We are learning, unlearning, and relearning so many things. Conflicts are not bad; because conflicts don’t have to be toxic. During a postgraduate leadership course recently, we were given the task of completing a survey on how conflicts were viewed in the society where we grew up. I had to make myself do the task the second time – via the lens of how I currently view conflicts. Staggering differences!! Conflicts can be out of good intentions, not feature foul languages, no voices raised, no rude fingers, no personality attacks, no love lost. Conflicts can be so healthy and they can help us to go farther than feigned peaceful coexistence would.

As toxic as conflicts were in the society I grew up in, our house was quite different. If you have three sanguine boys (my three big brothers were different variants of sanguine) each with a different crew of friends and views, raised in some of Lagos’ and then Ilesha’s most fearsome ghettos, then you may be able to comprehend the noise and chaos that ruled in our house. But, never toxic, no cursive words, no arms, no punches or injuries and you can’t penetrate their clique. I can recall siblings practically fighting a few hours ago but now two are waiting for the third to get ready before they all started to eat. Regardless of their differences, they faced external aggressors together with a united tone and purpose. Too many times, I reflect on intramarital conflicts in this way. That couples can disagree without toxicity and bounce back like a rubber band, and win together.

Outside our house, I can recall the stories of many families where high levels of toxicity existed among siblings, or between parents and child(ren). Ma’ami and my elder brother – Bamidele (of blessed memory) were referees for many homes in the community. But, even these folks with toxic conflicts don’t leave the house for one another and they don’t stop being siblings; as a matter of fact, they get over their crises and coexisted with a renewed understanding of another’s boundaries and elastic limits. Acceptance was the key. Those days and in that cultural context, you can't sack your sibling(s). Who and what you get is your fate, and you have to live with it.

Acceptance is why friendships work. Often, I pity my close friends, and I celebrate them too. I pity them for how troublesome, so direct, and persistent I can be and I celebrate them for how they have accepted me and continue to contribute immensely to make me better. I have few friends who will match my troublesome and direct profiles in order to drill correction into my head and because I have known them for so long and built confidence in their nonmaleficence, I can only grumble but remain grateful for their constructive criticisms. On the days of battles, they are the prayer and thought partners who form layers of concentric rings. I don’t worry my head about the unstable and ‘ophthalmic’ friends around me; I care rather about the stable, true, and blunt aiders of my destiny.

So, why do friends and siblings accept and tolerate one another more than many couples do?

The oldest couple once recounted that tolerance was the most important word that kept them going. And, I now understand. Tolerance was the reason some high profiles homes excelled. Queen Elizabeth and the late Prince Philip; Bill and Hillary Clinton are two famous examples. Many of us would attest that tolerance is what has kept our parents together. Another important factor is that the era of our parents fixes things, rather than the millennia’s Russian approach of discarding whatever appears to have a tiny blemish. A few years ago, a football writer explained the high turnover of coaches at Chelsea football club – that Russians don’t fix things, they discard them. Today, this has unfortunately been the new normal for my generation and while it may have benefitted Chelsea football club (owned by a Russian billionaire) in terms of trophies won, it is ruining the marital institution.

What do we do? We should begin to unlearn and relearn some things. Conflicts can happen in our marriages and they don’t have to be toxic, they don’t have to wreck our homes. Each person in marriage should begin to work on themselves and relearn the mechanics of healthy conflicts. Not all matters relate to right and wrong, the person seeing a ‘6’ is just as right as the person seeing a ‘9’; it is all about the points and angles of view. In addition, know when to just avoid conflicts, altogether (a sincere and spontaneous ‘okay’ and ‘sorry’ are two tools that you may later thank me for – I just hope that my wife is not seeing this, smiles); or when to accommodate the views of the other person without murmurs; the art of happily compromising by tweaking your point of view and how collaborating respectfully can birth unprecedented results.

We should understand that our wedding vows are not to be taken just literarily. Commitment requires tolerance; tolerance can’t happen without acceptance. These are the keys holding siblings and friends together. In the first year of our marriage, my wife and I began a deliberate friendship walk. We chose friendship above sibling relationship because the former put us on the same pedestal while the latter comes with some bureaucratic 'older/senior - younger/junior' hierarchy. And, also because Jesus used friendship to explain the strongest love ever – His death on the cross.

Did you know that the first people we report marital conflicts to are not usually our siblings or pastors? They are our friends. Can you recall that Yoruba elders pray for newlyweds to be lifelong friends? Okay. Why not start a deliberate process of taking your spouse as a friend? The process has to be deliberate and be audited periodically by both of you. It works.