Unproductive Conflict

Explanation:

There are many factors that can contribute to unproductive conflict and some of them should be most realistically addressed through individual or marriage counseling. For example, certain personality problems can derail attempts at healthy negotiation. A history of trauma can also make even healthy levels of conflict seem unbearable. The current discussion cannot adequately address these kinds of problems . It also cannot address situations where drug abuse, physical violence, or other extreme forms of toxicity are ongoing in the relationship. However, if both you and your partner usually enjoy good relations and usually start off negotiations with good intent, then read on. In the midst of a conflict, if you find yourselves off the subject and at each other's throats, then some of the following interventions may help.

First, it should be stated that there should be no attempt to totally eliminate conflict from your relationship. Healthy conflict is necessary to maintaining respect and even passion in a lengthy relationship. Without some conflict, most couples will develop a sense of loneliness and painful boredom. This is because each partner must risk expressing their own separate will in order for the other partner to feel that another solid person is in their company. There are many frustrated spouses who lament that their partners are too compliant. For clarification of this point, read about the initiator-dependent syndrome elsewhere in this kit. Instead of eliminating conflict, the better objective is to make it work for you as a couple. The way to do this is to turn it into healthy negotiating. This can be done with most conflictual situations. However, if there has been a betrayal of trust as in a broken agreement, then the conflict will necessarily involve more confrontation and less negotiation. The violator needs to be confronted with their responsibility to come up with a plan of correction. Hopefully, this latter form of conflict is not occurring very frequently because most relationships suffer terribly when there are frequently broken agreements. If this more serious type of conflict is going on, then either individual or marriage counseling would be the best route. However, first make sure that there are actual mutual agreements that are being broken, and not merely rules or "should" statements that one person has been unilaterally declaring.

When the difficulty is merely a conflict of interest and not one of broken agreement, then principles of negotiation are most applicable. For an excellent treatise on this subject, you might want to purchase Fisher and Ury's classic text Getting To Yes. This simple and well-written book was derived from The Harvard Negotiation Project and has been popular with professional mediators for many years. It outlines the basic principles for how to negotiate "without giving in". Some of these principles are inherent in the interventions recommended later in this discussion. Their most basic principles are as follows:

1) Deal with interests, not positions.
2) Separate the person from the problem.
3) Insist on objective criteria.
4) Invent options for mutual gain.

In the context of an intimate relationship, negotiations become even more complicated by additional psychological considerations. The four principles apply very well to all negotiating but they do not address a very important additional consideration that pertains to intimate relationships: that is the issue of pacing. Pacing is an inherent right that each individual has for managing their own emotional tempo. For example, for one partner to insist that their partner be immediately available for intimacy would be a violation of their partner's emotional pacing. As such, it would be a violation of their psychological boundaries. More psychologically sophisticated couples are aware that each person has a right to emotionally prepare for certain events such as intimacy or conflict. The reason why this is so important is that many conflicts in relationships blow up over this very issue. Many partners don't realize that they are fighting over boundary violations because they are not allowing adequate preparation for healthy negotiation. This is not to say that only one partner holds all the responsibility for the blow up. Very often, pacing will become ignored when the other partner is avoidant and never comes back to a topic of conflict. Where the first partner raises issues of concern and the other partner only stone-walls and indefinitely puts off negotiations, then the first partner assumes that they have to grab onto the second partner to resolve the issue while they can. As such, both partners often share responsibility for having set up a system of boundary violation. To reverse the system in which one partner intrudes on the pacing of the other, two principles need to be accepted and implemented:

1) Each partner must respect that the other person has a fundamental right to postpone, schedule, and prepare themselves for emotionally intense interaction. (This applies equally as well to sex as it does to conflict).
2) Each partner must accept full responsibility for proactively scheduling negotiations with their partner. Each partner must accept responsibility for being actively consistent with follow-through on such commitments.
Simply put, the partners agree to a) respect each person's right to emotionally prepare, and b) consistently and aggressively pursue negotiations despite the preparatory delays. When a couple can do all this, it often reduces anger in the conflict because an additional layer of psychological threat is removed. Neither partner has to fear losing their personal boundaries as when the other partner demands immediate intense interaction them.