What Role Does Attitude Play in Fractured Relationships?

Broken relationships are a fact of life. Whether people can resolve conflicts and heal emotional wounds depends on each person admitting complicity and taking responsibility to change. What stands out as a determining factor is each person’s attitude.

Attitude is influenced by a person’s temperament, personality, and experiences. Attitude cannot be separated from long-term spiritual, social, and political views. Attitude includes your personal disposition, feelings, and opinions about every aspect of life.

That attitudes play a significant role in a fractured relationship is obvious and determines if reconciliation is possible. Prompted by the Holy Spirit, an attitude can be modified or radically changed. 

Reconciliation is possible when healing emotional and spiritual wounds is a priority. God’s word reminds us Jesus came to "bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted and proclaim freedom for the captive," regardless of how bondage is defined.

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Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it  does not rejoice at wrongs but rejoices in the [truth]. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends...

~1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Revised Standard Version

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Stop Vindictiveness in its Tracks

Vindictiveness evolves when conflict lingers on indefinitely as a consequence of refusing to consider other people’s ideas and feelings. A vindictive attitude seeks to punish anyone who is perceived as an enemy. An enemy could be a person who disagrees or who is out of step with another person’s goals and ambitions.    

When conflict dominates a relationship, distress may eventually evolve into vindictiveness. The longer conflict exists, the more it fuels the fire of vindictiveness, which can diminish any appearance of love and compassion for significant others. Vindictiveness has the power to prolong a stubborn, self-willed attitude that perpetuates conflict.

An attitude of vindictiveness can be healed by making a concerted effort to listen and understand another’s point of view. Proverbs 3:13 states: "Blessed is the man who finds wisdom and who gains understanding.” This is also a step to forgiveness and a possible new beginning. Is this your desire?  

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Hatred stirs up trouble; love overlooks the wrongs that others do.

~Proverbs 10:12 Contemporary English Version

This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience – it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it shares the joy of those who live by the truth.

Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love never fails.

~1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Phillips – New Testament in Modern English