Conflict Management
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Effective conflict management in relationships depends on how you view conflict itself.
Like so many things, whether conflict in relationships is a good thing or a bad thing all depends on how you look at it and how you do it.
The challenge, of course, is to enter into working through the inevitable misunderstandings, disagreements, and oversights with acceptance and appreciation for each other. Once you can do that, conflict management in relationships becomes much easier.
This is really at the epicenter of the kinds of insight, acceptance, and keeping our eyes on what is important that can make all of our relationships in this last third or so of our lives more genuine and enjoyable.
The concept of relationships moving through a series of
relatively predictable stages
can help a lot in this, though it does not in and of itself speak to how to go about it in positive ways.
A Win-Lose View of Conflict in Relationships
If you see conflict as a situation in which someone is going to have to win and some is going to have to lose, then for you conflict management in relationships is most likely to remain fragile or even unreachable.Faced with a win lose situation in relationships, most people will see themselves as having very limited options: get their own way or get out of the conflict; perhaps out of the relationship altogether.
The first choice, "winning" the conflict, leads to some pretty predictable and problematic actions such as:
- trying to overpower the other person, physically or verbally,
- trying to convince the other person that they are wrong,
- trying to convince the other person that they shouldn't even be wanting something different from what you want,
- trying to manipulate the other person into doing what you want.
Or, one or both parties may decide to avoid the conflict by pulling back, staying out of the other person's way. It is rare that this strategy doesn't break down. Usually sooner than later, often when the basic situation changes due to some outside force such as the children all growing up, an inheritance, or a violent episode that can't be glossed over comes along that overwhelms to desire to not fight.
It is true that done long enough and skillfully enough, these people may settle into a peaceful life "together" running on two separate, parallel tracks, but it is not really a form of conflict management in relationships. It is avoidance. These are the ones who shock everyone when they divorce after many years. They were thought to have such a good marriage and, depending on your criteria, they may have. But, such a union is a fragile one, constantly at risk of being torn apart by one of the previously mentioned shocks or very often also by one or the other of finding some passion (or hope of it) from somewhere else and going after it.
The problem with either of these approaches, controlling or withdrawing, is that even if they do succeed, they are built on shaky ground. Sooner or later the whole thing is likely to come tumbling down.
A Relationship-As-Pathway-to-Personal-Growth View of Conflict in Relationships
If you conceive of conflict in relationships as a natural part of two people undertaking the building of a new entity as it were, a relationship, then it is no less difficult, but it takes on an entirely different meaning and has different criteria for judging it to be successful and conflict management becomes more possible.In this view we are seeking two things.
One is a deeper understanding of how the situation looks to the other person; their experience, assumptions, beliefs, desires, fears.
And the other is a deeper understanding of our own assumptions, beliefs, desires, and fears in response to the partner.
Hopefully,when we have attained this deeper knowledge our new
perspective thus achieved will reveal possibilities for moving ahead that neither of us could see before.
Making Conflict in Relationships Work for You, Not Against You.
Conscious conflict management in relationships is the pathway of choice. To stay on it on a consistent basis presents quite a challenge for most of us. Often an agreement on a structure that will keep our power struggle stage of our relationship cycle on a positive, non-destructive footing is necessary.Agreeing on a time and place to discuss emotionally hot issues can be helpful as can having agreements on who will talk, who will listen, when and what kinds of questions are useful. McKeen and Wong describe the particular format that they use in their book,
The Relationship Garden.
Some people find that a worksheet like the one linked to from the
Power in Relationships
section of this website, is a good start. Whether you use the worksheet or not, it probably will be helpful however you go at the discussion. (You'll find the link near the bottom of that page or you can go directly to it by clicking here.)
And the protocols described in books like "Difficult Conversations" by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project as well as the general understanding of what you are trying to accomplish have been pivotal in the success of many couples in finding their own way to get the hot issues on the table in a form that leads to solutions.
If you want to have a relationship that feels better than being alone, you have to find a healthy way to handle the inevitable conflicts that come with the territory. The sooner you start building the right kinds of conflict management to go at this for you, the better.
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