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Tomorrow can be different from today.
Our lives often leave us feeling hopeless—like nothing will ever change. But perspective is everything. When you know where to look, hope can be found in the spaces and places you least expect.
Join Jason Gore (Lead Pastor of Hope Community Church) for a fresh perspective, practical steps, and weekly encouragement that hope really is possible… even in real life.
When we talk about conflict,
it's such a scary word, right?
Right. We're in a conflict.
I really like to think about conflict at its core.
It's just a difference of opinion. Yeah.
It's a difference of opinion. You have an opinion.
I have an opinion. If we're going out for ice cream,
we're to pick up one court.
You and I. You want chocolate? I want vanilla. Oh man.
We have a conflict and we can either keep it what I like
to call little C conflict
or we are reasonable about the whole thing.
Or it can become a big C conflict
and it can ruin our relationship.
Yeah.
Welcome to the Hope and Real Life podcast with Jason Gore.
Our team is passionate
and committed to bringing you more hope in the everyday
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Let's get the conversation started.
Hope in real life family. So glad to be here with you.
We have an episode for you today.
We're calling Listen face, the Friction
Conflict Communication 1 0 1
because who of us does not have a little bit
of conflict in our lives?
I'm here with a very special guest, Mrs. April Miller.
April, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Yes. Why don't you tell us just a little bit
about yourself and maybe why you would be uniquely qualified
ah, to talk on this topic.
Communication. Well, I hope I'm qualified.
I, uh, I've been a therapist
for about 18 and a half years now.
A licensed therapist. Uh,
I help start the group life care counseling
and coaching here locally.
We have several offices now.
Uh, went to Gordon CommonWell Seminary, um,
which Billy Graham helped start the campus
that I was at at Charlotte.
Um, I love marriage. I am married.
Um, but yeah, conferences,
Conversation. John,
John. John who's actually a great guy. Miller.
So for those listening, I do know April personally know her
husband John better.
Mm-Hmm. And, uh, great guy. Yes. Three kids.
Three kids. Yes.
All in that starting to launch phase of life.
Yeah. Yes. Mm-Hmm.
Well, we are so excited to have you here. Thank you.
With this, uh, you know, we've got, we talked pre-show.
We got a lot of questions to jump into.
I'm gonna surprise you with one right out of the gate. Yes.
I wanna know the biggest fight
that you've ever been in in your life
and who it was with and what it was over.
This is exactly what I was talking about.
Come on. Reel us in. Biggest fight.
I mean, do you wanna go public arena?
Are you trying to go private? I can narrow in.
There's been many. Hey, our listeners.
I don't avoid conflicts.
Our listeners won't know. You can make it up.
Just give us, give us a good one.
Tell Us About the time I the
Wake County School Board.
How about the time John didn't take out the
trash. Did that ever, that's
Just, yeah.
I mean, he is fine. Jason.
Okay. Yay. Okay. Okay. Let's do this. Sorry.
Let, so we're talking about conflict
inside of communication.
Yes. Communication. How
to communicate well inside of conflict.
Let's just, just start baseline. Yes.
What, what's our definition of conflict?
That's a great question. And I like that you asked it
because what, what are we doing here when we talk about
conflict, it's such a scary word, right?
Right. We're in a conflict.
I really like to think about conflict at its core.
It's just a difference of opinion. Yeah.
It's a difference of opinion. You have an opinion.
I have an opinion. If we're going out for ice cream, we
to pick up one court, you
and I you want chocolate, I want vanilla.
Oh man. We have a conflict
and we can either keep it what I like
to call little C conflict
or we are reasonable about the whole thing.
Or it can become a big C conflict
and it can ruin our relationship.
Yeah. I've heard of churches
that have split over the color of the carpet.
Right. That's just people doing a difference
of opinion very poorly.
Yeah. So, and in marriage,
since we're gonna be talking about marriage,
I was just gonna share, I remember my first couple of years
were rough with John and uh, I remember
after one big fight, I remember this having this dawning
where I was like, man, if we could just not do that again,
we're so good together if we just don't do that.
And I remember when it finally dawned on me, you know what,
we're always gonna do that.
Yeah. There's always gonna be conflict.
'cause there's always gonna be differences of opinion.
Right. If we can just do it better is really what's gonna
make marriage better.
Yeah. I think, you know, and I, you know, as,
as a pastor also a part of who I'm, you know, I talk
to especially younger couples
and it's almost like they, there's, Hey, we,
it didn't seem like we used to fight.
Mm. And now like we have, like we disagree on things
and there's like this huge surprise,
like, okay, so wait a minute.
You were raised in one home under one set of values. Mm-Hmm.
With an entire set of life circumstances.
And this person was raised in a different home. Mm-Hmm.
With a completely different set of life circumstances.
And most of the time, if we're honest,
you probably haven't talked about all of
that stuff before you get married.
And then we act surprised that there's Yeah.
There's conflict when we get in there. Yeah.
Um, well let's do this.
What, what have, what have you seen, what are some
of the most common sources of conflict inside of, you know,
you said marriage, so maybe inside
of marriages, inside of relationships. Yeah.
Right. Differences of opinion
around those high value topics are the ones
where we're gonna see come show up in our marriage,
in our, in more hurtful ways.
Um, certainly finances, that's always a big one.
You've got your spenders, you've got your savers.
Even though you know you have someone who's struggling
to stay gainfully employed, that can be an issue.
Um, parenting,
not having a similar parenting philosophy in play can cause
a lot of differences of opinion slash conflict.
Um, household chores is a big one.
Different expectations about who's gonna be doing what Yeah.
Or who's doing their fair share.
Um, and then I'd say another big one is extended family
parents in-laws, adult siblings.
Um, there can be a lot of differences of opinion around
how we handle those relationships.
That doesn't happen in my family. I have
the best in-laws in the world.
And if they're listening, love you guys.
Thank you for being great. Okay.
Well played. Uh, alright.
How, how about this, how about what's a,
what does a healthy disagreement look like?
Because you said, I mean these things, like you said,
these could be small C conflicts
or maybe even if they're big C conflicts,
what does it look like to engage those in a healthy way
versus having, uh, say destructive conflict? Mm-Hmm.
Yeah. I like to think about it. Everybody's got needs.
Yep. Everybody has needs.
Who are we gonna go to with those needs?
We wanna go to the people that we know the best.
That we feel the safest with.
Expressing those needs in healthy ways is
what creates healthy relationships.
And so I'd like
to share a little bit about something I call a butter
sandwich for delivering a need.
Okay. That I think can be helpful for people.
Would you mind if I did that? I
Would love to take notes while you're doing
that. You go right ahead.
All right. So I like for people
to think about conflict in the form of
what I call a butter sandwich.
Right? You got a layer of bread, you got a layer
of butter, and you gotta a layer of bread.
Right? When you're thinking about a butter
sandwich, you start with the butter.
When you deliver it, you deliver it bread, butter, bread.
All right? But when you're thinking about
conflict, that's the butter.
I want you to think about what is my need or my want?
What is it that I'm after? Don't stay in the circumstances.
What's really at the core, I want you to respect me
or I need more of your time.
And can you get it into I phrases that's
where we stay away from the s and all of that.
Right. Right, right, right. So can I think about what I want
or need in a couple of sentences and get it into I phrases?
I call that the butter, the bread.
When you deliver the bread,
the bread is reminding the other person, Hey,
we're on the same team here.
We're wearing the same color jersey. Yeah.
We're on the same side of the field.
You may play offense, I may be special teams,
but we are on the same team.
Yeah. You don't have to say team to your partner.
You could, but whatever you're gonna say in that beginning,
you're just reminding them,
I really like having you as my pastor.
I really wanna be for you.
But, and that's why I call it a butter sandwich.
You don't have to use the word, but,
but that's where you're trans transitioning.
Having said that into here's my felt need that I'm having.
Yeah. And if you can, some people won't let you get
to the back end of the bread 'cause they wrote a
jump in when they hear the need.
But if you can, the back end is similar to the front end.
You're just reminding them we're on the same team. Yeah.
And I'm telling you this because I love you.
I love being married to you. I love being your partner.
I think this will help us be better together. Yeah.
So bread, we're on the same team.
Butter, here's my felt need and eye phrases. And then bread.
I'm telling you this because I
love you and we're on the same team.
So that to me is a healthier way to deliver something
that could be a difference of opinion. Yeah.
That's great. Super practical. Mm-Hmm. Appreciate that.
Mm-Hmm. Do, uh, I, my wife
and I, Diana, when in our earlier years of marriage,
I can specifically remember
and somehow by God's grace, we, we just stumbled on this
idea of recognizing when we were, uh, in conflict.
Yeah. That whole analogy.
'cause I, I was a collegiate athlete.
She was a collegiate athlete.
But we started talking of, okay, wait a minute.
Like one of us would kind of raise our hand, throw a flag
and say, Hey, definitely seems like we're approaching this
from opposite sides of the table.
Yeah. Like we, we should,
what if we approach this like we are same team Mm-Hmm.
Come around on the same side of the table.
If anything's on the table
or across from us, it's the problem that we have.
Right. Right. And then we can kind of approach it
Together. Excellent. Yes. That's
exactly the mentality.
Hope in real life family.
I want to take a moment and let you know about a resource
that we have for you for your own personal development,
spiritual enrichment, and really a way for you
to find a bit more hope in real life.
We have a tool for you called the Hope in Real Life app.
It offers things like parenting tips, financial resources,
marriage insights, uh, if you're looking for it,
there's even Bible reading plans in there.
And there's a community
where you can even share prayer requests
and know that someone is praying for you for whatever it is
that you have going on in your life.
It's available right now in the Apple App
store or in Google Play.
You can search hope in real life in both stores,
or you can use the download link that is in the show notes.
Remember, tomorrow can be better than today
and hope is possible even in real life.
So you mention that you'd go bread, butter,
and then sometimes before we can get through the butter,
that's when things even heat up a bit more.
What advice would you have for couples
who maybe struggle staying calm
during a heated discussion conflict, maybe not being able
to make it all the way through the butter to get
to the, the bottom slice of bread.
Yeah. With this, I think I wanna jump ahead into,
I wanna talk a little bit about, um, the Gottman's.
They're a couple. John and Julie Gottman.
That's the lens I use when I do marriage counseling. Okay.
They're researchers who've pulled together a lot of data
around how couples thrive or how couples deteriorate.
Uh, they like to talk about, you know, those who are
together and married for 50 years
and still in love versus those who get divorced and
or maybe they live together,
but they're just cohabitating at that point.
Yeah. They kind of call 'em the masters
versus the disasters.
Um, one of the things they discovered in their research was
a concept they like to refer to as flooding.
Flooding. Okay. It's a physiological thing
that happens in your body.
Another way to look at it is, it's called fight or flight.
It's when your endocrine system gets involved,
adrenaline gets dumped into your system.
That's when we usually make the best decisions.
Yeah. Your buddy, your body is literally preparing itself
for fight or flight.
Yeah. And we've added a couple more.
No, you know, freeze and fawn and all that,
but let's just stay with fight or flight.
And like you just said, the blood is running
to your extremities in order to prepare itself for that.
And it's leaving key organs, including your brain,
that frontal cortex where you do a lot of that reasoning
and decision making is actually being
deprived during that time.
So when a couple falls into flooding,
whether it's one person
or it's both of them, one
of the most important things they can do is
to start identifying
that physiological change when it happens
and stopping the conversation.
Mm-Hmm. When we push forward, like you were alluding to,
is when we start to get really
destructive, we're not thinking.
Well, that's when you'll hear things later
like, I don't know why I said that. I didn't mean that
Hypothetically my wife would say, I don't,
I don't know why I threw the phone book at you.
Something. Exactly.
Okay. Yes. Sorry babe.
So we wanna, each one tie was really funny. We still left.
It really happened back when you had phone books.
Did was you so there
at least, you know, it was a long time ago.
Yes. It's a long time ago.
So, yes. How about this active listening?
We talked about that a little bit.
How can active listening play a healthier
role in our conflict?
Can we maybe define active listening? Yes.
And then, uh, how does
that fit into this whole idea of conflict? Yeah.
I think when we say that we're labeling something,
most people have seen it, but it's an active role play.
Where you have communication is two people.
You have a communicator and you have a receiver. Right?
So as an example, if I told you I have a red car in the
parking lot, you're immediately gonna have an
image of a red car in your head.
Mm-Hmm. But if it's the same one that I have in my mind,
the odds are pretty much against that.
Right. If, if you have a married couple
and maybe they've owned the same red car,
they may be thinking about that same car,
but they still may be thinking about the car I have in my
mind, so active listening, active role playing in
that I'm communicating you more details
and you are catching those details
and you're able to, you're listening so intently,
you're able to reflect them back to me
before you give me your opinion about them.
So if I say I have a red car in the
parking lot, you have an image.
If I say it's a muscle car, I probably changed your image.
Right. You're probably thinking I drive a Volvo. Right.
Uh, but if I say it's a muscle car, it's
Now it's a Camaro or it's Yeah.
It's a Mustang gt. We're getting a little closer. Right.
Inactive listening.
You then reflect back to me what you've heard.
So I heard you say you have a red car. Okay, try it.
I have a red car. What did I
Tell you? I've heard you say a red
car, Uhhuh
And Yes. What
Else did I tell you? And it, it's
a Mustang gt. Mm-Hmm. Yes. Yeah.
And it's a, a muscle car. So
Now you and I we're gonna have less,
uh, misunderstanding. Yeah. What
I'm talking about. I just wanna highlight
that Hailey in our studio right now
is really getting a kick out
of you leading me down this road
and encouraging me to actively listen. So
I just, ah, is there something he doesn't do well?
Is that if we stumbled on something earlier?
No, no, no. Yeah. Yeah.
So active listening will help reduce misunderstanding
and it slows things down.
And then more importantly,
and this is something we were having a little
pre-conversation about in marriage,
sometimes people just wanna be heard Jason.
Right. If I'm talking to John,
if I know he's heard my points,
if I feel like I've been given the privilege of that
and he's actively listening to me
and telling me what he's hearing, if I know I've been heard,
there's a lot of times I can release something.
Mm-Hmm. If you've got more skin in the game
about that, fine.
Let's go your direction.
I know I've been heard, I'm comfortable letting it go.
Now it's, I'm fighting with you
and I'm fighting for it when I feel
like you're not really hearing me.
Right. So using active listening can
help reduce some of that tension. Yeah.
So a a bit of, of the active listening, how does, um,
agreement around the check?
'cause if we're in conflict, we might not be talk,
like if we're, use the example we're talking about ice
cream, at some point you have
to choose one of the ice creams.
But maybe if you're talking about a consistent behavior
that maybe needs to change, um,
because it's one thing to actively listen.
What, what would you say?
So we actively listen and so you've been heard. Mm-Hmm.
But now I feel like, um, is there a need to come
to a place of agreement?
And so if it's about behavior, so I've heard you say
that I do this and I do this and I do this.
I don't necessarily agree with you. Mm-Hmm.
Or I do agree with you, but here's why. Mm-Hmm.
And let me explain that away, why I do do that. Mm-Hmm.
Um, any steps or ideas on how to navigate that?
I mean, you're kind of getting into a
full counseling session now. We,
What I was trying get, do I need
to pay you $150 to be able to No.
And it's more than that anyway. Um, um, no,
I, I was thinking with copay and insurance, I don't know.
Well, that would help. Yeah.
That, that, that bring it down.
Um, I think a good thing here maybe for us
to think about is, um, when you are asking for a need
to be met or presenting something,
your partner can only give you a yes,
a no or a compromise.
Hmm. Yes. I understood what you wanted
and I can give that to you.
Yeah. No, I, I've actively listened. I know what you want.
I don't, I don't agree and I don't wanna do that.
Or a compromise. Okay, I hear what you're saying,
but in this instance, could we do it this way?
Or I could do that if you would do. Right.
And then they've just presented one side,
and now you get to give a yes a no or a compromise.
Mm-Hmm. And you start moving towards one another.
But if you can just simplify it in your head,
conflict is just a difference of opinion.
And really all I can, when I get my felt need out there,
all I can get from my partner is a yes,
a no or a compromise.
And then we respond back to that.
So without getting into a full counseling session. Yeah.
No, that's great. That's super helpful. It
would look Like that. And,
and I know we actually wanted
to talk about compromise a bit too.
Mm-Hmm. So that's a big word.
When you hear people talk about, uh, healthy marriages.
H how can com couples actually compromise
w without feeling like they're giving up too much? Mm-Hmm.
Yes. And even in the question, it's already sort of, uh,
hinting at an error.
Right? Think about a boat, a row boat, small boat.
When you have two people in a boat,
if they lean out the boat gets really tippy.
Mm-Hmm. But if they lean in,
the boat becomes far more stable.
And so if you're already coming into compromise thinking
about, I may have to give up too much,
you're already in a win-lose mindset, right?
That's not what compromise should be around, around.
Compromise is where can we meet so
that everybody's gonna win something,
but everybody's gonna have
to give up a little something to get there.
When one of us wins
and one of us loses, we're both really losing.
So like the Bible talks about we wanna be of one accord.
What can I do so that we can get into that same space?
Don't think of compromise as losing.
Think of it as finding that place of accord
Hope in real life family.
We are gonna press pause on this conversation.
We figure if you're listening to this while driving to work,
you're probably sitting in your parking spot.
And it's probably about time to go in for that meeting.
Uh, we will be here when you are ready to pick up the rest
of this episode, and we will see you on the other side.
Thanks for tuning into this episode
of The Hope in Real Life podcast.
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