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My first blog was written as a brief overview of personal relationship compatibility to show how inter-relationships were viewed from ancient times, in eastern philosophy, and how the same basic principles hold true today.   In this blog I want to look at or expand on what I mean by the ‘Conflict, Challenge, Control’ aspect of personal relationships.

I do not want to look at the behaviour of anyone in conflict or the psychological aspect but at the point where you come to realise that you just don’t like someone or where you know you are just opposites in personality to someone else.  Psychologists do enough research into human behaviour for me not to want to go down that route.

It is a generally accepted truth that some personality traits are innate, you are born with them, and some are learned.  I am sure you have heard people saying or have even said it yourself, “I acted on instinct”.  It is this basic instinct and your basic natural personality traits that result in your behaviour.  So, if your personality is that you are a straight talking individual you may dislike someone who deals in half-truths.  Behavioural responses will vary in a variety of different situations but all reactions or behaviour comes from your basic personality traits.

Family Relationships and Conflict

The family group is probably one area where you most often act according to your own inner nature.  It is the area where you get your first experiences of personalities and the compatibility of people.  This is also where you probably let your guard down the most, where you relax and ‘be yourself’.  This is because you feel most comfortable in surroundings you know and also where you know all the parameters.

The family is one of the groups where you do not choose the people you live with, at least not in your earlier years.  Take a situation where two members of the same family (sisters, brothers or brother/sister) just always seem to spark off each other, so much so that a parent might say “Why can’t you two just get along for once“.  With investigation, I have found that one person (call them Person A) probably has a more dominant personality and the one that controls the other (Person B) in the relationship.

According to eastern philosophy it is all about energies and how they interact with each other.  In reality, in a challenging family situation as indicated above, this manifests itself in a way that B feels the pressure from A.  A feels no stress nor sees any reason for a negative reaction from B.  With a negative outburst or reaction from B the other person might be totally puzzled and possibly make a comment like “What’s your problem?“, and are genuinely not understanding the reaction from the other person.

B is not necessarily a weak or a meek person, they may even get into another argument a short time later with someone they dominate, control or challenge.  Once you can identify where problems in family relationships might happen then you can take appropriate avoiding action.

So if there is continual tension in a personal relationship it may be because of the interaction of characteristics of the two individuals that may have very little to do with what has actually been said or done.  By understanding that a particular relationship is difficult will make it easier for you to modify your own reaction and defuse possible conflict.

John

Next:

Workplace and Conflict (Part 2 of 3)

Love and a Challenging Relationship (Part 3 of 3)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.