What might it mean to "resolve" conflict?

I have been reading an article in Psychotherapy Networker about the program for marital therapy promoted by John and Julie Gottman. Much of what they say and do resonates very positively with the approach that I have found to be most effective. It feels validating to me to find that their scientific studies parallel my more anecdotal studies.

So I was particularly attentive to the contention that they make that there are some conflicts, perhaps even many conflicts, which are not resolvable. Resolution of many of the conflicts that arise in a marriage will just not be possible. Instead we have to figure out how to repair the relationship even when resolution won’t be possible.

I can’t tell for sure if I agree with them on this point as I can’t tell what they mean by conflict resolution. For obvious reasons, this is of great interest to an approach to Building Healthy Relationships which we call Creative Conflict Resolution. Let’s look at what this might mean.

We start with what is conflict. For the purposes of the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution, we define conflict in its simplest form as the “condition of others being different than we want them to be” or “of our not being who they want us to be.” We discover that the more common condition is “when we are not as we would have ourselves be.” And at its most profound level, conflict is “the tension between what is and what might be.”

I will save a fuller consideration of the implications of that definition to another post and move on to the question of resolution. If by resolution we then mean that the other becomes who I want them to be or I become who they want me to be then clearly most conflicts are not resolvable. We can’t make others be as we want them to be and we are not likely to abandon our own integrity for long and conform to their expectations of us.

If we set a slightly looser standard and define resolution as the other seeing my point of view, or my seeing their point of view, then we have a much larger chance of creating resolution. But does the other have to adopt my point of view? Do I have to see it their way? What if we just agree to disagree? Is that resolution? It certainly doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment and isn’t very satisfying.

But what if by being able to see the other’s point of view and to accept its validity and by knowing that the other sees my point of view and acknowledges that my perspective makes reasonable sense to me given my own experience we have shifted the quality of the relationship? What if the issue of resolution is not measured by the way I subsequently behave or what the other chooses to do, but by the sense of connection that we are able to build with each other? Just as a conflict is a quality in the relationship itself, so is resolution a shift in the qualities of the relationship, not a shift in the people in it. This is not to say that the people may not choose to behave differently, but only that the task of resolution is the creation of connection, not the creation of uniformity.

That we are different is not really a problem. We are troubled when others are not as we want them to be, but having them be as we want is not necessarily an improvement. Indeed, the fact that we see things differently is potentially a great strength. When I see from two eyes instead of one I can get a sense of depth. For example, two parents may have a very different perspective on a curfew for their teenager. They had different experiences when they were each a teenager and they see the risks to their child differently. Ultimately resolution of their differences will rest on coming to an agreement about their curfew policy. But if one of them simply says, “Whatever, you are going to get your way anyway,” then they will have lost an opportunity to come to a robust agreement about what is in the best interest of their child.

So resolution of a conflict is always possible if it means staying with the differences that we bring to the issue until we have fully heard each other, fully feel heard by the other, know what it is that we are both trying to create, commit to what we are each going to do, and agree to how we will repair the agreement if it becomes damaged.

For more about this model, see Discipline #10 in the User’s Guide.