Invitation to Zoom Conversation #9
Fighting words: having conflict and learning about ourselves from it
A few weeks before Nate and I got married, we had a conversation that would prove moot. The subject was babies, the point upon which we didn’t see eye to eye was when would we start having them. Nate was 37 and had been married for over a decade, experiencing infertility in his first marriage. He was ready to start trying day one. I was 34 and was just coming into my career and wanted to experience at least a year of marriage before babies. (Neither of us knew, of course, that within a year we’d have three miscarriages and over the next decade many more, eventually deciding to actively prevent pregnancy.)
When we couldn’t agree on this point, we brought the conversation with us to our next premarital counseling session. What they said almost knocked the wind out of me: “We’re interested to see how you work out this conflict.”
That’s it. They didn’t tell me to submit to him or him to submit to me. They didn’t give us a bunch of wisdom about timing and control. They didn’t hold a bunch of empathy for his story or a bunch of optimism about mine. They saw the conversation for what it was, a conflict, and then encouraged us to work through it.
Nate and I came from two very different family dynamics when it came to conflict. His family chose to keep it behind closed doors and he never saw his parents fight. Mine was the exact opposite, fights commonplace, loud and often physical. He thought that because he did not see conflict in his family it meant there wasn’t conflict. I was so sensitive to conflict of any kind that I would run away from it as soon as it came up. Anger, raised voices, manipulation, control, any physical acting out—any of it, I was out. I thought that was the only form of conflict within marriage and family and I was terrified of it. To have this slow, steady, caring conversation called conflict was revolutionary to me. It shouldn’t have taken me until 34 to learn this, but it did.
The itch was scratched. I didn’t have language for the Enneagram back then, not knowing I was a 9 (a peacemaker—but in unhealth, a peace-faker or peace-keeper), but I began to crave conflict. I didn’t pick arguments or get stubborn about small things, but I began to see the value in intentionally engaging difficult conversations for the express purpose of understanding the other, even if agreement was a long way off or even never reached.
I stopped seeing conflict as all out war, an opportunity to win, a desire to be right or one-up the other. I stopped seeing it as a way to exert control or dominate the other, or to be controlled or dominated myself. Instead I began to see it as a way of enlarging my world and my perspective. If my aim wasn’t to win, the aims could be endless. It could be to understand, to empathize, to find equal footing, to listen, to hear, to choose my words carefully, to sometimes agree that resolution couldn’t happen soon but we could continue to work toward it.
Over the past near decade, I’ve learned and continue to learn to embrace the awkward silence, to ask a question and let it hang, to end a conversation with “let’s keep talking about it later.” When my aim stopped being to be right or to flee, it became to simply be with even amidst the tension of what sometimes felt wrong.
I wish I could say this changed my friendships and marriage and relationship with my family and my whole world. But it didn’t. Or it hasn’t yet. But it has changed me. I am simply not afraid of conflict anymore. I’m not afraid of letting someone believe what they want to believe as long as it doesn’t actively harm someone else. I also find myself more willing to engage really difficult conflict especially if it is harming someone else, including but of course not limited to my own self.
I’m still learning how to do this well. I’m still learning that conflict in which there are heated emotions is not necessarily a safe place for anyone and I have the right to say, “Hey, I know my own self well enough to know that’s not a good place for me to be.” I also know how to let it go. To say what I need to say and not hold onto bitterness if they disagree. I’m still learning how to ask the right questions but I have learned to not be afraid of the questions, the ones I ask or the ones asked of me.
Tonight, Tuesday, at 7pmET, you’re invited to a Zoom conversation with me where we’ll talk through these themes of having grace for ourselves and others in the midst of conflict and considering other views charitably. I want you to know I do not have all the answers or even most of the answers, but it has become more important to me to trust the process more than the answers.
Hope to see you there. The Zoom invitation and links are below. Make sure you note the passcode to get in.
As always, to protect the participants and allow for open communication during the call, we do not record these calls.
Lore Wilbert is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.