marriage because in my family, my dad did all the maps. I mean, I truly. I think maps were my dad's hobby, you know, and he didn't want us to do any map reading because he did not trust us to fold them back up after we looked at them, you know. So I just. I mean, I don't know anything about it.

[Les Parrott]

We were in downtown Seattle and we were lost. It was dark, it was rainy. I could not find this restaurant. We were meeting another couple for the first time, and I said to Leslie, I said, you've got to help me. She gets out this map, and I know she's working at it so hard, she's pouring over it for five minutes. She said, les, I've looked all over this map. She said, this street does not exist in downtown Seattle. I looked over at her. The upper right hand corner of the map said Spokane, Washington.

[Leslie Parrott]

So here's the thing, you know, for all of our married life, you know, when you're lost and late, it's a point in attention. And I'm never helpful in these moments. And it's always been disappointing to Les. Well, this time, for whatever reason, he was just in that place and he just, you know, I looked up. He starts laughing. Finally, he is laughing so hard when he sees that I'm looking at the wrong city's map, that his shoulders are shaking. He has to pull over on the side of the road because he's laughing too hard to drive. And we just start laughing together. And even though we're late and it's dark and it's raining, we have this moment. And I have got to tell you, I have never felt so good in my life. It's like when you're with someone who knows your faults and has decided you're okay exactly that way and creates that feeling of safety. It is the safest place on earth to be in a relationship.

[Les Parrott]

In that place, emptiness leads to the final stage of relationship, which is genuine relationship and friend. This is where you just go, ah, you can be who you are and it doesn't matter. That's what we all long for. That's that longing for belonging. We have in the soul of our marriage that we. And when you arrive there, we have Friends we'll go out with and we come back at the end of the evening and I'll go, did you have a good time? Yeah, it was okay. Yeah. I said, I don't know if they understood my sense of humor. And then I tripped up those stairs. I know they think I'm a klutz, you know, and you start to evaluate. Then we have another group of friends we can go out with. Doesn't matter what happens all evening, we're going to have a good time. You know, if I fall flat on my face, they just go, oh yeah, that's less. He falls a lot. Pick him up. That's genuine relationship. It's no longer pseudo relationship. You've journeyed through a little bit of chaos to get there and now all of a sudden, just like sitting in a big fat leather easy chair, you just want to stay there. Oh, this is comfortable, right? And that's our prayer for you. That you would enjoy the depth of genuine relationship in your marriage and realize that many times conflict, chaos is the price you pay in, in order to get there and enjoy that experience. We know you're already there, many of you are enjoying that. But it's sometimes helpful to remember conflict is the price. If it's possible as far as it depends on you, try do what you can to live at peace with one another. Thanks folks. Great to be with you.

[John Fuller]

And what a great note of encouragement. And with, with that, we come to the end of today's Focus on the Family presentation from best selling authors and marriage experts, Dr. Les and Leslie Parrott.

[Jim Daly]

John, I love that last point that Les is making there about having the kind of relationship with your spouse where they know all your flaws, but you know what? They still love you. And it hit me when I heard that. It's similar to our relationship with Jesus, isn't it? It's the ultimate unconditional love. He still loves us. Even though he knows our flaws and our sins, he's still in our corner. And I think that's why our hearts fill with joy when we have that kind of marriage where even though our spouse sees all of our shortcomings, they still love and care about us. And I hope we in our marriages can express that back to our spouses. That's convicting to me because that's the way it should work, but sometimes I fail at it.

[John Fuller]

Well, I appreciate that, Jim. Over the 30 plus years we've been married, Deena and I have had plenty of times to optimize our conflict management. It really is a wonderful Thing to be known and still loved. And I've shared that with my kids. There is a deep satisfaction in knowing that she is aware of my every fault and yet she still forgives me at the end of the day and she overlooks those flaws that keep popping up. And I'm not a real easy person to live with sometime. I can be very challenging. And she is still loving and accepting and brings a real strength and resiliency to our family and to our relationship and our kids. Get to see that, that long term marriage is something I want to model well for them even when we fail from time to time.

[Jim Daly]

Well, you know, the flawless among us, please step forward, I guess is the best thing to say. It's just like Jesus writing in the sand, right? We tend to think so highly of ourselves, we forget that we have annoying little habits and we certainly aren't perfect. And that's just, you know, human nature. And you know how they say you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Well, I can remember a weekend that Gene and the boys went on a trip and I was home alone. And I'll tell you what, I don't like that I missed them.

[John Fuller]

Those are lonely moments. You just kind of hear every clock ticking, every silence in the house.

[Jim Daly]

I am not a good loner person. You know, I travel quite a bit with my roll of focus and I don't do well being at home alone. I can say that it's not me. I like people around me. I'm that kind of extrovert and I just miss them so much. I missed having Jean give me that hug and say, how's your day go? Or having the boys beg me to come and see what they're doing. The house was just empty and quiet. It felt like I was missing the very essence of family. And man, it really motivated me to call her and say, hey, I love you. When you're coming home, can you get back quicker?

[John Fuller]

And did she say yes? Yes, Jim, I'll drop everything and come home right now.

[Jim Daly]

I don't recall. I can't remember really. It's just so funny if you're thinking, wow, I wish my marriage was like that. Let me remind you, focus on the Family is here to help you. We have time tested resources that will give you helpful ideas. We have counselors who can spend some time with you on the phone. And we also have our Hope Restored Marriage intensives for couples who really need deep intervention. Over the past year, we have helped over 600,000 couples strengthen their relationship and yours could be next. Here's a note we got from Kim. She wrote, a year ago, my life changed forever. I found out my husband was having an affair with one of our close friends. My relationship with God was very close, but my husband was running away from him as fast as he could. With the help and strength we received through God and your ministry, my husband's life has turned around and our marriage is getting better every day. Although I would never have chosen this journey, it is worth all the pain to see my husband loving God, me and our children. God Bless. Focus on the family. And let me just extend that to everyone who prays for us and who supports us financially because she's really writing that letter to you too.

[John Fuller]

It is awesome to see the Lord using this ministry in such a way. And as you said, Jim, it's not us. We're just on the front lines. This is a team effort and our listeners are a big part of it.

[Jim Daly]

Well, they are. And this is the essence of all together ministry to help save marriages like Kim's. And if you'd like to help other marriages, please donate and pray for us today. The best way to give is with a monthly pledge that helps us to steady out the budget and we can count on that group of people who are monthly pledgers. If you normally give to Focus on the Family at the end of the year, take that amount and divide it by 12 and make that your monthly pledge amount. We'd be so grateful for that evening out of the giving. And if you can make that monthly pledge today, I'd like to send you a copy of the book the Parrots wrote on dealing with conflict called the Good how conflict can bring you closer. And that will be our way of saying thank you. And if you can't make a monthly commitment, we understand that we'll send you the book for a one time donation of any amount.

[John Fuller]

Yeah, you can donate today. We've got the link in the episode notes or call 1-800-the letter A in the word family. And as we mentioned last time, if you'd like to identify some of the trigger points that might fuel consumer conflict in your marriage, visit us online and take our free reactive cycle assessment. You'll learn what's causing your disagreements, how to navigate those challenges, and how to build a stronger relationship. Again, it's free and it's on our website. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Take a moment, if you would please, and leave a rating about us in your podcast app and then share this episode with a friend who might need some experience encouragement. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.

[Leslie Parrott]

If the fights with your spouse have become unbearable, if you feel like you can't take it anymore, there's still hope. Hope Restored Marriage Intensives have helped thousands of couples like yours. Our biblical counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face them together. Call us at 1-866-875-2915. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. That's 1-866-875-2915.