Intimacy Breeds Conflict

For my 5th grade birthday I invited five of my best friends over for a sleepover. We painted our nails. We ate pizza. We giggled. We ate cupcakes made to look like ice cream cones. We watched The Goonies, which we had rented from Blockbuster. And then Allison looked at Sarah wrong and Sarah turned her back and made Allison sleep on the edge of our pillow palette and then Kendra started crying because she felt bad for Allison. Then they all went home and were mad at each other for a week.

Not my favorite slumber party.

The more you like someone, the closer you want to be to them. The closer you get to them, the more you realize there are some things about them you don't like. At that point you have a choice to address the differences, thereby deepening the relationship, or to let them slide and remain on a somewhat superficial level.

For fifth graders, maybe learning to let go of some of those sly looks from a hormonal pre-teen would have benefitted the sense of calm and fun we'd had before. But then again, maybe it was just the time to start addressing some of those relational concerns. We were all craving depth of friendship and there's only one way to go deeper--through conflict.

As fifth graders we didn't yet have the tools to work through our differences well. But we're all adults now. Isn't it time we gathered those tools?

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Human beings crave depth of relationship. We all want to know others and to be known, or at least we did at some point before a myriad of hurtful interactions soured our hope for intimacy. Our bodies are wired for connection. We thrive in healthy community and deteriorate in isolation. But building true intimacy (not just false peace or superficial connections) requires effective conflict.

On the other end of the spectrum is tribalism. It's where you camp out with people who look like you and smell like you and make the same kind of money. You only have to hear voices that sound like yours and when differences come up, you pretend they don't exist in the name of "unity" (but it's actually uniformity for a sense of safety).

It's where Allison and Kendra go home together and tell their version of the story to some of their other friends who validate and defend their position and unify against Sarah--never to reconcile again. The whole friend group breaks up into tiny clusters of hatred, bitterness and fear.

Tribalism is an effect of immaturity.

There's a phrase used in Emotionally Focused Therapy that says, "Intimacy breeds conflict and conflict breeds intimacy." As you get closer to someone, letting differences slide is a decision to plateau the relationship. Sarah could have ignored that sly look from Allison. She could have just shrugged it off. But relationships that don't address offenses are permanently shallow. Albeit in an immature way, Sarah was showing Allison she wanted more depth. The intimacy of a sleepover was just the context to reveal a difference that needed to be worked out. For. More. Depth. (And true unity).

While our fifth-grade selves lacked the maturity to address the differences vulnerably and with tenacity for reconciliation, we could do that differently now, couldn't we?

And so it is with us as a society. Anyone willing to step outside the safety of their tribe in pursuit of true intimacy and true unity must be willing to face some differences, must be willing to embrace the conflict that comes with a new closeness with people you don't necessarily see eye to eye with. It would require bravery and humility.

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My office is a unique place in that different political, religious, and world views are sitting on the exact same couch from one hour to the next. As the differentiated participant in this work, sometimes it's a bit of psychological whiplash. With my creative work I have red fans and blue fans. I have a personal history filled with fear-filled conservative Christian values and also life experience with brash feminist liberals. (Sometimes those two camps are merged, but rarely).

In that bipartisan position I find myself desperately wanting both sides to have a real conversation. Sometimes I really wish my clients could know one another. I wish that some of you, my readers, friends and fans, would be brave enough to face one another and attempt a vulnerable conversation. You each have such valuable stories. You each bring passion for highly important aspects of our life problems. And yet, very few of you step foot in the camp of the other.

If intimacy breeds conflict and conflict breeds intimacy, perhaps we have had unproductive conflict for too long. We've all gone home from the slumber party and pouted indefinitely. Are you tired of that yet? Are you lonely enough yet? Can you even imagine a world where we could get along?

Would you be willing to step into curious listening? Would you be willing to humbly examine the other side of the coin? I guarantee you will find things that scare you. I guarantee you will be thrown off and perhaps even embarrassed by the ass you'll realize you've shown.

But I can also guarantee an opportunity to grow. You will have a chance to soften and recover. You will get to know some human treasures. You will learn that the world is bigger, that there is more freedom, and that we can do so much more in triumph against the evil that is in this world than we ever could have done from our isolated war trenches.