The Conflict You're Avoiding Is the One You Need

Confronting problems head-on is often the healthiest way forward

When I was 25 years old, I spent a few months apologizing to almost everyone in my life. I had to sit across from people I’d hurt and listen after asking how my behavior had affected them. This was part of the process of me getting sober. I was certain each conversation would kill me. Not metaphorically. As my hands shook, and my heart raced, I feared I would explode. Every cell in my body screamed to run, cancel, make up an excuse… literally do anything other than let another person tell me how I’d impacted them.

But it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. The process was awful and many of the conversations didn’t turn out as I’d hoped, but I learned I could sit in the worst discomfort I’d ever felt and come out the other side. That made me feel powerful. In many ways, every hard conversation I’ve had since has borrowed courage from that experience.

Recovery forced me into conversations most people spend their whole lives avoiding. I think about those conversations constantly, because I hear how people avoid them every day in my office. Couples who haven’t said a real thing in years. Friends who let resentment build until they ghost instead of talk. The pattern is always the same: they believe the conversation will break the relationship, so they protect it by never having it. But the relationship deteriorates anyway… just in a slower, more fragmented way.

Most of my clients don’t need to learn how to communicate. The internet is full of advice: use I-statements instead of you-statements, state your feelings, express your needs calmly. What they can’t do is get to the conversation in the first place. Healthy conflict requires two things most of us were never taught: how to stay in the conversation when you want to leave and how to truly listen without defending yourself.

Most of us leave hard conversations without ever standing up. We say “Forget it!” or “I’m fine!” or “This isn’t going anywhere!” We change the subject, pick up our phone, or shut down, so the other person stops trying. Other times, we go on offense, raising our voice or dragging in something unrelated so that the conversation becomes a fight we can win instead of a vulnerable moment. All of these tactics accomplish the same thing: they end the conversation before it begins.

Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between a difficult conversation and a genuine threat. It registers danger and wants you out. Staying means overriding that signal long enough to let the conversation actually happen. Not forever. Not perfectly. Just long enough.

But staying doesn’t help if you spend the whole time defending yourself. We listen for inaccuracies instead of pain. We say, “That’s not what I meant” as though our intention erases the other person’s experience. We counter with something they did wrong so that nobody has to stay with the original point. Or we do something sneakier: we martyr ourselves. “You’re right, I’m the worst partner in the world. You may as well dump me now.” On the surface, it looks like an apology, but it functions as an exit. Now the other person has to stop talking about how they feel and start reassuring us. We never have to hear what they needed to say.

Most of us think closeness comes from compatibility and having enough in common. But the strongest relationships are actually between people who have had the hard conversations and found their way back to each other. Not because the conversations went well, but because both people were willing to be uncomfortable and keep going. Decades of research by couples therapists John and Julie Gottman confirms this. Successful relationships aren’t defined by the absence of conflict but by the ability to repair after it.

John and Julie Gottman

So how do you practice this? Start by noticing your default. When a conversation gets uncomfortable, what do you actually do? Do you feel the urge to defend (fight), run (flee), or shut down (freeze)? We all have a pattern. Instead, I want you to pause and take a deep breath. In through your nose, deep into your belly, and slowly out through your mouth. Notice a few things you can see in the room. Feel your feet on the ground. Bring yourself back to the present moment.

When someone tells you something that stings, before you explain your side, try asking a question instead — “Can you tell me more about that?” Or even just say, “I hear you.” Not because their interpretation is automatically right, but because the conversation can’t go anywhere if they don’t feel heard first. You can share your perspective after. Most of us skip straight to rebuttal and never get past it.

I was terrible at those conversations at 25. I cried, said the wrong things, and bit my tongue so much it bled. You don’t have to be good at conflict. You just have to be willing to be bad at it. The conversations that changed my life weren’t the ones that went well. They were the ones I spent weeks dreading and minutes surviving.