Identify the routine

Conflict Matters

Last month we looked at the four most common ways humans respond to disputes: fighting, accommodating to keep the peace, avoiding the situation altogether; or compromising.

“Dispute” or “conflict” refers here to any difference that has an uncomfortable emotion attached to it, for example, have you ever: mortified your child by posting something about them on Facebook? Been part of an argument with your spouse over the lack of time spent “with the family”? Dealt with a teenager’s refusal to communicate? These are all very normal domestic disputes or conflicts.

You might be wondering why “talking about it calmly” isn’t on the list of common strategies for dealing with such differences. That’s because “talking about it calmly” doesn’t describe what is really going on: at the risk of sounding sexist, plenty of men use this technique when their wives get “emotional” and it might be just a subtle from of fighting to win - “Look at me, I’m staying calm, that means I’ve already won the moral high ground!” And “talking calmly” can equally be a form of accommodating, compromising or avoiding.

However there definitely IS a fifth way, an alternative to those four strategies we are all so familiar with. More than 30 years ago (1981) a couple of professors at the Harvard Law school published “Getting to Yes”. More recently Dr Sue Johnson, a Canadian “couple therapist”, published her version in “Hold Me Tight”. I still recommend both books. Like many others before and since, these researchers figured out that once we are in the midst of an argument, we tend to see the other person(s) as the problem. One very practical way to change the game is to separate the problem, and get it away from the person. This is a bit like recognising it is the wind that makes the flag flutter. Couples who live together quickly fall into routine ways of handling disagreements, and most involve seeing the other as the one with “issues”. This fifth strategy is no more complicated than identifying the routine as the common enemy, rather than seeing each other as the problem. The habitual behaviour at issue can be seen as almost having a life of its own. This strategy works equally well in simple domestic disputes and in multimillion dollar commercial ones: get everyone to see the problem as “out there” and here we all are, alongside each other, trying to figure out how to solve this problem we all face.

Consider one common family dispute to illustrate the strategy in practice: a heated argument over when a teenager has to be home the second or third time (s)he goes out at night to a party or on a date. The teenager sees the parent(s) as the problem, characterising them as old, unfair, out of touch, cruel, heartless, inconsistent, and determined to destroy their hard won and fragile social standing amongst their peers. The parent(s) see a young person who is not as mature as they think they are, not yet ready to be fully responsible for protecting themselves…..in short, vulnerable. So what are the real issues in dispute here, and how could they be “externalised” and looked at together?

Previous ........... Next