Putting Conflict Styles into Practice

 This past week I've been studying conflict styles and learned about the one I usually use to confront conflict in my life. As I learned more about the different ways to engage and deal with conflict, I decided it would be interesting to go talk to someone close to me, but about something we don't see eye-to-eye about. 

I picked my girlfriend because we know each other, probably better than anyone else, and yet we have disagreements about certain things and like to talk about them. We hang out all the time, so these topics naturally come up in our conversations.

One particular thing that we have disagreements about is the fact that she cares a lot about animals and could never kill an animal. She believes that all life is important and I on the other hand don't really mind animal deaths. I told her once I would let a hundred dogs and cats die just to save one person, because I think humans inherently hold more value than other animals.

It's difficult to talk about because I think her position is so absurdly soft and she thinks my position is ridiculously brutal. I'm fearful that she would get upset if I try to bring up this topic again, but since we both like to have discussions/arguments, it should still be productive.

I'm writing this now after the conversation. I think this time around when we talked about it I was not, let's say, scoffing at her opinion so much and she was more open to hearing my side. In the end we had a mutual agreement that neither of us are wrong, but we think differently about the value of animals and that's okay. I'm glad that we came to this conclusion because understanding and respecting someone else's beliefs even though you disagree with them is, in my opinion, the healthiest conclusion to any argument.

Since this was the second time we talked about this, emotions weren't as high as the first time we learned about each other's positions and we were able to control more where the conversation went rather than speak out in the moment.

Overall, I found this exercise productive. I was able to talk to my girlfriend about something we don't agree on in more of a collaborative approach rather than a competitive one. I appreciate her for being a good sport about the whole thing, too.