Conflict Ain't What It's Cracked Up To Be, Or Is It?

I have a great idea. Let’s have a fight about whatever, and use as much anger and disrespect as possible. Cool idea. Most normal folks would think my suggestion is a joke. But it isn’t at all. It’s exactly the way most conflicts go in our society---negative and demeaning.

But conflict is simply disagreement, which is neither good nor bad, so what’s the problem?  To answer this we need to look a little closer. There are two aspects to conflict---content and relationship. Content conflict is often very healthy or even enjoyable, as when a friend disagrees with me over whether we have free will. If we stay in this mode, all is likely to be well even if the disagreement is significant, but….

Bad things arise when our conversation becomes relationship conflict, which is an “I-win-you-lose” posture, just as I mentioned in the last post on tolerance. No matter what, I will win, using any tactic, especially anger, interruptions, mis-representations, outright lies, guilt, and so forth. The content that started the conversation is now totally irrelevant, and the goal is for my emotions to trump your emotions. Thus, relationship conflict is nearly always demeaning and dis-respectful, and produces very bad interpersonal outcomes. Watching two people of differing political parties is about as unpleasant an experience as I can imagine. Being partisans (true believers), they have no objectivity at all and seek only to prevail over, preferably crushing the other person, who usually has the same style and goal. Each justifies his mis-behavior by claiming correctness and moral rightness.

Our poor behavior in conflict settings has been made worse by two regrettable societal trends, the first of which is that everyone has “good” reasons for what they do. Certainly people have reasons for their thoughts, emotions and actions. But whether the reasons are good or useful, bad or harmful, or neutral is not exactly determined by the person giving the reasons. Simply, our views of ourselves are notoriously unreliable since we give ourselves maximum credit for goodness, a fiercely held but at least partially false story! The quality of our reasons is determined by our spouse, partner, family, friends, colleagues, the justice system, the psychiatric community, or anyone who is impacted by our actions. In other words, others play a large role  in determining if our reasons have any reasonableness, fairness, or utility to them. Failure to see this means more unresolved and unpleasant conflict.

Imagine I tell myself that my motives, or reasons, for letting my wife know that she is eating badly (she really is not!) are solely to help her improve her health and live longer. My wife, however, does not see it at all the way I do. She considers my comments to be insulting and controlling, and possibly even self-serving. I am aghast. But humans are multi-motive creatures, and my motives may very well have been partly for her health and partly because I am embarrassed by her eating habits.

Almost never does a person do something for one and only one reason. The challenge is that many of our less admirable motives are hidden in the unconscious, which is why I heatedly deny my wife’s assertion about my motives. All I know in my conscious mind, wherein I am a legend of propriety, is that I am concerned about her well-being. My unconscious motive—being ashamed of her eating habits—never saw the light of day, but was clearly conveyed to her by my non-verbal signals, which I had no idea I was sending. Existing in a self-sustaining story of good motives, I cannot accept her version. Clearly my relationship with my wife will suffer for my illusions.

The second societal element is the inane statement that “your-feelings-are-valid.” This has no meaning at all since the word valid connects an event to a standard, as in “the measurements are valid.” That is, the measurements have an obvious and demonstrable connection to reality. Peoples’ feelings are neither valid nor invalid---they simply are and can be used for great good---Ghandi---or great ill---Hitler. The word valid was introduced to give faux scientific weight to the idea that your feelings and their expression were an unalloyed good. This “primacy of emotions” view and the idea that one’s motives are unilaterally “good” have caused huge problems between people and in society generally. We have been encouraged to express our feelings without any thought to the adverse impacts on others, or even on ourselves. The idea is expressed in the statement “If it feels good, it is good---go right ahead and do it!” This view is connected to the sense of entitlement that I have every right to emotionally trash someone who disagrees with me. Since our story is we must be right, it is easy to “validate” our highly unpleasant actions, no matter how much harm is done. Destructive conflict in spades.

When we think our reasons for doing things are naturally good or that our feelings are valid, there can be no good outcomes for others or even for ourselves, if we differ. These two tactics “allow” us to justify whatever behavior we want when we are in conflict, no matter how disrespectful or abusive. These tactics emphasize that I prevail---I get to do what I want because it feels good, and any complaints you have about my behavior are your problem. What is very clear is that content conflict involves thinking and processing at some objective levels. Relationship conflict, on the other hand, is all about not thinking---pure, ungoverned emotion on the run, and you had best not be in my way!

More on conflict next time.