How People Avoid Conflict during Divorce

HOW PEOPLE AVOID CONFLICT

This is borrowed from “The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution” by Bernard Mayer.

There are different ways to handle conflict: some people collaborate, others accommodate and focus on the other person’s needs. Some people compete and others compromise. You may have run across someone who avoids conflict. Have you ever thought about all the creative ways of avoiding conflict? Mayer lists eight different ways:

1) Aggressive Avoidance (“Don’t Start with Me or You’ll Regret it”) Intimidation is used to keep the other person from engaging in conflict.

2) Passive Avoidance (“I Refuse to Tango”): This would include withdrawing from a relationship, avoiding contact, being inappropriately silent, using distraction, etc.

3) Passive Aggressive Avoidance (“If You are Angry at Me, That’s Your Problem”): These folks don’t admit they are provoking the other person. They get others to react using verbal “hit and run.”

4) Avoidance Through Hopelessness (“What’s the Use?”): These folks give up before they start by inaccurately defining the problem as unsolveable.

5) Avoidance Through Surrogates (“Let’s You and Them Fight”): These avoiders let others fight their battles for them, or take it out on easier surrogate targets.

6) Avoidance Through Denial (“If I Close my Eyes, It Will Go Away”): This is the ostrich approach. The existence of the problem may denied, or perhaps its seriousness.

7) Avoidance Through Premature Problem Solving (“There’s No Conflict: I have Fixed Everything”): To truly resolve a conflict the timing must be right, the feelings expressed and understood, the values articulated. Making a shortcut around this process tends to be ineffective.

8) Avoiding by Folding (“OK, We’ll Do It Your Way; Now Can We Talk About Something Else?”): This is caving in, sacrificing one’s own important needs, and taking on too much responsibility.

Once you become away of these approaches, you might catch yourself or someone else using them. Awareness is the first step towards change and empowerment!

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