BENGALURU: The world is talking about de-escalation this week. The last couple of weeks has demonstrated how quickly things can escalate, and how much damage it can cause.
In relationships too, conflict escalation is a massive problem. Sometimes, in the escalating spiral of “who did what to whom, in retaliation to what who did and when,” things get so convoluted that there is no single starting point where one can actually assign a specific responsibility.
When there was no love lost between the conflicting parties to begin with, it is of course, nearly impossible to find a starting point. Even with people who want to love each other, and have had a loving relationship for quite some time, the escalated conflict situation can make it really hard to find a starting point where there was a clear offence with one party being the aggressor and the other a hapless target. Chances are that both feel quite righteous in their starting stance.
Thing is, when matters escalate to such a great extent that there is significant damage from verbal or other violence from all sides, there is no longer any difference between who is the aggressor and who is the target. For those seeing this conflict from outside, especially for people who are neutral to both, there is no apparent difference between either and one is no longer able to discern who to empathise with, and even if there was any sympathy to begin with, it gets lost in the extremes of the escalated situation. For people seeing this conflict, who want to have a good relationship with both parties, it can be truly a nightmare that feels unsolvable.
All parties to the conflict look horrible in such a situation and everyone just wants things to stop. Nothing else matters – just stop. Matters of justice, or any feelings of affection or love, take a back seat. We just want the conflict to stop.
If we are the parties in such a deadly spiral of escalation, it is likely because we do not see the other person as a valuable person. They are no longer someone we love or care about, no longer a co-parent, or someone with a shared interest in things we value, not someone we see even as a human being. We name them terrible things in our mind, reducing their entirety to whatever immediate offence was there or a label that allows us to hold them in hate and contempt, and we fully justify to ourselves that our escalating matters is absolutely warranted. Whether one ‘sees red’, or ‘goes black’, or however one wants to think about it, the truth of the matter is that we become monstrous ourselves.
De-escalation is a lesson we need to learn early and often, and practise all the time. Wherever we are in a conflict, the ability to de-escalate, and come back to being able to see each other, and what we are looking to solve, is crucial. Without that, chances are that the love that we have, the friends that we have, the respect that we earned - all are at risk.
(The writers’ views are their own)