Conflict Avoidant

avoiding conflict is not avoiding accountability

When things get crunchy in relationships, I come to the conversation to claim what is mine.

I most often, these days, arrive in that conversation with someone else who is there to claim what's theirs.

We pick through it like a treasure heap, exploring layers of assumptions and desires, requests and held-silences, feelings we never quite let come to the surface, feelings we processed alone, open loops and unkept promises. We expand on what the other states about their experience, not redefining it, bypassing it, or shutting it down, but welcoming it to reveal its fullness.

We even, at times, quietly hand each other what we think might be the other's, after some time in that sweet scavenge, each accepting with gratitude when we see our own stuff.

It feels good and true, an accounting, a claiming of raw materials to be wrought in a new and more intentional way, with the very best information available in this moment, which is also sure to be incomplete.

It’s a process that assumes that we are doing the best we can.

We know this is the process of loving each other, we know we will be here again, we know that we want a process we can enjoy.

Other times when I show up to claim what is mine in a crunchy situation, the other person is there to confront me with what they believe is mine, how it's bad and harmful, how it "made them" feel, how it needs to be different and better.

We are showing up to different conversations. They show up sure of what has happened and how it happened and why it happened, and that it shouldn't have happened, that the way it happened and the reason are unacceptable. They want me to see their point of view and own their pain by hurting, to make it right.

I am showing up to claim what is, they are showing up to decry what isn't, what should not have been, to demand what should be. I am showing up in responsibility for my emotions, they are showing up to be validated in their story about their experience and received in their emotional reactivity.

I speak to responsibility and accountability in first person pronouns, about I and mine, they speak in second person pronouns, about you and yours.

Part of how I am punished for their belief that something happened which should not have happened is to bear their reactivity to the emotions they feel when they believe what happened should not have happened. They do not have responsibility for their emotions, they are assigning blame to justify uncontained emotional expression.

In this space my boundaries are unwelcome because they obstruct the other's "right" to be reactive in their hurt. I need to bear the consequences of the hurt which they believe came at my hands, my willingness to be their punching bag is my merit, my pain is their price. If I set a boundary, I'm trying to get out of my just desserts, avoiding the punishment for what I've done—it's contemptible weakness.

The value systems that cause us to show up to these vastly different conversations are incompatible because one can see the other but can't reach it, and the other cannot see beyond itself. One comes to a conversation between, the other wants an audience, a whipping boy, “justice” to be served. One is curious about diversity, ready to love and find understanding and common ground, the other knows right from wrong. One comes to offer love and understanding, the other has a score to settle, a penance to exact, a result to demand.

As painful as it is to come to one conversation and be met with another, I mourn for the other's entrapment. They seek satisfaction and control when they could have LOVE. They choose resentment over nourishment, holding out for another to feed them what only they can feed themselves. Their inefficient emotional dumping leaves residue they can never be free of, it gunks up their relationships, a score that can be called at any moment, justifiably, in either direction.

My interactions with these people do only the harm to me that I serve myself. These interactions are not for me, they are not of truth, responsibility, and love, and I will be poisoned to the degree I allow myself to feed on them.

My commitment to seeing myself and owning my impact will not and cannot be fulfilled in spaces girded by this value system. Though I am always tempted to keep going in for what is mine, though I want to believe it can be a beautiful thing and that it's necessary, these dynamics turn ownership into blame, a weapon used for punishment, and I deserve to have a truer experience, where ownership is a gift, an opportunity to infuse a relationship with love, compassion, and consideration.

I fulfill my commitment to seeing myself and owning my emotions and my impact in each moment, and in conversations with my loved ones who live in truth. I do not require violence against me to understand my impact. My receiving of punishment can never heal or repair my impact. All truth can be offered and received in loving understanding, as a gift. All emotions are safe to feel.

I am willing to see any truth about myself, and willing to feel any impact. Because of that, it can always feel safe. I get to leave anything that feels violent, because staying for violence is not an honoring of any commitment I have made to myself or to the other.

I know that I know how to show up in non-violent accountability, and it is my boundary not to show up for any other type of accounting.