Conflict: Coping with Confusing and Depleting Relationships
Conflict is Necessary
Conflict is necessary to rebuild a marriage or a relationship. The hope and promise of being understood and accepted are on the other side of our conflicts. On this side of our conflicts, we say nothing or we go viral. Why do we do this? Conflict is confusing. We feel helpless before something we do not understand. So, we respond in a way we are familiar: silence or shouting. The other side of the conflict can be positive: forgiveness and reconciliation, or neutral as in forbearance, or negative as in divorce or stalemate. You can feel the ambiguity of conflict when you understand that anger is not the only emotional state that brings us to conflict. Anxiety, depression, fear, frustration all require conflict. Conflict is required if we are to get to the other side where we are understood and accepted. Conflict is necessary to the degree I am not confident that in my marriage or relationship:
- I will be kept safe from harm;
- I can express myself freely;
- I am understood by my partner;
- I stand in need of consoling words and emotional support;
- I need to be affirmed as I strive to live up to my ambitions.
The Agony of Conflict
The human struggle to seek and benefit from our relationships are bright with joy and frustrated by despair. Finding your way through the maze of your relationships can so strongly affirm you in your life’s ambitions you can face the most difficult of challenges. The tangle of relationship can also snarl you as the thickest bramble patch. The poem Agonizing Grace seeks to express the hope, promise and high cost of your meaningful relationships.
AGONIZING GRACE
Love’s attractive embrace.
Hate’s glare of shame.
Love and Hate.
A family of anyone’s name.
A circus of agony and grace.
A circus’ risky attractions.
Bodies flying high through space!
Will they fall?
Defying sensible norms,
they die. Agony.
Clowns’ humorous diversions.
Contradicting their hearts, they laugh.
Is there grace in the agony?
Families tell the story of the circus.
Or does the circus act the story of the family?
Love’s embrace: ‘We missed you.’
Hate’s shame: ‘Oh, really?’
Defying sensible norms will they fall?
Contradicting their hearts, they embrace.
Is their agony in the grace?
The circus must go on.
Grace can live in agony,
an agonizing grace.
A clown’s heart feels.
Agony cries for grace.
Families apart from an embrace go on.
Shrouded by shameful hate.
Living only in silenced grace.
Questioning who they are!
A circus without grace has only agony.
Will the act begin again? Can it not?
Is not the cry of pain the hope for grace?
Does not the circus require agony?
Isn’t the story still untold?
Play on, dear families of man, play on in agonizing grace.
August 15, 2001
The Tenth Sunday after Trinity
James P. Raun
The inspiration for Agonizing Grace came from a painting by Picasso. On a visit to the Baltimore Museum of Art, I had the privilege to view the BMA’s collection of preliminary sketches by this controversy artist. One important piece: “The Circus” is rooted in Picasso’s social conscience. He was disturbed by the conditions of the circus troupes traveling around France offering heroic performances of their art. These troupes would be family. The poet witnesses an acrobat falling to her death. She risked her life to entice people to come to the performances. The family made a meager existence from the attendance at their performances. When she falls, it would be a brother or cousin who as a clown needed to divert the attention of the crowd from the tragedy of his sister’s death. He did this out of necessity for they would have to refund the audience’s money if the left. They needed the money to survive the week.
We find ourselves in the same place when our marriages or relationships break down or collapse. In Christian thought, the answer given to seekers troubled by their response in an uncomfortable or confusing relationship is for them to speak with the perceived offender. The purpose of this conversation is to find some way both can reach an understanding of what is troubling either person. It is the right answer. Many times, this approach to the bumps and detours of relationships gets things back on track. Talking problems through is needed for understanding and comfort. As Jesus says in Matthew 18:15 “If he listens to you, you have won your brother.”
Other times this answer eludes the resolution that fosters closeness and love. You find your relationship closer to the poem: Agonizing Grace. What does Christian thought offer to us in this situation? Forbearance or in Old English ‘Long-suffering’ is the response of the Church speaking through its Pastors and struggling Pilgrims over the centuries of its history. I recognize that other outcomes too frequently develop: divorce or stalemate. Forbearance is different.
Forbearance is a Bridge to Peace
Forbearance is a commitment to a troubled relationship despite the confusion or injury you experience in that relationship. As Jesus goes on to say Matthew 18:16 “But if he does not listen to you.”
Jesus is saying there is an equality between these individuals. They both have the right to be heard. They both have the right to the truth. They both have the right to a response. You have the right to expect an answer from your spouse. But not just any response you can think of your relationship as an exchange between two people. Hence you expect your relationship with your friend, spouse, or parent to be reciprocal: ‘You help me, I’ll help you. Fair’ Other transactions like reciprocity would be that our relationship is bilateral: No one is ‘one-up’ on the other. What is good for one is good for the other. We experience equality in the relationship. We also expect the relationship to be balanced between what we both offer in the exchange between us. The balance may be between something concrete (money), and something abstract (gratitude) or it may be between similarities, e.g., mutual affection, mutual help –I’ll change the baby; you do the dishes’. Life works out between us: Chores, child-care, respect.
These expectations are reasonable and required if you are to be understood and protected from injury or confusion in your relationship. It is this failure to find your friend, spouse, or parent responding in a reciprocal, bilateral or balanced manner that presents the need to speak with them. How are we to respond when confronted by the impasse in their refusal or passivity in responding to your request. We talk to each other because that is fair, it is respectful; it is right. But Jesus faces the tragic and sometimes brutal reality that we do not ‘play nice.’
It is this refusal to be heard and understood which presents you with the question of forbearance. Making a commitment to bear with the relationship presents us with a severe dilemma. Our Lord speaks of these various difficulties in the Gospel of St. Matthew chapter 18. The setting of Jesus’ teaching is a dispute among the disciples about who is greatest: something like a 3 & 6-year-old fighting over who will sit on Mommy’s lap! So, with this immaturity in mind, Jesus says: “Unless you become like a child you are not even going to get into my Kingdom let alone be a leader!” What is Jesus’ point? He is asking us to be dependent upon each other: “Unless…you become like little children.” Trusting each other. Willing to share. Relating to each other protectively: “Woe to the one who causes one of these little ones to stumble.” Hearing each other’s side of the argument: “Go to your brother or sister and point out their fault…”
We are good up to this stage but what happens next? When they tell me to shut-up and leave! Fast forwarding, what happens when they continue not to hear, not negotiate, unwilling to even entertain our viewpoint! The Apostle Peter speaks up and asks Jesus: How much do I have to put up with?
In Christian thought, the task of forbearance is to foster an opportunity to allow the Spirit to move in the experience of the person giving offense. Bearing with another person is not merely a means to endure an exhausting or depleting relationship but to foster this possibility to cooperate with the work of the Spirit for the higher purposes of the community and your relationship. I make this direct appeal to the work of the Spirit because you need some way to go beyond the hurt, anger, or anxiety of these depleting relationships. The other ideals our society offers in my experience leave us further confused or exhausted: ‘give it time’; ‘Family comes first’; ‘Divorce is not an option’; ’Just wait. Don’t make waves’; all leave us more confused. Also, there is nothing in these ideas or ones like them which bring clarity or comfort to you as you endure the relationship. Being open to the presence of Jesus in your life and the life of the offender changes the relationship. I can relate to my partner with humility and patience just as Jesus has humbled Himself and is patient with me.
The relationship now introduces another person into the exchange; the bilateral relationship becomes a trilateral relationship, the imbalance between each other is balanced by the peace of Christ present within each of us. I can offer to my partner the grace and empathy provided to me. The relationship becomes an exchange between Jesus and me and then between my spouse and me: I am empowered to bear with my partner as Jesus is patient with me.
Peter’s question and your dilemma remains. When is enough, enough? Enough, is enough; when my spouse is not answering my questions. As Jesus says in Matthew 18:15 “if he listens to you, you have won your brother.” But It is not any response. It is a response that respects the equality we have in Jesus’ New Society. It is a response in which:
- I will be kept safe from harm;
- I can express myself freely;
- I am understood by my partner;
- I stand in need of consoling words and emotional support;
- I need to be affirmed as I strive to live up to my ambitions.
How quickly do we get to this place is the problem? If we wait too long, we are harmed. If we act too soon, we are not allowing for the Spirit to work. Bearing with my silent or raging spouse, is the dilemma of forbearance. This is why Jesus goes on to say in Matthew 18:16-17: Speak with others to gain wisdom and advice. We are a community, depending on each other.