69% Irresolvable Conflicts 🤼

I’ve been contemplating this statistic from The Gottman Institute: “Most relationship conflicts (about 69%) are perpetual problems that never get resolved. They occur because of the basic personality or lifestyle differences between partners. Therefore, the conflicts happen repeatedly. Once you have selected your partner for a life-long relationship, you have automatically inherited the set of unsolvable perpetual problems you will have. If you hadn’t chosen your partner, but had picked someone else, then you would have inherited a different set of perpetual problems, as they come naturally with relationships".

Another “completion project” bites the dust. Our attempts to have everything resolved are usually projections of our inner desire for peace. If we aim for outer ‘peace’, e.g try to have a relationship with no conflict, we miss that the real peace is internal. This includes friendships, colleagues, etc.

Once we accept that conflict is here to stay (69%!), we can refind peace in how we relate to it. Do we make conflict wrong? Do we hide from unresolvable problems? Do we relish them? Do we let them grow us? Do we encourage the creativity that comes from differences?

With love, Jordan