Yes—we spend a vast amount of emotional energy attempting to solve what we cannot. While this may seem like a defeating reality, it’s actually a clarifying one: our work in marriage is not simply to resolve conflict but to integrate fruitful ways to stay connected to each other throughout it. Another piece of research supports this. Professor Ted Huston discovered through a thirteen-year study with 168 couples that failure in marriage is not the result of conflict but of a weak emotional connection.2 A strong emotional connection, not the avoidance of conflict, is a significant predictor of
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