Summary
Joe and Brett explore conflict avoidance—one of the most common patterns that destroys marriages, business partnerships, and friendships. They distinguish between creating conflict to manipulate and allowing conflict to catalyze evolution. When two people are growing together, friction is the natural tension of evolution. To avoid it is to avoid growth.
The episode covers the root causes of conflict avoidance: fear of anger (one’s own and others’), fear of losing love, and the misconception that conflict means something is wrong. Joe explains that conflict avoidance builds resentment over time like a slow burn, and the longer you avoid it, the bigger the eventual explosion.
They discuss practical approaches including: learning to feel anger safely, recognizing that a relationship where you can’t have conflict isn’t actually safe, and seeing that the willingness to have uncomfortable conversations is what creates real intimacy and trust.
Key Concepts
- Conflict avoidance prevents the evolution that friction enables
- Fear of anger—your own and others’—drives conflict avoidance
- Prioritizing truth over comfort creates lasting relationships
- Resentment is stored conflict—the longer you avoid it, the bigger the explosion
- Healthy conflict is allowing what’s there, not creating fights
Key Quotes
“You’re not using conflict to get what you want. What you’re doing is you’re allowing conflict to get something better than you could actually imagine.”
“That is the natural tension of evolution. And to avoid it you avoid the evolution.”
“It’s more important for you to be in the truth of it than it is to make it good right now.”
“If there’s a problem you all talk about it despite the consequences of it, despite whether somebody gets upset, despite whether somebody might want to leave.”
“That’s where the conflict avoidance really destroys a marriage in the long run—because you’re not showing up in your truth as a way to avoid the potential outcome.”
Transcript
This week I had this very interesting conversation with somebody and we were taking a walk together and he started telling me the story of where his marriage was at and it’s the same story that I think I’ve heard a lot like the players are different but it’s basically hey we got married it was really great we’re happy and over time there’s like this kind of built up resentment there’s this like walking on eggshells there is this like we’re not like entirely happy with one another that whole thing and sometimes I hear that story in marriages sometimes I hear the story between Founders sometimes I hear the story inside of a job and to me usually there’s a couple key words in this that will point me to the idea that this is all created by conflict avoidance and that’s what this conversation I was having was like oh this is all about conflict avoidance and so we started talking about it it was really useful for him and then he said oh you know I’ve got this CEO friend who’s having same issues conflict avoidance getting in the way of his work in the way of his marriage and you don’t have an episode on it so could you make an episode on conflict avoidance and so that’s how this thing is happening. So when I’m saying conflict avoidance what I’m not saying is that you’re using conflict to get what you want. What you’re doing is you’re allowing conflict to get something better than you could actually imagine. And so what I mean there is that there’s typically if there’s two people and they are closer they’re working together they love each other and they start having conflict, there that is the room for growth for a better solution that’s like that is the natural tension of evolution and to avoid it you avoid the evolution. If you go into it then you speed the evolution. So it’s not creating tension it’s noticing the tension that’s there the conflict that’s there the friction that’s there and then leaning in instead of leaning away. And it’ll get bigger and bigger so that when you finally lean into the conflict it has a much higher chance of blowing things up. Whereas if you’re right on top of it in every moment—well it doesn’t need to be that diligent but if you on a weekly basis say okay what’s the tension here that I’m not addressing and I’m going to address it then it’s usually easier to move through most of it. So what makes this a thing? What makes people avoid conflict? A lot of it has to do with being scared of their own anger or scared and therefore scared of other people’s anger. Like fear of anger has a tremendous amount to do with it for most folks. They’re scared of losing love.