Be able to put up

A fundamental dispute, mutual recriminations, accusations, raised voices… And now the door slammed loudly or the telephone receiver was thrown in the hearts. Many are familiar with such moments: just a few moments ago, nothing foreshadowed a break, but suddenly completely peaceful relations are shattered. The hostile silence that replaced them seemed to last forever. But one day (without knowing why) we begin to think more and more often about the “outcast” – as if he had changed, become different, but someone who could break this heavy silence. meet? Reconcile?

Return Point

“I stopped communicating with my father after another dispute about politics, which ended in a personal attack: my father said that I stopped understanding him, that we had nothing in common for a long time, and hung up,” says 38-year-old Tatyana. – I experienced our many-month gap as a liberation. But somehow I caught myself looking with sadness and tenderness at older men in the store and on the streets – and I felt how much I miss him.

Tatyana decided to make peace with her father when she realized that she lacked communication with him. And 30-year-old Oleg wanted to restore relations with a colleague, because he was tired of feeling guilty. “At a meeting where the entire management of the company was present, I single-handedly defended a project that we were working on together. Of course, I mentioned the name of my colleague, but all the attention was still riveted on me. She was offended and did not speak to me for several weeks. I was so excited by the success that somehow I didn’t really pay attention to her experiences. But then, meeting her in the corridor, every time I felt terribly awkward. And one day I just called her and apologized, admitting that I was to blame for her and I regret what happened.

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• Saying No: The Healing Power of Rejection

The desire to reconcile with another person can have various reasons: the feeling that we lack communication with him, the exchange of opinions, his support, an acute sense of guilt, and sometimes just curiosity (how does he live now?). “The need to renew contact arises only when the relationship with another person is really important to us,” explains social psychologist Ekaterina Dubovskaya. – You can even say that we quarrel precisely because the other person is not indifferent to us and we want him to understand us, accept our point of view, look at the world through our eyes. And the decision to make peace arises because the relationship turns out to be more important than the reason that caused the conflict.

“The gap in communication confirms the emotional dependence on each other, otherwise we would just move away,” agrees family psychologist Maryse Vaillant (Maryse Vaillant). – Quarreling does not mean breaking the connection: when we are offended, angry, blaming ourselves (or another person) for everything, this is a sure sign that he is still important to us.

And reconciliation is a way to break through your negative emotions to a relationship in which there is a place for a variety of feelings, but based on dialogue and mutual understanding.

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• On whom do we take offense?

Repetition traversed

It is difficult to resume communication if you still have unspoken arguments left. Is it worth re-formulating your claims? It depends on the situation and on who we want to reconcile with. “Sometimes it is simply necessary to do this, because behind the most insignificant reason for a quarrel (for example, a wife forgot to tell her husband that a friend called him) there may be a deep misunderstanding,” explains Ekaterina Dubovskaya. “And real reconciliation is possible if the partners can discuss the claims that give rise to such strong feelings in them (forgetfulness of the wife causes resentment and anger of the husband, because it symbolizes inattention for him, ignoring his interests and needs, or the desire to do everything in his own way).”

However, there are situations when it is not worth making claims. For example, between parents and adult children, explanations often lead nowhere. “On the contrary, trying to prove someone wrong again can renew the confrontation,” explains psychoanalyst Isabel Koro-litski. “In this situation, reconciliation without explanation allows you to define new boundaries of communication, and for a grown-up daughter or son, this is a good reason to confirm their independent position.”

This is exactly what happened to 32-year-old Karina. “I quarreled with my mother because she tried to control my every step, tried to decide for me who I should be friends with, where to go, when to return home. We did not communicate for almost five years, and I decided to restore relations only after I had a boyfriend. I hoped that he would help me keep our relationship within the bounds of decency. I called when she was out and left a message on the answering machine asking how she was doing, as if we had broken up a week ago. A few hours later, Mom called back and acted as casual as I did. We did not remember the quarrel, did not discuss its cause. But this is what allowed us to establish a distance in the relationship, which turned out to be the most correct for us.

At work, on the contrary, it can be useful to return to the cause of the disagreement in order not to repeat previous mistakes in further cooperation. “In professional communication, disputes and negative emotions are associated with specific situations (for example, unclear distribution of responsibilities, competition), says Doctor of Psychology, business coach Alexei Sitnikov. “A detailed discussion of the conflict situation relieves emotional tension and allows you to move from confrontation to the search for a constructive solution.”