How to Handle a Jealous Partner: Conflict Resolution Strategies Explored

In this episode, Simon Goode analyzes a listener-submitted case study involving conflict arising from a partner's jealousy over frequent messaging with an old friend. He explores key contributors to such conflicts, including differences in values, trust, and communication styles, and outlines practical conflict resolution tools like clarifying goals, apology frameworks, and the Thomas-Kilmann model for handling disagreements. The episode emphasizes understanding both perspectives and developing multiple options for resolving relationship tension constructively.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Privacy and phone boundaries

06:05 Dealing with relationship conflicts

08:49 Discussing relationship communication issues

12:53 Defining relationship goals and priorities

14:09 Navigating relationship conflicts

19:37 Discussing relationship and workplace conflict

22:38 Discussing effective apologies

24:54 Communicating with different personality types

27:27 Managing communication and conflict

32:03 Listener interaction and feedback

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Sequence of Topics Covered

Introduction and Podcast Overview

• Simon Goode introduces himself and the mission of the podcast 00:15
• Encouragement to subscribe and access to free conflict resolution resources

Case Study Introduction: The Jealous Girlfriend Situation

• Origin of the case study: listener email describing conflict in a relationship 00:39
• Dynamics of the conflict: boyfriend's friendship with an attractive female friend 00:52
• Girlfriend's feelings of jealousy and insecurity
• Initial confrontation: girlfriend questions boyfriend about frequency of contact 01:16
• Discrepancy between boyfriend's report and actual message frequency 01:19

Analysis of Key Contributing Factors

• Privacy and trust issues around checking partner’s phone 02:56
  • Value differences in relationships regarding privacy
  • The balance between transparency and personal boundaries
• Frequency and language in messages as sources of tension 04:28
  • The subjectivity of affectionate language between friends of different sexes
  • Expectation around how partners interact with friends
• Impact of past experiences, social circles, and external opinions on reactions 10:25
  • Influence of friends and family
  • Personal history, such as previous experiences with infidelity or divorce

Dissecting the Conflict: Types and Approaches

• Identifying facets of the conflict 05:51
  • Frequency of contact
  • Affectionate language
• The role of emotions and nervous system regulation in escalating conflict 07:55
  • Defensive reactions
  • Importance of self-regulation
• Clarifying goals in the conflict 12:02
  • Immediate and long-term priorities in the relationship
  • Impact on family and social dynamics
• Sorting goals: for self, for the relationship, for others 13:25

Tools for Resolution and Communication

• Types of conflict to address 14:32
  • Data/facts-based conflict: clarifying the truth
  • Values-based conflict: validating diverse perspectives
  • Relationship conflict: addressing underlying patterns and restoring closeness
  • Interests: focusing on actionable, specific solutions
  • Structure: creating systems or rules to reduce tension

Exploring Responses and Negotiation Strategies

• Approaches for negotiating compromise 16:05
  • Validating perspectives and seeking middle ground
  • Making specific proposals or structural changes (e.g., joint activities, sharing information)
• Consideration of underlying causes such as lack of information or transparency 19:19

Apology and Relationship Repair

• Five types of apologies discussed 20:28
  • Expressing regret (“I’m sorry”)
  • Admitting fault (“I was wrong”)
  • Promising not to repeat the behavior
  • Offering reparative gestures (“What can I do to make it up to you?”)
  • Requesting forgiveness (“Would you please forgive me?”)
• Importance of meaningful apologies and avoiding dismissiveness

Personality Differences and Their Impact

• Using the Big Five personality traits to understand reactions 24:20
  • Openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, extraversion
• Impact of individual sensitivity, compliance, or anxiety 24:35

Conflict Styles and Assertiveness

• Explanation of Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Modes 26:08
  • Competing/directing: maintaining firm boundaries
  • Accommodating: giving in to partner’s requests
  • Compromising: meeting halfway
  • Avoiding: postponing or sidestepping the conflict
  • Collaborating: seeking creative win-win solutions
• Pros and cons of various approaches 28:39
  • The risk of delayed resolution versus benefits of closure

Practical Application and Personal Reflection

• Encouraging listeners to reflect on their own relationship dynamics 31:33
• Emphasis on tailoring conflict resolution frameworks to individual needs
• Invitation for feedback and further case study submissions 31:58

Closing

• Summary of key points 32:29
• Gratitude to listeners and encouragement to interact with the podcast

Transcript

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Speaker 0:15

Hello and welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful to you, please consider pressing subscribe. Well, in the episode today, I'm going to be analysing another conflict resolution case study, this time involving a jealous girlfriend. I received an email about this topic a little while ago from a listener of the podcast, and they were talking about some really challenging discussions or arguments, I suppose, that had happened between them and their partner. The person who emailed me was a guy, and he's got a reasonably attractive female friend, and they've basically been best friends for a very long time now. It's not a sexual, it's not a romantic relationship in any way. And yet his girlfriend, his partner of a few years now, was jealous. She was feeling not secure. She was feeling a little bit uneasy about what was going on. And so she asked him, How often are you in touch with this old friend that you've got? And he responded something along the lines of not very often. But then his partner looked at the phone and saw that there was actually reasonably frequent messages, some of them even using words like, I love you, friend, or something similar. Miss you, can't wait to see you. Now, I don't know that we would necessarily write this to the same our guy friends. I don't know if we would say the same thing potentially. This is the kind of area where there isn't really a global right and wrong here. It is to some extent going to come down to your values, your individual ideas about what's okay and what's not okay, and where's the actual line there, where's the actual boundary. Similar to the previous conflict resolution case studies I've gone through. I'm going to be annotating. So if you'd like to watch the video, you can see it on your screen. But I'll do my best to describe as well. Like even if you're not watching, I'll do my best to make sure that it makes sense just by the audio. So here's the situation. Initially, let's go through and just figure out a few of the key points that might be contributing to the conflict, and then I'm going to explain a couple of different tools that we can use to develop options for responding. So here's the situation. One evening, after a quiet dinner at home, Sarah asked her boyfriend about how often he messaged his attractive female friend from university. Attractive female friend. He replied that it was hardly ever, maybe once every few months. A few days later, she found his phone unlocked on the kitchen counter and feeling uneasy, checked the messages. I I wonder there, I might just put a little bit of a a note there. That I think is potentially the first beginnings of a difference in values to me. Because I wouldn't want my partner checking my phone. This again, it's something that we're all going to be slightly different on, but I really value privacy. I really value like even trust. And I hate the feeling of someone watching me with a microscope and scrutinizing what I'm doing. So even now, when I can notice my foot my wife picks up my phone to check something, I do bristle a little bit. It's like this automatic kind of reaction of who do you think you are? That's mine. And I mean, if we think about our phones, they're very private, aren't they? We could be Googling medical issues that we're dealing with that we don't want our wife to know about, for example, or maybe there's other sensitive information that we're recording, a journal, something similar. And regardless of whether or not you think that you've done anything wrong, some people don't like to have their phone looked at without permission. Others might think, well, look, we're in a relationship now for three years. What is essential is that there's a level of trust between us. So what's the big deal? If you're not doing anything that you shouldn't be, what problem is there with me looking at your phone? And again, we're starting from very different starting points in terms of the ontology that contributes to those perspectives. So she discovered they messaged each other most weeks. Light conversations about work, shared jokes, and occasional love you friend, miss you mate at the end of chats. So there's a couple of things that jump out at me here. One is the frequency. And this might be the beginning of the issue because the person said I hardly ever message them, and then she's seeing it's most weeks. Now that might be in the person writing the email to me's mind, not much. That might be what they consider to be nothing significant. It's like you're basically in a footing tipping competition with each other or something. It's not like you're asking each other, like, what are your life goals? All of these kind of elements. And then miss you mate, that might be the kind of thing that somebody says to even other friends that are of the same sex as them. Like if I would say to my guy friends, Miss You Mate, can't wait to see you. And I'm writing the same thing to a female friend, Miss You Mate, can't wait to see you. Well, that's an interesting thing to consider as well, isn't it? Should we expect our partner to treat people of the opposite sex a little bit differently than they treat friends that are of the same sex as them? I don't know, especially with the prevalence of same-sex relationships and the apparent fluidity of some of these concepts in terms of particular people's ideas. Yeah, I mean, there's going to be a lot of issues to navigate as we go through these kind of challenges step by step, bit by bit. It's like a very messy combination of wires that are all tangled together. I think one of the challenges is first of all, just sorting it out and figuring out which bits of the conflict are causing which issues. So the frequency is one. The other aspect of the conflict that jumps out at me though is that it's also language. Like maybe that is overly romantic or overly intimate or something similar from Sarah's perspective. So, in terms of if it's your girlfriend complaining about it, you could just deal with the issue itself, and there we could choose which lane to go down. Should we talk about maybe I'll speak with them differently? That makes sense. I can get where you're coming from. I won't say I love you to them anymore moving forward. Or maybe we stick to our guns and say no, you don't have the right to tell me how I talk to my friend. This is ridiculous. So we could talk about the language, or we could talk about the frequency. I'll message them less frequently, or how about I just use email or something like that so you don't hear the phone going off and it's interrupting our date night if that's the thing that's causing the issue. So either the frequency or the language, I think these are kind of two facets to the same conflict. Nothing sexual or romantic appeared in the messages, but the frequency and affectionate language left her shaken. Well, there we go, it summed it up for us, hasn't it? When she confronted him that night, her voice was tight with hurt and distrust. He looked stunned and defensive, insisting it was purely platonic. The conversation quickly grew tense as she struggled to believe his earlier answer, and he struggled to understand the depth of her reaction. I wonder what do you make of all of this? Have you dealt with the situation where there's been a partner jealousy issue? And what did you do? Was it something in terms of structure? Like I'm just not going to message that person, I'm not going to follow them on Instagram, I'm not going to like have the same kind of contact that we did previously. Or maybe it's something more in terms of the meaning behind it and the language and whether or not you use that intimate language for other people aside from your partner. I mean, that could be something that we could explore as well, couldn't it? The conversation quickly grew tense. It's always the way it goes. When one or both people aren't able to self-regulate their nervous systems, we rev up into fight or flight mode. And then before we know it, we often are approaching things in more of an antagonistic or defensive kind of way. It's this adversarial me against you kind of dynamic that develops. And it's very challenging then to interrupt that to almost short circuit it. It can be like a train that's going at full speed and it's got a lot of momentum on its side with the animosity and the vitriol and the frustration that we're feeling towards one another, etc. Now I suspect that probably the boyfriend in this situation overreacted when Sarah brought it up. It says he looked stunned and defensive. And I suppose to some extent we could think about that as a natural reaction. Of course, you're going to be inclined to defend yourself when someone's having a go at you. At the same time, it's often not what's helpful for resolving the issue, regardless of how upset the person felt that they were being criticized and judged and the girlfriend was trying to control you or something, micromanage you. I suppose we can set aside those issues for s aside, at least initially, and focus on understanding Sarah's perspective. I'm sorry, I actually hadn't realized this was as much of an issue as it obviously is for you. Could you talk to me a bit more about what's been going on? How long have you felt that way? Have there been particular things that have happened that have made that worse? Are there particular concerns that you've got, practically speaking? Like are you worried that maybe there's infidelity or I'm cheating on you or something? Or is it more about just there's no black and white cut and dry relationships here? So the messiness inherently is going to create a bit of tension. So it's kind of like, how did you get that view? And what are you asking me to do here? Like, what would you like to be different moving forward? So we can do that, we can explore those topics with empathy, regardless of whether or not we agree with Sarah. We could be thinking this is bloody ridiculous. Like you've obviously misread things. But if we jump in and say you're wrong, and it's the me against you kind of dynamic, obviously the natural invitation is to the other person to play the other side of the argument. Whereas if we begin by exploring their perspective, what's going on here, then we decide to share our own perspective. Actually, this is how I see things. They're going to be able to receive that so much more readily because they're in more of a contained headspace. They're not as revved up in that fight or flight way of operating. So it really depends on what's going on for both of you in the other aspects of your life, doesn't it? Like it's possible that Sarah, if we put her here in the person B category, has got other people in her life that are telling her that this is not okay. Maybe her close friends group are saying, we shouldn't let the partners get away with this, we shouldn't let our husbands get away with this. Maybe it might be her own family, like her parents or other people having input. She might have grown up in a situation where there was infidelity and cheating in the family or something, even grown up in a divorced and separated family. Well, she might have particular sensitivities to some of these areas as well. And then for the person writing the email, obviously their view is also going to be informed by all of the other things that are going on in their life as well. But it's not just like my view gets informed by these other people. If I'm really struggling at work at the moment, I'm under the pump, I'm not getting much sleep, I'm doing really late hours, well, that's not going to leave me with very much capacity for staying calm when my partner wants to have an argument about something. Whereas if we're on leave or work is in a much more contained, stable kind of way, then I'll probably arrive home in a different headspace. I'm more able to listen to feedback or have a difficult conversation without revving up. So it's not just this single conflict in isolation. When I hear about these kind of issues, it's all of these external factors that are contributing as well. So if I was coaching this person and they were telling me about Sarah, the difficulties that they're having with their partner, I would often begin by asking them questions about goals. And I think this can also be incredibly helpful from the husband and boyfriend or wife and partner's perspective as well. Like what's important right now might be slightly different to what's important tomorrow or last year or in two years' time. So I like to pause and just consider, well, what's the goal for myself? I don't want to be accused of something that's not true. Okay, that's probably accurate at a surface level, but why? How come? Like what difference does it make if she accuses me of something that I didn't do? I suppose that's where we get to the other aspects of the goals. Maybe the relationship that I want with Sarah is one that's defined with a level of trust, or I want there to be a level of closeness. And so the conflict and arguments that we're having at the moment's getting in the way of that. Or I would like her to know that I'm committed to her. I would like her to know that she's important and placing her as a priority in my life to some extent. All of these things are going to be slightly different depending on what we want, what kind of relationship with our partner is healthy, what are we aiming for here? And then we might have goals for others as well. In this scenario, it doesn't add it, but it's possible that there's kids that are involved or other family members or there's something else that's happening. So same what similar to workplace conflict, I often like to start by sorting the goals into these three big buckets. What's your goal for the relationship with the other person? Is argument something that you'd prefer not to have, or maybe that's not such a big deal, but you don't like to have tension sitting there for weeks at a time? Or maybe for you you want reasonably frequent contact because you like there to be quite a friendship between you and your partner. Whereas for other people, you do all of your activities and social stuff outside of your relationship, then you come back almost for a little bit of recovery and spending a bit more intimate time in a small setting, just with the other person directly, maybe. And I think then if we can go through and think, well, what kind of relationship do I want here? What's important for any other people that might be involved? It is incredibly helpful then for us to clarify our own goals. Like maybe I realize that I don't want to get pushed around here, but once I pause and think, well, it has to be give and take in my relationship. And the last thing I want is for my kids to be in involved in any ugly drama that might be erupting. Well, maybe I can just let it go and tolerate it. Those other priorities might be a little bit higher when we can go through that activity of sorting it out. So what type of conflict do you think is contributing here? If we think about the jealous girlfriend, he said hardly ever, and then she's looked at the messages and it's much more frequently. I think a lot of partners begin with a focus on the data. They think that the conflict is all about the facts. That's not true, or no, it's only been once a fortnight, or that was only because we were going in this thing together and we needed to do a bit of organizing, or that was only because she was sorting through some of the old high school memories, so she was asking me for a bit more information out of the usual. So we could just clarify the facts, you've got it wrong. You're not understanding this. This is actually the way that things are. I wonder though, if this is what Sarah wants. If Sarah said, look, I'm worried about this. You're contacting her far more than you told me that you were. Maybe the discussion that would be better had is about values. I'm faithful to you. I've never cheated on you since we've been together. I don't know where this sense of insecurity comes from for you. I'm not insecure. Well, I suppose we do have different perspectives on this. I wouldn't mind necessarily that you spend times with your guy friends and you know you've got Jim who you hung out with last week, and that's okay with me. At the same time, it's really important to me that I maintain the relationships that I've got. Friendships are really important to me. I grew up as a only child or something similar. So for me, this really is a priority. Obviously, you're going to have different perspectives there, but I'd like to see if we can find some middle ground here. What would a compromise look like, or how could we collaborate? Maybe there's some kind of an option that would work for both of us. What do you think? So the data is about let's correct the facts. The value is much more about let's validate both perspectives. Validate? And then I think what's needed is negotiate. Well, then what are we going to do? Okay, so we've got these views, then how will this be applied? Negotiate. There are three other types of conflict that we could focus on, though, instead. Another is relationship conflict. This is the back and forth, the reciprocal patterns that go on between you and Sarah. So if you've had the tension and argument, maybe you organize a really nice thing to do on the weekend, go to a botanical gardens, go for a walk around, have a picnic or something, and you're rebuilding that sense of connection, or getting her a gift, or making her a meal that she really likes. Or apologies, I think, would go into this category as well. Maybe we need to say, I'm sorry, this came out wrong. That wasn't something that I should have done. You're right, I I said that it was hardly ever, I wasn't factoring in this and this and this. I can get where you're coming from. So that's not about correcting the ledger. That's not telling them that they're wrong. It's just saying, fair enough, like I can see your point. And what would be helpful for re-establishing closeness, re-establishing connection here. We could also think about interests. Maybe Sarah would be happy if you just removed your pa the old friend from Instagram. So this is where we make specific proposals. We could choose how assertive to be here. We could say no. I'm she's my friend. You don't have the right to tell me how to interact with them. I'm sorry, but it's just not something where I'm willing to be flexible. Or I know that you'd like me to remove her from Instagram. Obviously, this would make you feel a bit more secure about the situation. The challenge for me is that I'm not gonna see the updates on our kids, or I'd like to know this and this. So that's not something that I can agree to. For me, I like to be assertive with those kind of phrasings, like it's not something that I can accept. It's not flexible, or it's not something that I can agree to. But I'm not saying you're sorry, how dare you, who do you think you are? It's more like, okay, that's what you're asking me for. That's not something that I'm prepared to do. But let's think about some other options. There might be something that works along the same line if it's not, even if it's not having that same level of permanence in the step, like unfriending someone. So then that's the final option that we've got is structure. Maybe Sarah would be comfortable if she looks at your phone every few weeks. You might let her look through your messages. I don't think I would personally do that, but that's an option that you've got. It might be spending time together with the new friend and Sarah there, like you double date together or something similar. I don't know. I wonder if this might make it worse in this particular situation, but potentially. I wonder though, if this is often a symptom of something else that's going on. Like partners who are jealous, it might be that there's a lack of information coming about what they're doing at work or what they're doing in their life outside of the relationship with them. So maybe sharing a bit more information, like when you go for a weekend away, hang out with your partner, hang out with Sarah and give her a bit of an overview of the kind of stuff that you did. Because if she doesn't know, she never hears anything about work. If she says how's work and you say nothing exciting happened, well, that means there's a blank wall there, isn't there? And so what Sarah begins to do is to project all of her worst fears onto that wall. And so when she finally brings it up, she's probably been stewing on it and marinating away. So the level of emotion is right at the edge where just a tiny little bit would cause things to become unsettled. But my point of talking about this tool, the five types of conflict, is that we've got several options for dealing with an issue. And if you're dealing with a Sarah in your life and you're feeling like the tension hasn't gone away, it's still sitting there. Well, maybe dealing with one of the other types of conflict would be more helpful. Now I mentioned in the relationship conflict category that apologies was one of the things that we could consider. When it comes to jealous girlfriends, we could use probably the similar five options that we've got for dealing with workplace conflict. So the first way that we could apologize is saying something like, I'm sorry. Like I should have been more clear, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that it was hardly ever you're right. It's more often than that. It's kind of like saying, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it. Like a little bit of repentance in a formal setting. It might be I apologize, we apologize on behalf of the organization. I'd like to apologize with Sarah. It's probably like I'm sorry. The second way that we could apologize, though, is I was wrong, I shouldn't have done that. So we could say I'm sorry, and then we say we shouldn't have done that. I should have been more clear. I should have looked at it more carefully before I decided to just assume incorrectly, obviously. So we could say I'm sorry, we could say I was wrong. The third way to apologize is to say something along the lines of I'm not gonna do it again. So that would be an example where we could say, look, if I do have contact with the friend, I'll let you know. Or if anything comes up where I'm messaging her more frequently than usual, I'll try and remember to give you a heads up about that. Or this isn't going to happen again because I've unfriended her on Facebook. Actually, this isn't gonna be an issue moving forward because this other thing has changed. So we've got three options for apologizing there. I'm sorry. Or we could say, I was wrong. Or we could say, I'm not going to do it again. The fourth option that we've got for apologizing is some version of saying, What can I do to make it up for you? I made you your favorite meal. How about we go on a nice weekend away together? Can I do a bit of extra housework and help help you with something that's going on at the moment? Like some kind of either a gesture or a practical way of dealing with the impact of the thing that you've done. So you could say, I'm sorry, and then I've bought you this nice cupcake from up the road. Or I'm sorry, is there anything I can do? I've written you this letter, I've written you a poem, I've written you a song. Like all of us are going to have slightly different things that actually we would do in practice. But it's about communicating, things are different now in whatever way you decide to do that. And then the final type of apology that we could make is something like, would you please forgive me? Could you forgive me? Maybe we could use this with Sarah. We could say something like, Look, I shouldn't have said that. Would you forgive me? I get where you're coming from. That was wrong. I like using language like what would it, what would help for us to move forward? Or what do you need to see from me or hear from me for you to get a sense that I've taken it seriously, which will help things to move forward, you to move forward, us to move forward. I think that phrasing is much more helpful than move on. Can't you just move on? Can't you just get over it? Are you still upset about that? Obviously, the implication there is you shouldn't be. You're overreacting, you're being unreasonable in whatever way that I think that you are. So what comes back often there is defensiveness and resistance. So if we decide to apologize, the relationship conflict layer, we could use all five of those different types of apology. I'm sorry, I was wrong, I shouldn't have done that, it's not going to happen again. Uh I'd love to know though, what can I do to make it up for you, given the fact that the weekend's gotten more of a sour flavor to it? Or maybe moving forward, there's something else that would be helpful for me to do that would help things to get back on track. Now, the individual person that Sarah is is going to influence how sensitive she is to these kind of issues. It is one of the aspects of personality differences that emerge between people. I really like the big five way of understanding personality differences. It talks about these five categories up the top here: neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. So some people they think it's really important to tell the truth. You should be accurate, you should be honest. They've got a very high sense of compliance or cooperation. So it's possible that Sarah is very high on that, whereas the partner isn't. So she's thinking, You've you've deceived me. Whereas he's thinking, What are you talking about? Like, do I really need to get out a calculator and measure every single message that we've got? Would you like a word count? Would you like a character count here? Like, what the hell is going on? I think a better way of dealing with that would be to say something like, I know that obviously you're probably expecting me to be a bit more accurate than I was. And it's not like you're silly for expecting it. It's obviously there's this difference between us. It might be too that Sarah is a little bit more vulnerable to stress, more anxious. She might be higher in neuroticism, generally speaking. And again, we don't want to deal with this by way of criticism of what's wrong with you. Can't you just get over it? But we might say something like, I do know that these are the kind of things that sit in the back of your mind that make sense given the fact that you don't have all of the information about what's actually going on in reality. So we could also deal with this issue talking about the personality differences. Maybe that's what's contributing to the conflict overall. Now I've mentioned a few times that we could decide how assertive to be in regards to dealing with the conflict. The way that we can apply this is by thinking about the five different conflict modes that Thomas and Kilman talked about. Their premise really was that we've got these five different ways of dealing with any conflict that we're involved in. First, we could compete, or sometimes it's called directing. This is the way it's going to be. So you could just say, look, I understand that you'd like me to remove them as a friend, but that's not something that I'm prepared to do. Like you might decide just to stick to your guns and hold on to your boundaries. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're harsh or rude or disrespectful or like vindictive or antagonistic or something. It's really about I'm not budging, I'm firm. On the other end of the spectrum, we could just accommodate, no worries. I could remove them from Instagram. Like, what's the big deal? If there's a reasonable amount at stake, like you care about your relationship with Sarah, and it's not the end of the world to remove online friends, like you can still SMS, you can still email, you can still WhatsApp or whatever. Well, maybe you're just willing to let the other person have what they're asking us for. That was where I asked those questions earlier about what would you need to see from me? What would you need to hear from me? What would you like me to do differently for things to move forward or to help us move forward? Now in the middle, we've got the third option, which is compromise. I'm not willing to remove them from all the social media, but at least I'll remove them from Facebook. Or I'm not willing to just not respond when they write me a message, but I will try to keep my responses a bit more brief than previously. Or I'm not going to talk about our relationship with the old friend that I've got. So at least it gives you some assurance that I'm not bitching about you behind your back or something. The fourth option that we've got is avoiding the issue. Frankly, I think this is a lot of partner's go-to strategy. It's like put it in the too hard basket, we'll talk about it later. Or do you know later you've had more bad things happen, so you're feeling a bit more frustrated, and there's not any more option to deal with it then. But there might be some situations where this isn't the time and place to deal with it. If you're in the shower and Sarah comes in and says, Why didn't you tell me that there was more messages? And you're thinking, what the bloody hell? It might be like, look, that does sound like an important thing to talk about, but could we do it later? Let me just hop out of the shower and then I'll do my best to listen to you about what's going on. The fifth option that we've got is what's often called collaborating. This is where we would sit down or have some back and forth with the other person and consider is there some option for an actual win-win here? Now that also has drawbacks. None of these are entirely positive or negative in workplace conflict, in other family kinds of conflicts that we're dealing with. Sometimes it makes sense to be very firm, sometimes it makes sense just to be reasonably flexible, sometimes there's those opportunities to compromise, sometimes avoid does make sense. This isn't the time and place to deal with it, for example. Collaborating is good because we aim to get to a win-win kind of option. Like maybe the double date scenario could be something that works for them. But not always. Like there isn't always going to be a win-win that's possible. Maybe Sarah just expects you to remove this person as a friend, and that's the that's the end of the story. So you might be thinking, oh, maybe there's other options that could help. I'll let you see the messages, or we'll do it all publicly instead of private messages, or, you know, whatever, the double date idea. But maybe not. That might be something that you hope is a win-win, but effectively the other person uses the situation as an opportunity to take advantage of you. So it might not be possible. It might be a bit of a risk, and it delays getting to an outcome. It delays getting to a decision. At least if you say, no worries, I'll remove her from Facebook. It's done and dusted. There's no ongoing issue. The issue isn't sitting there bubbling away behind the scenes. Whereas if you say, look, I get that this is important to you, for me as well. Could we organize the time to go through it? Maybe on Tuesday night after work, what do you reckon? Until Tuesday, there's this tension that still sits there. Until Tuesday, when we get a resolution, there might be other issues that are connected to this one, like the boys weekend away that you were hoping to have or something similar. So getting to a quick resolution, even if it's just split the difference, it's not something that I'm 100% happy with, of course, but at least it's something that I can live with. Then it might mean that at least you can get closure. And the next conflict, like the boys' weekend that you're trying to organize, doesn't get um torpedoed by way of leverage for this other issue that's still sitting there. I really like thinking about these five types of conflict: the compete, compromise, accommodate, avoid, and collaborate. I use it a lot, in particular with people who are a little bit conflict avoidant. They don't feel like they're assertive enough in some of these situations. So just thinking, well, would you prefer to compromise rather than accommodate? Where would you prefer to compete and just be very direct? What would that look like? And where is the opportunity for collaboration and moving towards a more long-term significant win-win? Well, then at least it gives us some options to choose from instead of just thinking I should do something about this, but I'm not exactly sure what. Well, as always, this is still just a high-level summary, and the approaches that work for me might be slightly different to you. That's perfectly obvious. But how have you found it? The reason that I like doing these conflict resolution case studies is because I'm trying to show how some of these different practical frameworks can be applied. It's not so much about getting the answer, it's more about developing options and clarifying the goals. And what that means is that it increases our capacity to respond rather than just react. But I don't know. I'd love to hear from you for a bit of feedback. If you'd like to shoot me an email, you can get in touch. It's podcast at simongood.com. If you've got an idea for a scenario like this one I mentioned, it was based on a listener of the podcast that sent it in to me. Please feel free to do that as well. Um, it might be a case study or even a topic that you would like me to talk about and explore in a bit more detail. Um, if it's been helpful, I'd be incredibly grateful if you would be willing to press like, leave a comment, those kind of things make a massive difference for the algorithm to know that there's real humans who are watching. And thank you very much for listening. I very much appreciate your time, and I'll hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast. Bye for now.