What happens to you in conflict situations?  That is what we wanted to know from those who responded to a recent survey we ran in our January newsletter.

Written by: Dr. Brett Sparks, Licensed Psychologist, Certified Intensive Lead Therapist, National Institute of Marriage

What happens to you in conflict situations?  That is what we wanted to know from those who responded to a recent survey we ran in our January newsletter.  We had respondents think about a recent argument and then answer two questions about how they felt and what their core fear was.  Respondents were asked to choose one feeling from the following list: hurt, sad, angry, anxious, shamed, guilty, confused, scared, wearied/apathetic, or other.  They were also asked to choose one core fear from the following list: rejected, disconnected, inadequacy/failure, invalidated/devalued, misunderstood, helpless/powerless, unloved, unimportant, or other.  One hundred people responded to our survey-Thank you!

Here’s who took our survey:

• Just over three quarters of the respondents were female
• Nearly 90% were married
• Of those not married, 4% were never married and 7% had been married before but were currently single
• 93% of those responding were between the ages of 30 to 59 with 41% between the ages of 40 and 49, 29% between 30 and 39, and 23% between 50-59

Here’s a brief sketch of what we found:(*A more detailed description of the results follows the summary below)

• Hurt and anger were the two feelings that most of our respondents described in their conflicts
• Men endorsed hurt and anger equally
• Women were less likely to feel anger than hurt in conflict
• In regard to core fear, inadequacy/failure and invalidated/devalued were the most identified among our survey respondents
• Men clearly chose inadequacy/failure as their primary fear
• More women chose invalidated/devalued than inadequacy/failure as their primary fear but the difference was minimal

Summing it up:

Not surprisingly hurt and anger are the two emotions most endorsed in the midst of conflict.  The two go hand in hand and many believe that anger is a secondary emotion that derives from hurt or a sense of injustice.  Anger can be charging and tends to feel stronger or more emboldening than sadness, anxiety, fatigue, or other feelings that might drag us down.  Unfortunately, anger often leads us to act in ways that we can later regret.  Identifying one’s feelings and understanding where they come from can be a start to then responding in a way that is most consistent with who you believe the Lord wants you to be.  Keep in mind that your feelings are valuable sources of information.  Take stock today of how you commonly feel when there are difficulties in your most intimate relationships so that you can best use the information that your feelings might give you.

It is not pleasant to have the experience of feeling invalidated, inadequate, devalued or like a failure.  These are the core fears that a large percentage of those who responded to our surveys indicated that they experience in conflict situations with their spouse.  Have you ever considered that there may be underlying core fears that you may not want to experience because they do not feel very good?  It is our belief that we each have core fears and these are primary motivators for the way we might behave in any given situation, especially in our most intimate relationships.  In other words, we tend to act or react in ways to protect us from experiencing the fears.  For example, someone who is afraid of failure may become exceptionally hard working, never satisfied with anything less than success.  While this may look great at the workplace as that person climbs the ladder, in his or her marriage it may look like avoidance, lack of caring, controlling, etc.  Like feelings, these fears are important to shed some light on so that each of us can better understand why we do what we do.  Once we identify them, care about them, and understand them, we have a better chance of responding in a way that maintains our integrity and allows us to be the man or woman that God desires for us.

For more information about core fears consider reading our new book DNA of Relationships for Couples.  In addition, you can view our website for various articles on similar or related topics.

* A more detailed look at the overall results:

Feelings (90 respondents):

• The most typical response to conflict was to feel hurt (32%)
• The second most typical response to conflict was to feel anger (24%)
• A combined 22% felt either scared or wearied/apathetic

Core Fears (89 respondents):

• The most typical fear identified was inadequacy/failure** (26%)
• The second most typically identified fear was invalidated/devalued (24%)
• 12% of respondents experienced a fear of rejection

Here is how the two genders stacked up:

Feelings (19 men and 70 women respondents):

• Hurt and anger were endorsed by an equal number of men as the feeling they experience in conflict for a total of 74% of respondents
• Hurt was the feeling that most women identified as the feeling they experience in relationship to conflict (31%) and 20% identified anger as the feeling
• About 11% of both men and women identified feeling scared in reaction to conflict.
• Women were more likely than men to identify sadness (6% to 0), wearied/apathetic (13% to 5%),
• Men were slightly more likely than women to identify feeling confused as a reaction to conflict (5% to 1%)

Core Fears (18 men and 70 women respondents):

• 40% of the men identified inadequacy/failure as a core fear
• 26% of women identified invalidated/devalued and 21% identified inadequacy/failure as core fears
• Fears of rejection or invalidated/devalued were equally endorsed by a combined 33% of the men
• More of the women endorsed fear of disconnection (7%) and unimportance (7%) than the men (0 on both)

A comparison of age groups:

Across all age groups feeling hurt followed by anger were the two most common feelings identified in response to conflict.

People in the 40-49 age group most frequently identified their core fear as invalidated/devalued (30% of 37 respondents) while those 30-39 and 50-59 identified inadequacy/failure (31% of 26 respondents and 22% of 18, respectively) as  theirs.  Although having very few respondents, those in their 20s most often chose disconnection as their core fear (40% of 5 respondents).

A look at marital differences:

Both married (32% of 79 respondents) and unmarried (40% of 10 respondents) most commonly identified hurt as their primary feeling.

For unmarrieds, sadness was the second feeling most commonly endorsed (20%) whereas for marrieds anger (22%) was the second most common feeling identified.

26% (of 78 respondents) of married respondents chose invalidated/devalued while 23% chose inadequacy/failure as their core fear.

40% (of 10 respondents) of unmarried respondents chose inadequacy/failure while 30% chose rejected as their core fear.

**On a side note, it would have been interesting to have separated these (e.g., inadequacy from failure and invalidated from devalued) to see if there is a difference in how they would have been endorsed.  In other words, were respondents endorsing inadequacy or failure, invalidated or devalued?  Stay tuned as that may be a future survey.

Note: Please keep in mind that definitive conclusions should not be based on the results of this survey.  The information given here is merely descriptive and is intended to inform and perhaps generate ideas for further study.  It is not intended to stand alone as scientific study.