5 undervalued benefits of relationship conflict

It gets a bad rep but conflict in a relationship is as valuable a force as it is inevitable.

Once you get to a certain relationship depth with someone, you're going to experience disagreements or struggles at points along the road. The root of these is usually in a difference of opinion, experience, perspective, taste, personality expression or belief. We all come into relationships with our own set of these that we've collected and developed throughout our personal journey and of course these are occasionally going to clash with someone else's!

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about abusive conflict situations here. That's a different story and I'd urge to you access the many resources available.

But for those disillusioned by the occasional road block you experience with your partner, here are some ways to re-frame relationship conflict:

1. An opportunity to verbalise needs

When our values or opinions are challenged by an interaction with a loved one, sometimes it's hard to pinpoint what it is about the situation that's making us uncomfortable. By opening dialogue about this, it presents an opportunity to try and make sense of the feelings behind our reaction and even try and put these into words – not just for your partner's benefit but for your own.

Have you ever started talking to a friend about something without knowing where you were going? Then as you continued, you started to make sense of it for yourself through the process of explaining it to another?

Conflict provides us with an opportunity to bring our deeper feelings and needs out to a conscious level and in the process, allows us to learn something about ourselves. It helps us to probe into the limits of what we are and are not willing to accept and to help us set boundaries around these.

2. An opportunity to get to a deeper level of your relationship

You heard me right. Conflict can actually improve your relationship. It's an opportunity to get to the next level of knowing your partner on the particular issue you're clashing on.

Maybe on surface level it's not necessarily new knowledge that's lighting your heart on fire... but if you stay open and curious, you might learn something new about their fears, insecurities or hopes that allows you to know and appreciate them as a person at a deeper level than before.

Often the harder times are where the most growth happens in our relationships. By facing the discomfort and challenges and accepting each other at the other end.

3. It breeds creativity

Two minds really are greater than one when it comes to generating new ideas and solutions. Especially when those two minds belong to the people the solution needs to work for.

If you actually listen to what your partner is saying (rather than focusing on your next counter-offensive), you may learn they have some valuable ideas or opinions on how to solve the issue you're struggling with that works for you too. Crazy, I know.

Your partner's different beliefs, experiences and opinions that contributed to getting you to this point of conflict, may actually help you navigate your way out of it. They can offer some diversity to the stagnant solution pool likely firmly established in your own mind. Some healthy and respectful debate following this new injection of information will likely improve the quality of the solution arrived at.

4. It saves time

We all love a time saving solution these days. Some initial tension and disagreement in the short term could save you time by helping you reach the best solution for the long term. While it may be tempting to skirt around an issue to keep the peace, on matters important enough to us, we're going to revisit this again and again in potentially less constructive and indirect ways.

Facing conflict as it arises, allows you to show your cards early on and play with the same information from there on out.

5. It helps broaden our own perspective

Hearing another person's perspective can help mould our own perception or perspective on an issue. This can go one of two ways. We could either find ourselves feeling more clear and committed to our original position OR we could experience a shift of openness towards a new perspective on an idea. Both are absolutely fine and are a product of you taking in new information to form a broader, more rounded perspective on the issue. Let's face it, it would be pretty boring if our partner's were a mirror reflection of ourselves!

Alright well if it's so bloody great you think, how come it destroys so many relationships?

The goal is not to not have conflict, it is to handle it well.

More on this next week...

In the meantime, read about how couples coaching and individual coaching can support you to reach your relationship goals.