Conflict Addiction – Barriers To Settling
Description: I was moved to write this article because of my experience of a conflict in my own life. After I had managed to “move on,” I began to think about how compelling this very small dispute had become to me; how much of my thought and psychic energy had been consumed by it. I began to wonder if there is not something especially engrossing about conflict; why we can get hooked into a conflict, and keep the arguments going and going and going, even when the person with whom we are in conflict is not in the room; and whether conflict in and of itself has an addictive quality, that causes us to keep returning to it, arguing our case again and again
The Costs of Conflict:
If there are high costs to conflict then, if people are rational beings, they must believe that the potential return on pursuing the conflict exceeds the cost. There are certainly high costs. Putting aside the monetary cost of pursuing litigation – there is a cost to having so much of your energy drained, for years, by an ongoing personal conflict. The effect on children has been well documented. If my high school friend couldn’t talk about anything else to me, during one afternoon, I’m sure she also had trouble fully focusing on her children, during those years. But what are the returns?
One goal of the battle is to be declared the victor. Another resides in the fantasy that, when your adversary confronts his/her loss, he/she will learn a lesson. A client told me that she fears that walking away will allow her husband to get away scot-free. She can see this as a (flawed) pattern in his life – that when things get tough he runs away, just as he ran away from their marriage. She is aggravated with him, and thinks she should let him “get away with it, but should instead teach him a lesson.” But would he learn any lesson if she were to decide that she would hire an attorney and seek more assets?
As a party to a conflict, I can see the momentum created. The longer it goes on, the more persuasive one must finds one’s own arguments; because if I don’t have a good case, why am I still fighting? There is more tendency to polarize, and vilify the other, because it would not be rational to keep fighting this person unless they are really bad – the momentum in the head creates the stronger feelings that you are fighting evil.
Does anyone change their behavior (or personality) because they lost in court? Do parties come away from a litigation saying, “Oh, now I understand, I was wrong all of these years, and my spouse was right. I have learned from this conflict.” We all like to see ourselves as avengers, as the heroes in our own movies. Even (those we might see as) the worst terrorists believe that they are doing the right thing, fighting for honor and truth.
I am working with a couple (John and Barb) in conflict resolution who told me that for 2 years, they have been living in their home without speaking to each other. John and Barb are lucky, in that either of them could afford to buy out the other from the marital home. But they are unlucky, because they have both become swept into fighting over who will stay and who will go. Perhaps their “higher selves” could find a way to say, “hey, s/he cannot let go of this right now, so maybe s/he needs the house more than I do.” If there is financial compensation – can one of them move forward to another home without feeling that she has “lost,” and the other has “won?” Can the dispute be reframed so that it appears to (John and Barb) Lucy that there are other ways to see the dispute than that one of them will win (stay in the house) and the other will lose (leave the house)? For example, there is an opportunity for one of them to move to a new place, buy new things (with a compensatory stipend, if necessary) and start over fresh; to go down in the family history (and in their child’s mind) as the hero, who has sacrificed him/herself to give all of them peace; the chance to make a new home, freed of the memories which reside in the old.
Ultimately, isn’t it a choice to remain locked into the struggle, or the choose to move forward with your life? I struggle to understand what makes people choose to pursue conflict, and even to behave irrationally to do so. Is it the loss of face? The fear that leaving will be like admitting guilt? When each feels so intensely that s/he has been wronged, that s/he is the victim, it’s a challenge to be the one to take the first step to resolve it
