Couples who avoid conflict experience impaired intimacy, build resentments, and become disconnected from each other. Conflict leads to the experience of heightened emotions, which facilitates motivation to communicate and resolve problems. Engaging honestly and passionately about feelings, wants, needs, and ideas leads to conflict resolution.
At the moment, deciding to let an issue go unaddressed is a relief. Minimizing the importance of a problem can seem mature and logical. However, suppressing is not a solution to resolving conflict. Common reasons ( or excuses) that cause people to avoid confrontation are:
- Difficulty coping with anger
- The belief the outcome will be negative
- Feeling inadequate to effectively communicate
- Low self-esteem
- Family of origin never modeled positive conflict resolution
- Past abuse and trauma
Dealing with anger: Anger is a feeling that many people fear. The belief that anger always results in negative fighting and either winning or losing deters people from expressing this emotion. The truth about anger: it is a powerful feeling that relates to feeling hurt, wronged or misunderstood. If expressed without threats, name-calling or inaccuracies, anger can lead to a better understanding between partners about their behaviors and attitudes on the issues being confronted.
The belief the outcome will be negative: This projection deters confrontation because it predicts it won’t resolve a problem and suggests it could make a bad situation worse. This mindset makes avoiding conflict seem reasonable and healthy. In reality, it is an excuse to avoid engaging in an uncomfortable experience.
Feeling inadequate to effectively communicate: Feeling unskilled at expressing feelings, wants and needs deters people from being assertive. Initiating a confrontation requires one to feel confident in their ability to articulate their position on an issue and forcefully advocate for themselves.
Low self-esteem: Feelings of unworthiness makes initiating or engaging in confrontation overwhelming. If the potential confrontation is in a romantic relationship, the fear of abandonment overrides the importance of addressing an issue. People with low self-esteem doubt whether they deserve to make requests, disagree with others, or set boundaries. To a person with low self-esteem, confrontation is a right reserved for people who are strong and more deserving to be heard, respected, and to get what they want.
Family of origin never modeled positive conflict resolution: Growing up in a family where confrontation was violent or never resulted in positive outcomes creates a fear-based resistance to engaging in conflict in relationships. Additionally, families that avoid confrontation and conflict fail to model for their children how to effectively manage the uncomfortable feelings that go along with asserting themselves, setting boundaries, and working towards compromises.
Past abuse and trauma: Engaging in conflict is particularly frightening for individuals who have experienced past verbal or physical abuse. Physiological or neurological flashbacks can be spontaneously triggered because of past traumatic experiences. These reactions can cause a distorted view of the risk involved in engaging in any form of confrontation.
Avoiding confrontation and conflict will keep the peace and preserve the status quo in a relationship in the short term. However, in the long time, this avoidance will reduce the potential for healthy intimacy and lessen the chances of a relationship surviving. Avoiding conflict can also result in staying too long in a bad relationship. Working through personal obstacles that cause avoidance of confrontation and conflict is worth the effort.
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