Conflict Avoidance Blocks Intimacy

Before I had trauma therapy, I lived in extremes. I was either going to have a full-on confrontation or I would sweep the entire conflict under the rug and pretend everything was peachy. I was all-or-nothing — as many of us with trauma can be. It took a lot of therapy to help me move away from that mentality.

Conflict avoidant partners were happiest when I wasn’t addressing any conflict. Deep in people pleasing mode, I would hide all my needs and pretend to be okay with the status quo of my relationships. Those relationships only worked when I was self-sacrificing. They could not be sustained when I was true to myself.

I began to see that it’s impossible to have true intimacy when we keep ourselves from both knowing and being known by others. Just as they were avoiding conflict by pretending not to see it, I was avoiding it every time I went into people-pleasing mode rather than addressing the problem directly. Their conflict avoidance cleverly disguised my own.

I realized that conflict avoidance is also intimacy avoidance.

It makes sense for those of us who have experienced trauma. We learn to be hypervigilant at all times in order to sense conflict before it happens — either in an attempt to avoid it entirely or in order to prepare for it. We become skillful in recognizing the warning signs, and we develop survival techniques to navigate challenges. What we don’t usually do is develop healthy ways of confronting and resolving conflict, and we don’t always recognize when our survival skills have outlived their usefulness.

As I began to realize that confronting conflict directly was inextricably linked to cultivating intimacy in relationships, I stopped wanting to avoid it. I wanted to solve problems; not pretend they didn’t exist. I wanted to build that true, strong, and intimate relationship that I knew was possible.

I began addressing issues in my relationships — and I found that conflict avoidant people truly will try to avoid conflict at all costs, even if it means leaving the relationship to do it. I was getting healthier, and that sometimes means outgrowing relationships in the process. Conflict can be triggering to many people, and it can seem self-protective for them to go rather than stay and face the discomfort of change and growth.

Confronting problems was uncomfortable for me, too. I’ve never enjoyed doing it. I just know that the alternative is to watch a relationship break down from the weight of all the quiet resentments we never address.

I didn’t want to pretend everything was fine when it wasn’t. I wanted a partner willing to talk through conflict. I wanted someone in my life who was also working toward a resolution rather than letting me carry the full weight of the relationship. A partner who couldn’t face conflict wasn’t going to fit into my life anymore. I wasn’t the people pleaser I used to be.

I began to see that it was easier for those who avoid conflict to leave when things got hard or settled into the familiarity that comes with a longer-term relationship. I used to interpret this as me being easy to leave, but now I see that it had little to do with me at all. I began to realize that the ones who are always leaving when things get hard are also the ones living without truly healthy, intimate relationships. They may genuinely want to connect with others and yet have no idea how to do that when conflict is a normal part of relationships.

The best relationships confront conflict head-on.

The strongest and healthiest relationships are capable of confronting conflict from a problem-solving perspective. In those relationships, it’s not one partner against the other but both partners against the problem. Both people participate in talking about their feelings and finding solutions to improve the relationship as a whole. Assuming the conflict isn’t directly related to a deal breaker for either person, learning how to navigate feelings and needs in a relationship can allow us to grow both as individuals and as a couple.

For those of us who grew up without seeing a healthy model of conflict resolution in relationships, we’re learning these skills from scratch. It’s not easy, and it can feel discouraging as we navigate the strong emotions that come with confrontation of any kind, no matter how gently they’re addressed. We have to confront our own defensiveness, fear, and discomfort, and sometimes, we have to face the fact that not every problem has a simple solution. Some don’t have solutions at all.

Looking back, I can see that some of the conflict I avoided was avoided for a very good reason. I knew that if I faced the problems head-on, I would have to admit that the relationship wasn’t a good fit for me. Most of the relationships that left weren’t the right relationships, so if they recognized that fact before I did and left, it set me free to heal and move on. To confront the problems myself might force me to be the one to leave.

Part of the growth process for learning to navigate conflict is learning to make the hard choices that come with it. To move forward and build true intimacy, we also have to embrace the fact that we don’t have control over the outcome of any given conversation. Advocating for our own needs could mean realizing that the relationship isn’t working for us anymore. It could mean facing facts we’re avoiding. But it could also mean learning to navigate discomfort in order to reach a whole new level of intimacy with a romantic partner.

It’s brave to be vulnerable in relationships.

To communicate well and address conflict takes a level of vulnerability that puts most of us firmly outside our comfort zones. It’s far easier to get out the broom and start sweeping everything under the proverbial rug. But the problems don’t disappear. If anything, they grow bigger in the silence of resentment.

To build the kind of close, intimate relationships we want, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable. We have to embrace the vulnerability of admitting when we are angry or disappointed. We have to be able to own all of our emotions even if they don’t seem to make sense to the other person. We have to make room to advocate for our own needs while considering a partner’s, too.

For so long, I avoided conflict and the intimacy that comes from resolving it. I built up walls to keep myself safe. It took a long time to realize that I was repeating coping strategies from childhood that had outlived their usefulness. What once had helped became a block to everything I wanted.

These days, I’m a work in progress. I practice addressing conflict, and if I don’t always get it right, I’m still trying. I don’t want shallow relationships. I want the deep intimacy that only comes when we’re willing to face conflict and find resolutions.

I’m holding myself accountable because I finally realized that every step away from conflict is a step away from intimacy, too. I hold my ground. Then, with a deep breath, I take a step forward.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

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