playing nice

Working through Conflicts with Emotional Maturity
Thursday, May 7th, 2015

I once lived in a house with a landlord I'll call "Hank." When I signed the lease to live in the house, I was informed that there was a rule that we had to clean the house for 70 minutes each week. That seemed fine; it's not very long, and clean spaces make everyone happy.

When I moved in, I realized I had misunderstood what I had gotten myself into. The agreement was not that we had to clean on our own for 70 minutes each week. We had to confirm with him ahead of time what the task would be, complete the task with him, then confirm via text that it had been completed. While on the surface this doesn't sound totally unmanagable, it created problems. If there was any miscommunication or incomplete communication, this system made it the tenant's problem. As tenants, we had busy lives, and extra planning and organization complicates things.

To make matters more annoying, Hank would frequently miss scheduled appointments to complete our cleaning. So not only did we have to work hard to make a schedule, but his end of the bargain would at times go unfulfilled. I don't often get into situations that cause real conflicts, but this had me annoyed.

In short, I felt cheated. All I wanted to do was avoid conflict, do my 70 minutes, and move on. Instead, I was forced to have a task hang over my head all week that I had no control over. And this made me upset.

But I wanted to resolve the conflict. I told Hank that this was my goal, to know what I had to do, and to do it. I wasn't trying to cheat him out of the cleaning, I just wanted something to plan around, as my weeks were busy. I asked if we could switch to him telling me what to do, or if we could discuss it in person each week, so that he couldn't avoid my texts. It was hard to coordinate but it helped immensely.

I've learned that simply explaining your emotions can solve almost any problem. And once you have an idea for a solution, you can begin by saying, "Would it be a problem if..." While this is in a way a bargaining tactic, it works; stating it that way forces the listener to seem uncompromising if they decline. Simply asking for help is something we often avoid, at our own expense.

If I could go back, I would never have allowed myself to get frustrated. I often find - as I think others do too - that I play over conversations in my head that haven't even happened. When I see myself getting into this habit, I try to clear up my frustration as quickly as possible; having a fake conversation with yourself hardly does any good.

As I moved forward from this conflict and others, I've tried to remember that the other person generally sees the situation with their own form of logic too, even if it's one we can't see clearly. Trying to see the situation like they do can lead to a stronger sense of empathy and a more influential position when trying to find a place of compromise. Because in any conflict, there's middle ground to be found, if both parties can understand their emotions.