Ignoring Conflicts

The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships

In family situations, as well as in the workplace, there is a lot of emphasis on understanding how to resolve conflicts, and while knowing how to resolve conflicts is certainly useful – and while it is often the right way to go – there are other times when you will realize that you are in a conflict that the other person has no interest in resolving, in which case the best thing for you to do is understand how to simply ignore the conflict. Of course, discerning when you should resolve a conflict and when you should just ignore it can sometimes be difficult, but the more time you spend around someone – at home, or at work – the more readily you will be able to determine whether you should resolve the conflict or simply walk away from it.

When it comes to ignoring conflicts, the first step to take is being able to identify when you should ignore a conflict; one clear indication of times when you should ignore conflicts is when the person with whom you are having the conflict appears to be on the “war path” – that is, when they seem to simply be looking for an argument for no reason at all.

Once you have determined that the situation is ripe for ignoring the conflict, you should train yourself to simply walk away from the conflict without making a big show; although it can be more natural to say something like, “that's it, I'm just walking away,” all this will really do is open the conflict further – which is why you should simply walk away without making any show at all.

And one thing that can be difficult about simply ignoring a conflict in this way is that the person walking away will feel like the conflict was never resolved; but realize that oftentimes when someone is simply on the war path, they will not even realize the frustrations they have planted in others, so wait for their bad mood to blow over, and everything will be magically patched up again!