Avoid relationships with those who constantly fight or flee in conflict

If conflict won’t make you fight or flee, you’re made for relationship.  That’s the good news.  Want to know who’s a good partner or how to be a good partner?  Don’t fight or flee when it comes to conflict.

Even though we WILL fight and flee — that these will be our natural default to conflict — if we overcome our initial response, we have the qualities of being a partner.

Not just that.  If we can cope with conflict in our lives with others, it makes us efficient and effective workers and relational contributors on the whole.

Fight and flight are, of course, part of the Four F Trauma typology (with Freeze and Fawn).  I think Freeze and Fawn are definitely trauma responses, whilst Fight and Flight are more likely to be straight-out conflict responses.  In other words, our typical response to conflict is either or both, Fight (attack) or to Flee (escape).

But, what about if we can’t do conflict well?

There are many people who are inept at conflict.  They deny or they fight.  They play the blame game, or they gossip.  They’d rather make light of differences than work through them, or use their personal power to manufacture outcomes that work their way.

The narcissist doesn’t play the game of conflict resolution.  They are not peacemakers.  Because that would involve give and take.  It would involve genuine negotiation and win-win situations.  These are the some who are not suited to effective relating.  They have the game on their terms and there’s no correspondence to be entered into.

None of us are expected to get conflict perfect.  As I said above, we will respond in the moment of conflict by escaping and attacking (arguing, not physical attacking).  But people with the capacity to relate overcome these urges within either minutes or a short time after that.

If a person is still in attack mode a day or two later, or they’ve withdrawn to the point where they still haven’t re-entered the relational space for an extended period, and either or both these ways of doing conflict are normal for that person, there is little hope for relating healthily.  (The exception to this is when there has been deep hurt done.  That can take a long time to come back from, but we’re talking betrayal, affairs and the like.)

The kind of relationship where conflict is never resolved aren’t much fun for both parties.  But one party will tend to drive these ineffective results.  We’re talking all kinds of relationships here.

Sometimes we find that one person’s reticence to do conflict or their inability to do conflict peaceably affects the other person who would normally do conflict well.  What happens is the conflict becomes entrenched, usually because the one who is capable of doing conflict decides they’re sick of doing all the work.

The overall point is this: we must watch out NOT to commit to relationships with people who cannot or will not do conflict.  These are people who will stay in fight or they will flee, and either damage results or nothing ever gets resolved.  Those who refuse to engage in conflict will frustrate those who seek peace.  Those who insist on fighting us for their own way as their norm will cause us too much grief for us to stay in the relationship long term.

Photo by Tom Parsons on Unsplash