Hints for Healing When Tensions Build
Alternate Title: The Importance of Touch in Building Family – Part 2
In Part 1, I talked about the simple act of touching being a practical tool for bonding. Even when it’s soft and subtle, touch can be powerful.
The same is true during conflict. When in the midst of a heated fight, gentle touch
helps de-escalate tension.
A couple once visited us for marital counseling. In response to her pain from something he’d done, she pulled away from him. He didn’t understand what he had done wrong, so he was offended when she rejected him.
By the time they came to us, they were barely speaking, with both occasionally threatening the possibility of divorce. (Though they both were also saying, “The thing that scares me most is that he/she might leave me.) In other words, emotions were deep and not always rational.
They arrived in separate cars, and sat on the couch. He clung to the right arm, she hugged the left. After a bit, we asked them to move closer together and suggested that he put his arm around her. When they were touching, the blaming and the anger cooled. They even glanced at each other a few times.
However, a misunderstanding caused tensions to rise again, and the arm came down, the space between them increased, and the threat for divorce came up again.
Many couples go through similar scenes, and like this couple, they often reconcile. However, things can work out more quickly and with less drama with the application of a few guidelines.
In a hostile environment, vulnerability is high, especially if you’re hurting from something that’s already happened. It doesn’t feel safe to be close, much less to touch, as if space offers protection from being hurt again. Rather than reach out, “my” self-protective nature wants to reject–or hurt–“you” before you hurt or reject me.
It’s hard to take the first vulnerable step when you’ve been hurt. Meanwhile, the tension and strife continue.
However, for me, at the same time I want to push away, every fiber of my being often longs to be embraced and comforted. While maintaining a safe distance, my inner man is likely crying, “Please hold me! Hug me and say you’re sorry I’m hurting.” But it took a long time for me to learn to verbalize those feelings.
If the relationship is more important than winning an argument (and 99.9% of the time it is), choose to be vulnerable, and use touch to help prevent the tension from becoming intense. If things get out of hand, try touch as a way to de-escalate the drama.
Touch helps build a bond and maintain the peace n several ways. Some ways you can use touch to help is:
- Every day, cuddle and talk when you first get home or first go to bed to strengthen the bond and thus deepen trust.
- Daily cuddling and sharing makes it obvious when you don’t want to cuddle. It serves as a signal that something is not right in the relationship. You can then talk it through before it gets buried and grows, becoming a major issue.
- When a difference arises, touch as you seek to understand each other and
settle differences. (Hold hands, lightly carress or rub his/her back, place hands on thighs, touch toes or knees under the table, or such.) Maintain a bridge of touch. Even fragile, tentative contact communicates a desire to reconcile. - If your inner man wants peace and unity, it helps to verbalize that—even if you feel vulnerable doing so. Sharing the desire for unity opens the door for changing directions and tone of the discussion. True victory is oneness, peace, and joy in the relationship. Stating that goal helps elevate it above the temporary discord.
- Ask forgiveness—and forgive. Make sure things are clear between you.
- Hug to seal the union.
If the hostility is so intense that the thought of touching is revolting and out of the question, it’s probably time to take a break, get quiet before the Lord, and take a pop quiz with 1 Corinthians 13 and see if your love has failed.
Ask yourself, am I being arrogant? Seeking my own? Being provoked, and taking into account a wrong suffered? Or am I being patient, kind, bearing all things, and enduring all things? (1 Cor. 13:4-7),
In His final hours with His disciples, Jesus said, “And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them (followers); that they may be one, just as We are one” (John 17:21-22, emphasis added).
Some days, it’s hard to remain one with another person, even the one you love the most. But we’re not alone. Jesus passed on His glory to help us be one just as He is one with His Father.
It’s important to Jesus that we be one. I’m not sure how to appropriate His glory for that purpose, except by taking up my cross daily and following Him. That means death, and it often requires death to self–to my rights, to being heard, to my . . ..
I have to die to winning the momentary victory, if I want the win the battle to be one with my mate. I need to die to self in the fight to find unity and peace.
When we are one, that’s a strong family. It also brings peace and joy to us and glory to God. The only way we can do that is by appropriating His glory. Touch is a simple trick to help us get there.