RESOLUTION IS A WAR GAME
conflict is for evolution
I’m sitting at a coffee shop on Monday morning in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, where I live now, enjoying the best almond croissant in town (as decided by me).
I’ve been wanting to write this article that you’ve just started reading, for many days. But I’ve continuously found a way out of it. “Later”, I say. “It’s not fully formed in my head yet”, I decide. A little, “who really cares, anyways” rolls through.
About an hour into my time here with the almond croissant, I caught myself turning away from the computer and toward the delicious pastry each time I was about to drag the mouse all the way across the screen to the “Create” button on Substack.
Writing something like this is not comfortable. It brings up all kinds of feelings and emotions. There’s that part of me, and of you, that just wants to stay in the comfort zone.
He wants to maintain a kind of sameness that avoids the stickiness of the unknown. He is the great protector that has been with me, and you, since childhood. He is the one who came when I cried out for help quietly and nobody came. he pledged to always be there when relating got intense.
Let’s call him Brian.
As a child, when I was seen, understood, validated, and loved, Brian sat back relishing in the wonder of seeing me shine. In his joy, he was taking notes. The top of the page read, “this is how it’s supposed to be”.
Of course, there is so much comfort in the sensations of being seen, understood, validated, and loved. It reminds me of being a little boy; of the dreamy times before having responsibilities.
As I grew older, I was informed and ushered into the responsibilities I would have to take as an adult in this world - mostly about having to find a way to financially support myself and a family and with that wealth, keep myself and them safe.
Over time, it’s become quite clear that my responsibilities as an adult Man are far greater and more interesting than creating wealth and family. I tried the success path for the first 3 decades of my life, ending up in a kind of zombie-frankenstein state - walking around mindlessly with a collection of identities sewn together by expectations that I absorbed from people I looked up to as successful adults.
In relationships, the zombie-frankenstein structure has many consequences. I assume that you’ve probably faced many of them.
Some of the consequences reveals themselves when there is conflict happening between you and your partner.
Remember Brian?
Because conflict is a sign of failure, Brian will try to resolve conflict as fast and quietly as possible.
He jumps off the couch, puts on his armour, and rises to the occasion. His imperative is to get back to safety ASAP. He has a whole set of weapons with which to fight the battle against conflict. His secret purpose is to win at any cost.
First, he might try to find understanding. He’ll ask for an explanation. If he can understand the problem, he can be the saviour. If that doesn’t work, he’ll try to explain himself. If they understand, then maybe they can see how much of a victim we were and be saved. If understanding fails, there’s always the possibility of defending my actions to prove that we were right all along. It’s not working. Maybe we can just contort ourself enough to be liked again. Oh no, another miss. Maybe we can just forget it and find love again by bringing our physical bodies together. Or maybe I can run away and remove my love for a while so they’ll miss us enough to see they need us.
It is as though conflict is an external force (the other person) that is trying to destroy the relationship - if they only understood that I’m a good boy, they’d submit and change something to make this work again. The responsibility, of course, is not mine.
Here’s a new perspective: conflict is an archetypal force inviting you into evolution. There is a lesson that is trying to emerge out of the underworld, like a seed wanting to break its sprout through the last layer of earth, bringing new life. I say, “you” because as an adult there is no one else who can create what you want in your life.
When Brian sees sprouts trying to break through, he sees weeds threatening his beautifully crafted monocrop garden. But that’s just because Brian has only known one way of doing things.
Brian is perfectly capable of learning new ways. He can be trained in new behaviors that leverage his creativity to support evolution, diversity and aliveness.
He can learn to help you become vulnerable, to admit his little lies, to listen as a heartbreaking return to reality, to let himself get killed so that a newer version can emerge.
If you don’t know how to do these things, you can get help to learn how. Not from someone who works in the context of resolution, like a typical therapist. Rather, from someone who lives in the field of evolution. You’ll know who they are when you find them because they’ll offer questions and experiments that invite you to break down so that you can enter into a whole new way of seeing the world.
When you learn how to access evolutionary skills, you get to start having more fun, more love, more aliveness. You discover the creativity that keeps relationships growing. How can anything get old and boring when it’s constantly changing?
Resolution is a self-centered approach to relating. It is a strategy to keep YOU safe from pain. It will only last as long as the next, bigger conflict comes.
Couples don’t need resolution. They don’t need ceasefires. They don’t need more rules and restrictions. Those are things that power-hungry world leaders need.
Evolution is a an act of service - not just to your partner - to your whole community. When you allow the pain of conflict to land deep in your bones, everyone gets to witness a whole new world of possibility. Their own Brian may not like it, but that deeper part of them will not forget. They might even come to ask you how to do it.
Couples need evolution. This Earth needs evolution. The wars stop when we learn how to fall apart together and make space for new life.
When conflict comes knocking in your relationship, it’s time for evolution. A new version of your relationship is trying to break through the cracks. And it’s your job to lead the charge - to be the first to break.
This writing was inspired by several couple’s coaching containers that have emerged in the past months that led my friend, Charlotte Vetter, and I to start crafting a Conflict Navigation Online Course for couples. Shoot me an email if you want to be on the list for updates about it.
Jeffrey, I appreciate this perspective. You’re right I do have a tendency toward the lone wolf. And I deeply agree that we can become experts at deceiving ourselves.
But your answer also makes me wonder about the opposite danger.
If we cannot fully trust ourselves, how do we know when the voices around us are helping us uncover truth, rather than simply reinforcing another layer of identity?
At what point does wisdom require community, and at what point does it require solitude?
After all, many of the great transformations throughout history seem to involve both: the guidance of others and the courage to stand alone.
Perhaps the challenge is not only learning how to distrust ourselves, but also learning how to listen deeply enough that neither our own fears nor the voices of others drown out what is true.
And I wonder:
Could dependence on community become just as subtle a defense against uncertainty as the lone wolf’s dependence on self-reliance?
Hello Jeffrey, I hope you’re doing well.
I have two questions that came to mind while reading your article:
Have there been moments when you realized you were using the language of growth and evolution as a way to avoid feeling a deeper pain?
How can we tell whether we are being called to evolve within a relationship, or whether we are being called to leave the relationship altogether?
These questions stood out to me because they seem to touch on the delicate boundary between transformation and acceptance.