Do You See Conflict As An Opportunity?
Posted: Friday, April 22, 2011
by Jim Anderson
Weddings That Last
If you are in a relationship and there is no conflict, you have a serious problem. Every healthy relationship has conflict. The difference between couples who are happy and those who aren’t isn’t that they have conflict, it is how they handle conflict. Happy couples feel understood by their partners and are able to share their feelings and opinions openly when there is a problem in the relationship.
Conflict is usually thought to be the problem. It isn’t the conflict that is the problem, but the way we respond to it. Conflict can actually be healthy. If we decide that conflict is bad and avoid it at all costs, it is like a plant avoiding rain. Humans need a little conflict every once in awhile, like plants need rain every once in awhile. Conflict is what wakes us up and takes us out of our habitual patterns. It makes us sit up and take notice.
If you think of conflict as something negative, then you will tend to avoid it. However, if you see it as an opportunity, you will not be afraid of it and will use it to make things better in your relationship. Life is like that. Usually life’s greatest blessings often come out of pain and frustration. If nothing else, conflict helps us define good times.
Common Problems With Conflict
When we don’t know how to deal with conflict, it can cause us problems and be destructive to our relationships. The key problems couples have with conflict include arguing over stuff that doesn’t really matter, not being able to agree how to resolve a disagreement and never resolving some, avoiding conflict, and most of all having one person end up feeling responsible for the problem.
Many of us also feel that conflict shouldn’t exist in a marriage. This perception denies that life is filled with change, which includes pain and suffering, failure and disappointment. Conflict is inevitable and in the natural course of life and relationships. Instead, many of us go out of our way to avoid conflict. Avoiding conflict deprives us of the opportunity to learn lessons and grow as a person. Relationships are the classrooms where we learn to grow and mature.
Another problem we have with conflict is not being able to differentiate between the person and the problem. Too many of us fall into the trap of blaming the other person and spend time trying to change the other person.
One of the biggest issues is not being able to completely resolve conflict, and it becomes chronic. The problem keeps coming back. To completely resolve conflict, you have to face it head on and work through it completely.
The Opportunity
If you can improve your conflict resolution skills, you can take advantage of conflict as a tool for building a better life through better relationships. So lets take a look at what you can do.
One of the first things you can do is welcome conflict when it comes. That may sound counterintuitive, but it requires you to change your paradigm about it. Conflict can be used for good. You can learn from it. Don’t approach it as an opportunity to win or lose, or to solve a problem. Approach it as a learning opportunity and to make a better connection with your partner. Don’t get caught up in the cycle of escalation. Along with that, don’t keep an inventory of suppressed grievances. The inventory just grows and eventually becomes overwhelming. These thing must be resolved.
One big piece of the opportunity is to allow yourself to be vulnerable. Express your feelings, because they can be a means of personal healing and allow us to connect with others more deeply. It is a means of building intimacy. Intimacy requires vulnerability.
So use these ground rules to take advantage of the opportunity. Focus on the person’s behavior, not the person, be respectful and specific, use good communication skills along with humor to break down negativity, take your partner seriously, discuss calmly and don’t dredge up the past. Resist the urge to discuss your conflict with friends and family, who will only influence you to prolong the conflict.
Make an appointment to discuss the conflict when you can be rational about it. Before you discuss, make sure you are clear on what exactly the issue is. Talk about how each of you contribute to it. Look at what you have already done about it that hasn’t worked, and then brainstorm at least ten new ways to resolve it. Then, discuss those options and agree on a solution to try. Make an agreement with each other how you will implement the solution together and set a meeting for later to discuss how you’ve done. Then, reward yourselves for a job well done.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)"We're arguing..." "No, we are discussing" (why is it when I am initiating the conversation we are arguing but when he is we are discussing??) BUT we communicate and if we can get our SELF out of it long enough we can have a really meaningful dialog! Thanks for this insightful piece.Please log in to respond to this comment.
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