What are 3 Strategies for Creating Deeper Relationships?

1) Know your conflict style. During moments of conflict, do you tend to attack or detach? If you are in an intimate relationship, what is the conflict style of your partner? If both people tend to avoid conflict, the silent treatment may go on for a while, where issues become ignored and tend to fester.  If you both are hot reactors, there may be yelling and screaming, difficulty in impulse control, and much toxic rage without purposeful conflict resolution. If one person tends to detach, and the other tends to attack, the dynamic may be complex, with an appearance of passive aggressive behavior in response to angry attacks. With these extremes of conflict styles, the outcomes may range from challenging  to perhaps, dismal.

2) Once you evaluate your conflict style, determine who in your life you have difficulty relating to. Does that person have a similar conflict style, or a different style of handling conflict? Begin an inner journey of self discovery, identifying your thoughts and feelings during moments of conflict.

3) Develop a strategy to manage conflict. If you are a hot reactor, find some anger management techniques, and learn to communicate more softly and clearly, handling one small aspect of the conflict at a time. If you tend to avoid conflict, begin with small steps to develop courage to speak your needs. Explore the possibility that you may have “inherited”some family of origin messages about open and honest communication, and the prohibition of such communication. 

Whatever your conflict style, you can grow, stretch and learn new strategies to make relationships deeper, more meaningful, fulfilling and longer lasting.