You only have a certain amount of emotional energy. When you’re trying to resolve conflict, you can use that energy either to fix the blame or to fix the problem. You don’t have enough energy to do both. So, you need to ask yourself what’s more important—to blame the other person or to resolve the conflict.
When it comes to solving problems, you should decide ahead of time that you’re going to fight fair. Within your marriage or family, set ground rules for words you’ll never use—words that serve as weapons of mass destruction.
The thing about weapons of mass destruction is that if all combatants have and use them then everyone is destroyed. There will be no winner, and everybody will be a loser. That’s why at the height of the Cold War between the United States and Russia there were treaties, some of which are still in effect, which say we neither nation will use those weapons because “if you yours and we use ours there will be nothing left of our nations or any other nations. If these two nations who are on opposite sides of all issues can agree to not use those weapons, then we can certainly agree to not use our weapons of mass destruction.
Relationships often have weapons of mass destruction too. When you use those weapons, you fix blame—but you never fix problems. In marriages, for example, those weapons include things like threatening divorce or bringing up differences of opinion of what are often issues of personal preference or issues or conscience or each other’s parents. You must agree, no matter how upset you are, those words are off limits. Those are words of mutually assured destruction—they destroy a relationship by tearing down trust.
The Bible is very specific about what’s out of bounds in a relationship.
Colossians 3:8 GNT But now you must get rid of all these things: anger, passion, and hateful feelings. No insults or obscene talk must ever come from your lips.
Anger, passion, hateful feelings, insults, and obscene talk are weapons of mass destruction. They’re used to fix blame. And when you fix blame, you’re judging—and only God has the right to judge.
Matthew 7:1-5 GNT “Do not judge others, so that God will not judge you, for God will judge you in the same way you judge others, and he will apply to you the same rules you apply to others. Why, then, do you look at the speck in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the log in your own eye? How dare you say to your brother, ‘Please, let me take that speck out of your eye,’ when you have a log in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
Never use weapons of mass destruction instead use your energy for what matters. Fix the problem, and not the blame.