The acronym “FACES” is not my invention, even though I cannot remember from where I picked it in my voracious reading habits. The acronym forms the foundation for understanding one’s mate, and helps the mediator to have a structured approach to managing marital or other family conflicts. You will agree with me that disputes do not fall from the sky like an unidentified flying object that strikes marriage mates like a thunderbolt without warning. Neither is a conflict like a storm that gathers pace with sudden ferocity, giving its victims little time to pick their pieces and run for cover.
Conflicts are like a little seed that germinates in favourable conditions, grows to a fragile seedling and, if well nurtured, into a towering tree with abundance of fruitage to feed everyone around it. If unmanaged, such conflicts can break a marriage or family relationship.
The ability to manage conflicts and effectively resolve disputes in marriage depends on the FACES your spouse wears. By FACES, I do not mean “angry” or “pleasant” or other temperamental, or physical, aspects of one’s facial expressions. Would it surprise you to hear that a marriage will make or break depending on our family background, our attitude towards either the relationship or the conflict itself, whether or not we have a habit of openly communicating with our spouses or family rlations, our experience in handling relationships, and our personal skills in building and restoring such relationships. If you are keen, you will immediately notice that the italicized characters form the acronym FACES. That is what we are all made of.
Family Background
Each one of us is made of multiple elements of our family background. It is no surprise that most dysfunctional families beget emotionally distressed offsprings easily susceptible to unstable relationships. Whenever I hold private sessions with marital disputants, I pay keen attention to their family background to understand their emotional make-up, traumatic experiences that contribute to their attitude towards relational situations, and so forth, and so forth. A close friend, who I will call Martin, narrated his deep-seated fear that his marriage was near break-up. According to him, his sister never sustains a relationship. Martin attributed all this to the unbridled relationship between his parents, which was punctuated by violence and psychological torment through which their mother endured for their sake. I have heard such naratives time and again. So?
It helps to know the family background of your mate way before marriage. Courtship provides the perfect opportunity to peer beyond the face and ready oneself to a life of ups-and-downs. Indeed understanding the family background of one’s mate serves to prepare one with foresight to support their mate in times of emotional and psychological need.
Your Attitude
Premier ADR Consultants never tire from reminding our clients and readers that no conflict is intractable. Having said that, it is also true to say that attitude counts. Having a positive attitude towards one’s mate, the relationship itself and the conflict, contributes to effective management of the conflict. If the conflict escalates into a full-blown dispute, one’s attitude towards the other party, and towards the possibility of resolution determines their relational destiny. The belief that the spouses will never reconcile leads to just that. No resolution.
The Willingness to Freely Communicate
Always remember that communication is the key that unlocks all barriers to healthy marital and family relationships. Moreover, that is the mediator’s most effective tool of trade. As we have pointed out in our previous write-ups, the mediator’s task is primarily to (a) help the disputants to open up their lines of communication; (b) improve their communication; (c) understand one another’s view of the relationship; and (d) identify their shared interests and benefits in reaching settlement on mutually agreeable terms. Conversely, walling-up serves to build communication barriers to the ends of misunderstanding.
Indeed, conflicts are the unnecessary fruitage of breakdown in communication. Mates who are ready to bring down the walls have a future to be proud of.
Experience is the Best Teacher (???)
Even though there are many who do not agree with this expression, it is widely accepted as the truth. However, the lesson might, in some cases, come too late in the day making the experience worthless in itself. Having said that, it is appreciable that mates who have had to surmount difficulties in life are more likely to be enduring in hard times when their relationship is put to test. Perhaps, such experience sharpens their skills to deal with similar circumstances in the future.
Are You Skilled to Deal with the Adversities of a Strained Relationship?
There is little doubt that communication skills, experience and attitude towards our relationships, one’s mate and the particular circumstance by which the relationship is tried is decisive. But not all are skilled in managing differences with one’s mate or relation in the family setting. That is where expert mediators come in.
Premier ADR Consultants work hand-in-hand with marriage mates with strained marital relations on the verge of breakup or separation to resolve their disputes by means of our transformative conflict management and dispute resolution strategies. We help parties salvage, restore and maintain healthy family relationships in a safe and peaceful environment with guaranteed privacy and confidentiality.
Our expeditious, cost-effective and party-controlled techniques guarantee consumer satisfaction resulting from the voluntary and jointly generated win-win outcomes. We provide the best alternative to the all-familiar costly, time-consuming, adversarial and often emotive court litigation that only works to weaken and ultimately destroy marital and family relations.