Fight to love

When you get into a conflict what is your goal? Think about conflicts and fights in general.
Fight to love

BENGALURU: When you get into a conflict what is your goal? Think about conflicts and fights in general. Maybe it is a fight with someone who bumped into your vehicle on a crowded street, or a shopkeeper who insists he gave you a two hundred rupee note and you are sure he gave only a one hundred rupee note in change, or someone parks their vehicle in your allotted parking slot, or a neighbour who insists on bringing out their wailing infant into the balcony right next to your window and banging on the railings with an iron rod to try and distract the screaming child no matter what the noise does to you as just a regular person trying to sleep.

Do you just let things slide thinking it will quieten down on its own? Do you insist on fact-finding, bring out all the data and evidence so that you can have a fully logical analysis of the situation? Do you immediately draw your boundary, insist the other person correct themselves and threaten punitive action? Do you do what they did back at them so as to make them realise how awful they are 
to you?

Quite often, the goal in any conflict is driven by the immediate context of the fight rather than any long-term goal. In a traffic situation, we just want to get compensated for the damage and move on. With the shopkeeper, we just don’t want to be cheated. With the parking lot, we just want to protect our own property, and with that neighbour we just want to let each other live in peace without incident.

In relationships though, the goal is rarely just the one thing relevant to the immediate situation. Even if you and a loved one are fighting over what you want to watch on TV, it is rarely just about that day’s entertainment alone. There are so many different things that come into one fight – patterns of behaviour, how much one loves the other, desire to be understood, the space we make and hold for each other, the care we show each other, getting to know each other deeper, or even how we are changing as individuals and wanting the partner to know it.

The challenge when we are in conflict with a loved one is to first know what’s the agenda of the fight. Are we really fighting about what’s on TV or are we fighting for the very relationship itself? Is the conflict about the here and now situation, or everything and everywhere all at once? If we don’t recognise it, we end up not really resolving anything, not feeling more connected or even just clear about who stands where, and certainly having no idea what needs to be done.

What if we try and remember that all fights in a relationship are ultimately fights for love? Would we stop and try to see things differently? Would we fight to just win, or would we fight to win over someone?

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