August 6, 2015,
Family, Relationship 
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Do you remember the movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”? It was a battle of characters, personalities and one upmanship. Do you remember Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in this amazing battle of wills filled with lies, deception, lots of bullets and fast cars, and the scent of a roasted meat, red wine and a few candles?
At some moments the couple were very pleasant to each other while at others they were vicious. Does the theme of this movie sound familiar? Is this a theme that is evident in your relationships? If so read on as I address how to deal with these conflicts.
By the way it is so important that you do deal with these conflicts and the sooner the better.
Why? Simply because if you don’t they can damage you and your relationship and leave a lasting scar that may never be fully recoverable.
Reasons for Conflicts
A conflict can be a way of holding onto or breaking up old ways of interacting between the couple, or even to “balance the scales”. Some couples fight when one of them attempts to develop, or express, a separate identity, or when they attempt to find new solutions to old problems.
We’ve already seen that such behaviour is usually because we imitated our parents, or other significant people in our lives, when we were deciding how we should respond to what went on around us.
Alternatively, an old “dance” can be based on something we’ve done in the past that got us a preferred response, even though not necessarily a positive one. We then made a decision to repeat the behaviour, since we had no other more effective way to respond.
Each reason for conflict is important; you need to consider them all so that you can discover how and why you deal with conflicts the way you do.
How to Deal With Conflicts
On the one side, conflicts can be described as disagreements. On the other side, they can be described as contradictory and invincible differences based on models set a long time ago during childhood. However, with a touch of a sense of humour I will offer you a quote from the movie that fully depicts the way two partners can both have disagreements but can also work perfectly fine together for their common good.
Angelina Jolie and Brat Pitt are standing in front of their neighbours’ curious eyes. They unite forces and instead of getting into an awkward situation they create the perfect family lie. The conversation went a bit like this:
“Describe how you two met for the first time.”
“It was in Colombia.”
“Bogota.”
“Five years ago.”
“Six.”
“Of course. Five or six years ago.”
Unfortunately, in the real world, nothing is that simple… especially with such an amiable sense of humour. That’s why when people ask me “How to deal with conflicts?” I always share the main rule of the game called “a family conflict”: unravel the ball and understand where the beginning of the rope is.
If one or more of your fundamental needs are repeatedly not met, you are thrown into some old belief, thought, feeling, or behaviour pattern that may lead you to deal with the conflict in an inappropriate way.
The way to unravel that ball is to simply listen more to each other and hear it each other out fully before responding.
As I say to so many of my clients never ever stop listening to each other because the way through will be in those words.
To Separate or Not to Separate
My professional experience brought me to Darren and Trudy. This is a couple who have been married for 14 years; they have a joint business, three kids and numerous interpersonal problems. Unfortunately, that’s not all. Each day they were battling with each other and didn’t believe that they could spend even a day in peace let alone have any real understanding of where each was coming from.
Being in a state of financial, emotional and situational dependence their “family life” was a series of responsibilities, conflicts and heavy moods.
So as Darren and Trudy considered separating, which is where they were when I first met them, there were many other things to keep in mind as well. For some couples this is simply too much to endure so, as it had been for so many years for Darren and Trudy, they simply resign themselves to their lives as they now are and live “unhappily ever after” or leave the relationship thinking that that is the only other choice they have available to them.
I cannot wait to hear your experiences regarding the topic – how to deal with conflicts? As a final word I will say just one thing – the presence of a conflict is not a problem, the problem is hidden in its unknown origin. The family battle field is a changeable one, and full of wins and losses. It can be a terrain for the creation of a happy, strong relationship when the partners are ready to work together as a team if you really want that as your outcome.
To the wonder of you,
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