Everybody Wins: The Chapman Guide to Solving Conflicts without Arguing Author: Gary Chapman | Language: English | ISBN:
B001E2OASG | Format: EPUB
Everybody Wins: The Chapman Guide to Solving Conflicts without Arguing Description
Every couple has disagreements. All too often, though, when we engage in arguments, our goal is not to resolve the conflict at hand, but rather, to win the fight. Unfortunately, when you win an argument, your spouse is the loser, and nobody wants to be or live with a loser. When you resolve a conflict, your spouse becomes your friend. Good marriages are based on friendship, not on winning arguments. Now, Gary Chapman provides couples with a simple blueprint for achieving win-win solutions to everyday conflicts and disagreements. By learning how to listen empathetically, respecting each other's ideas and feelings, and understanding why particular issues are so important to their spouse, couples can find solutions that result not only in resolving the conflict at hand, but also leave both partners feeling loved, listened to, and appreciated.
- File Size: 1039 KB
- Print Length: 128 pages
- Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; 1 edition (December 18, 2006)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001E2OASG
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,879 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Do you ever find yourself arguing with your spouse? Going around and around about an issue with little resolve? If so, then Gary Chapman, the director of Marriage and Family Life Consultants and bestselling author of THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES, says you're not alone. In fact, every couple has disagreements. In marriage, conflict is inevitable. But arguing is a choice.
In this short, focused title, Chapman explores what's so bad about arguing and why it's important to resolve conflicts of every size. He challenges readers to identify their most painful arguments as well as which three issues have consumed the most time and energy over the past year. Chapman believes that no matter what arguments you are having with your spouse, it's essential to look for resolution. He argues that conflicts within a relationship arise out of our uniqueness.
Chapman believes that the answer to conflict resolution is not in trying to rid ourselves of our differences but in discovering how to make our differences into assets rather than liabilities. The goal of a good, healthy marriage is learning to work together as a team and discovering resolution that pulls the couple together rather than apart.
Drawing examples from his own interactions with couples as a counselor, the book offers a variety of stories that most married people can relate to. For instance, Chapman describes Iris and Jerry, a couple who decided to repaint their house. They agreed on every color until it came to painting the bathroom. That's where the argument began: Iris wanted green while Jerry preferred blue. As each spouse makes their case why their color is the best, Chapman surmises that both parties are still in arguing mode and haven't moved to resolution mode.
This is one of Chapman's simplest books, yet it is perhaps his most powerful. Stepping away from his familiar "Love Languages" concept, he develops a more elegant approach to marriage issues. Fundamentally, it's about creating harmony from differences in marriage. For Chapman, it's not about getting rid of the differences around which conflict centers itself. It's about changing our approach to these differences -- seeing them not as problems, but as latent strengths. It's about moving from a conflictual mindset to a collaborative one.
The key to Chapman's whole approach here is summed up as follows: "The answer to conflict resolution is ... in learning how to make our assets into differences rather than liabilities." A couple must use their differences to their own advantage. This premise is quite brilliant. If a couple took the time to think about this one idea and to explore its implications, a great deal of positive individual and marital development could result.
From this perspective, differences cease to appear essentially conflictual. Furthermore, as latent strengths, they contain keys and clues to how they can be used to create marital harmony.
It's clear from the chapter headings that creating harmony from difference is the end goal of the book:
1. What's So Bad About Arguing
2. Why Is It So Important to Resolve Conflicts?
3. It's All About Attitude
4. Conflict Resolution Requires Listening
5. Listening Leads to Understanding
6. Understanding Leads to Resolution
7.
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