When a calm response to conflict rouses an act of abuse

I’ve noticed a common dynamic recently.  Those who seem to respond well to being attacked are all the more susceptible to abuse, simply because in attacking them, the other person isn’t landing the emotional blows they had endeavoured to strike.

It’s the same with verbal jousts.  If a person responds well to slurs, insults and other vocal barbarisms, notwithstanding an aggressive tone, you can sure bet that things will hot up all the more.

And it’s all the same with covert passive aggressiveness cloaked in common bullying.  A response of kindness will not cause cruel, scapegoating treatment to abate.

Nothing gets a vindictive person more incensed than a lack of response in the one they’re trying to upset.

If you observe this in your own life, you’ll see it’s true.

It can leave you feeling like there’s no point in responding to conflict well.  A certain kind of person will not take no for an answer.  They will not see that you’ve responded to them respectfully, meeting their berating, chastising rudeness with relative kindness.  They see it as a red rag to a bull!

We can know that when this response is given to our holding our own in the conflict, that we potentially face a dangerous — and certainly a hostile — adversary.

Now, it would be different if someone was temporarily incensed, for they were intimidated by a poised, thoughtful, reflective response.  A good response to conflict when we’re upset can certainly be intimidating.

But if someone ups the ante and they insist on schooling us, if they insist on winning, we have a real problem, and I’d venture to say we’re dealing with someone happy to abuse a person for their own gain.  This should never happen in Christian circles, but it does, and far too much.  It’s the “I got God on my side” attitude, and it always leads to the misuse of that person’s power to overwhelm the other person.

What can we do about these situations?

We need to accept that the situation is probably going to go pear-shaped, no matter what we do to prevent such an outcome; no matter how much we act as peacemakers.

We can have faith in being gently authoritative (not authoritarian — there’s a difference), but we must realise there are limits.  Some people will just not respond to calm logic and sweet reasonableness in conflict.

I’ve had one situation in all my adult life where I applied calm, non-confrontational speech and it still didn’t work.  I’m glad I had this experience; however painful it was.  It showed me that even when we refuse to counterattack, that doesn’t mean the other person will back off.

As this article shows, there are people who will push all the harder because their stand over tactics aren’t putting us off.

We’ll need to accept that encountering some people in conflict will be a defining moment in our relationship.  Perhaps the relationship survives only long enough before the first real clash.

The best of relationships only become so because conflict can be negotiated; because both parties love each other enough to ensure mutual respect is a given.  And trust blossoms because conflict was handled peacefully.

Nothing can be done about these relationship situations, and trauma will probably result because of how we’re treated, which is ironic given that you did everything you could to respectfully disagree.

Photo by Chris Sabor on Unsplash