Conflict is a good thing. It is a necessary part of life, progress, growth and movement. Conflict is a part of marriages and families that holds great potential for growth and maturity.
In Psychology Today (March 23, 2017) Elizabeth Dorrance Hall observes that there are least three reasons conflict is a good thing in relationships.
Conflict signals a need for change.
The biggest room in anyone’s life is the room for improvement. Conflict pushes us out of comfort zones and wakes us up to opportunities and challenges that enrich our lives and equip us for bigger challenges.
2. Conflict celebrates our interdependence.
Relationships are fascinating mixtures of independent people trying to work together in mutually beneficial ways. Our unique personal preferences, priorities and goals will conflict with those qualities of another unique individual. Healthy relationships learn to celebrate the differences that push us to grow beyond ourselves. They do this by identifying the points of conflict, working to understand each other’s perspective and collaborating to discover new and different ways to compensate for those differences.
3. Conflict is almost never about that which it seems to be on the surface.
In marriage and family therapy we often see conflict as the symptom that is calling attention to the real problem. Everyone is enriched when we push past the conflicting symptom to discuss the deeper values and principles that at stake.
CONFLICT IS COMMON
Metaphors abound in nature to illustrate the benefits of conflict.
- Chicks necessarily pecking to exit their eggshells.
- Germinating seeds that push through the dirt to find the light.
- Road graders that must push aside the soil for a highway.
- Students trying to push through assignments before deadlines.
SIMPLE GUIDELINES TO RESOLVING CONFLICT
The truth is that there are few ‘simple’ solutions easily applied that readily result in positive outcomes. At the same time there are some general guidelines that may be helpful.
- Seek to understand rather than to be understood. Listening is a skill to be learned and practiced. It is particularly challenging to practice our listening skills when we strongly disagree with what is being said by the other person. Conflict is easier to manage when we take the time to listen and reflect so we can respond carefully.
- Observe the “STOP” rule to avoid destructive conflict. When the destructive communication begins to emerge, each person should be given the right to call a ‘time out’. Follow this immediately with agreeing to meet at a better time and place and try again, applying Guideline 1 (above).
- Seek win/win solutions. Win/lose and lose/lose situations rarely succeed in resolving feelings. When one person ‘wins’ an argument by intimidation, the ‘loser’ is left to come up with a way to resolve feelings that can be pretty intense . Lose/lose situations occur when each person compromises, losing something in order to win something else.
Work to achieve solutions where each person feels that they have been heard, understood and respected. Everyone wins when we spend the time and energy to arrive at mutually beneficial solutions to conflict.