(Re)connection over conflict

audio included 🎧🥰📝

Like you, I have a conflict in my life I could choose to let go of. A spring cleaning of sorts; making room for the connection on the other side. And yet, it’s hard for me to fully believe in that illusory other side beyond conflict, where reconciliation resides. You’re familiar with the obstacles standing in the way of repair. Pride. Shame. Hurt. Specifically, the hurt of feeling abandoned by someone who doesn’t seem to realize it. Somehow that’s worse. It concedes an imbalance of needs, a mismatch in relative importance. That I need you in ways you don’t need me. That I needed you in ways you didn’t need me.

But there’s a certain approach to relationships I’ve chosen to adopt, and I cannot only do so in theory. That no one is disposable — nothing in nature is, as adrienne maree brown teaches us. That we are all worth fighting for. That kinship is deeper than minor hurts and betrayals. Putting this theory into practice leaves me at the shore of reconciliation, with a deep knowing that while it may be uncomfortable, I need to make my way into the waters. This gap between the ocean and me mirrors the gap between theory and practice. The idea that we say we want community, but we ignore and avoid embracing some of the inevitably uncomfortable realities of actually being in community. The many texts I’m behind on are a testament to this gap (yes, capitalism keeps us busy, and also, I’m inadvertently prioritizing my own need for space over reliably showing up for people)

If reconciliation is the ocean, then I’m at the shore, bracing myself for submersion. As I look out at the water, I choose to remind myself of a lesson I learned young: the waters will be shockingly cold, but only initially. Once I’m submerged past my belly, the frigid water will transition to at best, delightful, and at worst, tolerable. All the tension I was not even aware I was clinging to will dissolve and release from my body. And it will begin to feel like there was never another place for me to be.

What does it mean to reconcile? It’s choosing togetherness over separateness. It’s accepting that reconciling will be very uncomfortable, but only at first, until it isn’t. There will be, if we work towards it, a moment where the pressure valve of all the conflict releases. Not fully, but enough. And we will feel a great togetherness once more. There is a certain freedom in the re-alignment. Ocean and body. Friend and friend. That other side called reconnection, once an illusion, brought into full view and reality.

The goal is not to stay at the shores too long. Ruminating. Obsessing. Fighting imaginary battles. Saying in theory the same words your mouth refuses to form in practice. Some people, far wiser than me, just dive in. They know it’s the anticipation that prolongs the suffering. They aren’t masochists like I am (or, perhaps, merely a different kind).

Relationship therapist Esther Perel often asks the question: “Do you want to be right or do you want to be in relationship?”. For the egotist in each of us, this question is instructive. It can bring us back to what matters more than winning an argument. What we must make matter more than winning anything. Connection. And pride and connection do not go together. Pride is like the manipulative lover that wants to isolate us from the people in our lives who actually care for us. It keeps us shallow company and makes us believe no one’s companionship could be more meaningful or deserving. By now we’re all familiar with the view that technology distracts us from real life. Similarly, pride distracts us from real connection… *whispers*: do you want to be right or do you want to be in relationship?

While at times, pride can protect us from situations that are unworthy of us, where we are unsafe, so often it does not have our best interests at heart. Because, surely, our best interests must be connection, community, togetherness (which, as I mentioned, we like to pretend are devoid of conflict, tension, or dis-ease). Our best interest cannot be tossing and turning with our ruminating thoughts, overthinking slights we refuse to make known (except, of course, to the extraneous parties we might gossip with — only seeking viewpoints that confirm our own).

When I am struggling to move myself towards repair/reconciliation, I remind myself that many people have forgiven me for things I will never know about, in ways I will never know of. Many people are in the process of forgiving me in ways they will never disclose. I have been the beneficiary of the emotional process of choosing forgiveness and repair for hurt that I am unaware of. Texts I’ve failed to respond to. Promises I’ve failed to keep. Pain I’ve inflicted and failed to acknowledge or redress. And in my ignorance I will declare it unjust for me to have to do such a thing for someone else in a way that feels so one-sided. Why am I letting this go if they have nothing to let go of? Why am I forgiving and forgetting if they have nothing to forgive and forget? The ego believes itself to be the perpetual victim of other people’s slights, forgetting that we are each also “other people”.

As is hopefully clear, I’m not advocating for blanket forgiveness, nor all its religious subtext. I’m talking about the people with whom we know we could reconnect and reconcile, but feel too proud or ashamed or hurt to. Maybe next month. As adults the time passes on and on, until years have gone by. I was fascinated that in the US, of all the regrets that adult humans have, lost connections are the number one regret. When I imagine myself dying, or the other person, it always becomes shockingly clear to me how meaningless the conflict between us is. So why do I let it persist?

If we zoom out and look more holistically at all our relationships across space and time, including the one in question, we see that we exist in a broader web of silently forgiving and having been silently forgiven. Once we see repair as cosmic alignment, as an opportunity to support something bigger than ourselves, I think it becomes easier to move towards. When we begin to reflect on how unobvious it is that the people in our lives choose to keep us around, despite the slights, despite the hurt, despite the indignation we cause them, knowingly or unknowingly — it becomes easier to dive into the waters of reconciliation with an open heart and open mind.

Like children preparing to enter the ocean, we can remind ourselves that the sting of the cold, frigid water is only temporary. We can remind ourselves that the time will come when we will be fully immersed and invited into the freedom and the connection and the release. And we will float with our face to the skies, the sun shining on our face, basking in a connection that once felt like Home and finally feels like Home again.

if you enjoyed reading this, please know the writer felt it needed a lot more work, but has chosen to see the beauty of sharing things that to her may feel unfinished but to the reader may arrive at the perfect time in a condition that is quite adequate to receive its underlying message. today I affirm that my goal is not to be seen as a good writer. my goal is to offer that most special sensation of feeling seen.