One of the hardest things to do is to confront conflict. Why? As humans our brains only have two options: receiving pain or pleasure. And given a choice, we will seek pleasure every time. Only doing things that are pleasurable are not realistic. If we can’t face this reality, then we are back on Fantasy Island where all our dreams come true.

Even when it comes to our jobs/businesses, every single part of our daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks do not bring us pleasure. Sometimes this task might be a five minute task, or it could be a one hour task. Whatever the case, there comes a point in time when motivation goes out the door, and discipline has to take over.

Discipline

Discipline says, “It’s not about whether I can pump myself up enough to get the job done, I must get it done. I can chill when it’s over. I have a business to run.”

Why do we discipline ourselves in our jobs/careers?

We want to be obedient to God in the calling that he has entrusted to us.

And keeping it real, we want that paycheck. Bills don’t get paid by themselves.

When we don’t take that same enthusiasm into our romantic relationships, or any other important relationship for that matter, we are setting ourselves up for disaster.

What We Do

Avoiding conflict in hopes of only receiving pleasure is like cutting off the top of all the weeds on our lawn, hoping they will never return. It ain’t happening.

We seem to have this thing down pat in our romantic, friendship, and familial relationships.

When we avoid conflict in our relationships, we say things like, “Oh, you know we need to come together for the sake of keeping peace.” Or, another excuse sounds like, ” You know how he/she is.” Just ignore that and let’s move forward.”

The end result: nothing is resolved. You move forward at the expense of damaging and disrespecting yourself because you don’t want to feel the pain of the other person getting mad at you, and possibly not speaking to you because you told them the truth.

Slamming doors, walking out, and giving the silent treatment, and other passive-aggressive behavior gets played out really fast.

You are in for a rude awakening. But you haven’t figured that out yet.

What is truly happening when you are avoiding conflict is that you are walking around building up bitterness, resentment, and unforgiveness against the other person. What you did to have pleasure at all costs has caused you pain at every cost to your mind, body, and soul.

You have been walking around with an unattended open wound.

And you keep going through cycles and cycles of it.

Why?

You refused to dig down deep enough to pull up the weed from its roots.

What is going to happen next in the healthy relationship cycle? What will be difference in the toxic relationship cycle? Tune in for the next post when we talk about the end result of this behavior in both situations.

Until next time,

Katina