CATFIGHT!
Consider Lily bloggers will be posting often for an on-going conversation. Check back regularly!!
Actually, I want to talk about avoiding catfights…sorry. It’s just a fun word to yell (and/or type with gusto).
Our previous topic on controversy and truth got me thinking about how people handle conflict in life. We’ve all been there – the roommate who doesn’t do the dishes (usually, I’m that roommate – my apologies to anyone who’s ever shared a space with me), the relative who goads you about politics, the friend who said something hurtful. Conflict is a real part of everyone’s life, and as far as I know, they haven’t given that Nobel Peace Prize out to the “guy who cured conflict.” Eventually, every relationship has to deal with conflict of some sort, and unless we want to scrap every relationship once it reaches that first disagreement, we’ve got to find a way to move past it. How do we deal with conflict in a way that is healthy, in a way that doesn’t just ignore the problem (I’m with you, passive-aggressives of the world), and also in a way that restores the relationship in question rather than aggravating the situation?
Okay. Clearly I need to be working on this issue as I feel like I have been thinking about this topic a lot lately (and having conversations about it). Thanks, Sally, for bringing it up. I will admit up front that I am not so much the one to engage in “catfights,” but I am definitely the one to see women whom I would term as “passive aggressive” and avoid them like the plague. The problem with that, of course, is that it is not an attitude toward having grace on friends and moving toward growth in the friendship instead of moving toward holding a grudge against those whom I find to be “untrustworthy.” My first thoughts on your question lean toward honesty and upfrontness. Focusing on speaking the truth helps to fight-off the passive-aggressive tendencies. Upfrontness means actually having to have the hard conversations – confrontations – and yet, having those in a spirit of kindness and love. These are areas I know that I need to work on. I believe they help to keep a “restorative” attitude toward the relationship. I suppose the challenge alongside this, however, is how to deal with women who are not willing to approach the friendship with the same goals of honesty and forthrightness.
Since I’ve started working as a counselor, I’ve noticed a significant trend among all of my clients, which in turn has revealed some truth about myself: I’m continually amazed how many people (mostly women) don’t feel that they are even worthy to engage in conflict. What I mean is, if something is specifically done to us in a relationship (i.e.) We live with Sally, and she doesn’t wash the dishes, then something inside of us tells us that we shouldn’t confront her about the problem because we don’t want to hurt her feelings, and if we think about it, we really aren’t worthy of having clean dishes anyway…I’ll just wash them myself, or I’ll passively lash out at her another time about something else.
Okay, maybe that example seems a little silly, but I think there’s something to the idea that engaging in conflict is really showing love to ourselves by claiming our rights as women made in the image of God. When we lovingly give our concerns to the people in our lives, and when we receive the same concerns from others well, conflict can be really good for us. Not only can our friendships grow deeper because we know we are safe with one another, but we are living out the command from Romans 12:
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Lindsey, that verse is the very verse that I always used to guide my style of conflict management. Unfortunately, I took it quite out of context. I assumed that peace meant a lack of confrontation. Having roommates, however, blew that notion out of the water.
When I was a senior in college, I lived in an apartment with my best friend Sarah. It started off pretty well, but then I noticed something that really started to get me pretty angry. Sarah got ready before I did in the bathroom that we shared and she would always bring her clothes to the bathroom on a hanger. After she dressed, she’d leave the hanger hanging on the towel rack behind the door. Then she would leave and it was my turn to get ready. I would open the door, which would then hit the hanger located behind the door, and then the door would come back and hit me in the face as I was entering the bathroom. Since I’m not a morning person (and by “not” I mean that if you want talk to me before 10am, you should maybe reconsider).
Days went by and weeks turned into months. And it was the same. Every morning. Open the door. Door hits hanger. Lisa gets hit in the face. And shockingly I never was prepared for it. And every time I saw that door coming toward my face, my feelings for Sarah would grow. And not in a good way. The tension between was us palpable. I really thought I was maintaining the peace by not telling her how much I loathed seeing her hangers on the towel rack every morning, but in reality, the rift between us was the furthest thing from peace. It got to the point where I couldn’t even look at her without thinking of the hanger, which really put a kink in our friendship.
I got married right after I graduated from college, so Sarah and I gave up our apartment and went our separate ways, but we remained friends. About a year after we moved out of our apartment, we had lunch one day, and I felt a word vomit coming on. The massive amount of caffeine I had recently consumed propelled me to gush on and on about how upset the hanger on the towel rack had made me so angry day after day after day. When I had finished my rant, Sarah threw her head back and laughed. “Why didn’t you every tell me that?” she asked. “I would have moved it.” And she really would have.
I think about that story often, and I remember how keeping the peace might mean dealing with conflict sooner than later so that peace can actually be present. It’s so worth it to confront someone, especially someone you love, so that peace can truly reign and bitterness is put at bay.
So, by now my love of shopping is fairly well documented here at Consider Lily. My TRUE favorite pasttime, however, is AVOIDANCE. More than rummaging through a good sales wrack…before trying on THE PERFECT JEANS (gasp…is it possible?)…I WILL AVOID CONFLICT. PROBLEM: Weird vibe with a roommate. SOLUTION: NEVER go home when you know she’s there/only go home after 1:47 am so you know she’s asleep. CHALLENGES: Showering…Change of Clothes…Knowing that while you’re not there she’s sitting in your chair and eating your food, which is how this whole thing got started in the first place. For the record, my avoidance has made a situation better exactly ZERO times.
Last year, the pastors at our church did a series on IDOLS. There were FOUR main idols, each of us have one if we are honest with ourselves. While my number one idol is APPROVAL (seriously, you like me, right?) a close second for me is COMFORT. I LOVE being comfortable! I love the physical comfort that my yoga pants give me. I love the mental comfort that zoning out in front of the TV offers. And I love the psychological comfort that Conflict Avoidance brings…although it only lasts until my roommate/co-worker/parent/boyfriend does something ELSE that irritates me. I sit and stew…wondering how they can be sooo wrong sooo often. What my lack of confrontation is saying is that “MY COMFORT” is more important than their feelings or the health of our relationship (ouch!). I wonder if it might be better for me to open up dialogue early, when tensions are still small, and actually give them an opportunity to offer me their opinion/share their perspective. I’m going to slip into my yoga pants right now and think about that…
Lisa, I love your hanger story. 
I think it is a great example of how the little things can escalate into full blown anger and animosity. I I guess my only bit of wisdom I’ve learned slowly over the years, by trial and error, has to do with those “little things.” They are like a pebble in your pocket (I know, this metaphor is from like the 80s or something)… one pebble isn’t too heavy. But if you add another one every day, pretty soon you are so weighed down and aware of your pocket of rocks that it is debilitating. So, you guessed it, deal with those pebbles one by one, as they come. It is SO much easier to confront someone about a small matter than a big one. And we can preface it by saying “I know this probably seems like a small thing, but I just wanted to talk about it before I let it grow bigger.” It takes practice, but it really does pay off to get in the habit of honesty and working things out before anger takes root. The book “Boundaries” by Townsend has helped me a lot in that area.
Good insight, friends. Nicole – you have verbalized my idols so well that I am now sitting here convicted at how I am exactly like you have described (oh…except for the shopping… I’m a horrible shopper – my best jeans were given to me by you, if memory serves). One other thought I had on this topic is something I am currently mulling over in my life and trying to get a good grasp on. Kevin is the master of this ability and I desperately want be one as well: it’s the ability to look at offenses as NOT A BIG DEAL and MOVE ON. I’m pretty sure I am too easily offended in this life and I want to get past that. I’m not trying to say the hanger story wasn’t a big deal, Lisa — I am a fellow non-morning person so I’m pretty sure I would have thrown the hangers on the floor and/or rigged them to hit my roommate in the face the next time she came in the bathroom. But I also wonder if we – as women – need to put things in perspective. Some of our “issues” are just not big deals. We make them big deals. But in the grand scheme of issues to get upset/angry about, they aren’t. Being able to “forgive and forget” in the moment could be a freeing way to live, I think.
That makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve heard someone say that when we get offended, what we’re really angry at is the other person’s failure to recognize our importance (”can you believe she just cut in line like that?”). Obviously, people do things that are truly hurtful and truly wrong, but my life would probably have a lot less conflict if I learned to “just move on” from the pettier annoyances in my life. Not only would I not fester so much about silly conflicts, but I think I’d be better at recognizing (and addressing) real conflicts if I trained myself to discern the difference!
I agree — pick your battles! One way that might help to decipher between petty little pocket lint that can be tossed to the wind (sorry, I love metaphors) and true pebbles that need to be dealt with, is to first take those things – however small – to the LORD!! I am speaking to myself here, too, because I often forget to take my internal narrator to God. When I am offended or when I am deeply hurt, I often dwell on it myself first, and then call up a girlfriend. Taking it to God, via journaling to Him, walking and talking to Him, or whatever your style might be… that will at least give the Holy Spirit some time to give counsel to your heart regarding whether or not to have a necessary and honest conversation. And praying FOR the person who has hurt or offended can also soften our hearts to approach them in a respectable manner.
Funny story… I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole hanger incident and thinking that I definitely could have handled that differently. Then today, I walked into the bathroom to find not one, but TWO HANGERS hanging on the towel rack. But right before unleashed an early morning torrential bout of hatred upon my unsuspecting husband, I remembered that it was just a hanger, and not really that big of a deal. I mean really… a hanger… it’s not really a reason to start a war .