Conflict is for Opponents

Conflict is what opponents do. Competition is for rivals.

If I encounter conflict in relationship, I divest from the idea that it is a close relationship, and invest my attention elsewhere.

For me, the definition of a close relationship is one where we remain collaborators, teammates, partners. We are meeting life together, never competitors, never rivals, never opponents.

Yes, NEVER.

Never ever.

If something in you says this is unrealistic, you're just like me. That is a place I have gone to grieve, believing even the closest relationships, even the truest love, involved some degree of enmity.

I have humbly asked to learn what the world might have to offer me, willing to allow what is beyond my imaginations.

I have come to know collaboration I never saw as a child.

Now I can see—conflict is for opponents. I can live in such a way that my loved ones are never my opponents.

Never ever.

It ends when I commit to remain always within the beingness of collaboration, when collaboration is the feature which defines close relationship.

It ends when I am finally unwilling to leave love even for the juicy pleasure of an unloving narrative about the other person.

It ends when I stop asking for it from other people and be the one to show loving collaboration, by example, in every situation.