The Case for Confrontation
Using Honesty and Vulnerability to Deal with Repeated Violations of Your Boundaries
As social creatures, connection with others is a key pillar for our mental health. If you are reading this, there's a good chance you are a young person like myself. Young people are great at making new connections, but we tend to struggle worrying about what others think of us. This trend in young people helps us value new experiences and people, but leaves us open to repeated violations of our boundaries.
Violation of boundaries is another way of saying that somebody’s behavior crossed over the line standing between acceptable and unacceptable. For example, if you have determined that it is totally unacceptable for your friend to borrow your clothes without your permission, your boundaries are violated when a friend engages in this behavior. When unacceptable behavior becomes a pattern, you may consider taking some action.
If you are a self-respecting person, there are two primary options for dealing with repeated boundary violations: cutting people off or confrontation. Cutting people off isn't always the most reasonable solution, so confrontation can be a powerful tool. Furthermore, since cooperation has been emphasized since we were toddlers, most of us could brush up on our confrontational skills.
What is Confrontation?
Confrontation has a negative connotation associated with it, but this is only the case when poor communication skills are utilized. There are three primary elements for confrontation to become an effective form of communication:
1) Respectful behavior
2) Good intentions
3) Precise boundaries
Respect is obviously a necessity for progress to be made in any conversation. This means the conversation should be carried out with respectful tone and language. Without mutual respect, both parties cannot come to an understanding on each perspective, thus preventing progress. Telling your girl you don't appreciate her "catty behavior" is going to halt any sort of productive conversation, even if you think you have a great point! It can be difficult to compose yourself respectfully when emotions are running high, so garnering some control in spite of your emotions can help.
Intention is also important. If the intention of a confrontation is nefarious, the confrontation is not beneficial for anyone. Not only does an ill-conceived confrontation impede beneficial progress, it also harms the relationship by further dividing the individuals from each other. For example, engaging in a confrontation because you want to show off your intelligence is a great way to breed resentment. For successful communication, the intention must be to reach a peaceful plan for the future that is agreeable to both parties. Would you want to spend time with someone who wants to fight for the sake of fighting?
If this is how you look walking into the room to get confrontational, you’re doing it wrong
Lastly, a confrontation must be precisely bound. A precisely bound confrontation is carefully worded to establish the scope of the discussion. Without this element, an argument about cleaning the dishes can turn into an argument about everything and anything.
“I get you feel this way about the dishes. Interesting you don’t bring this passion to the rest of our relationship”
Unless you are some sort of prophet blessed with the gift of speech, finding the right words to place boundaries on a discussion is a tall order. For us flawed human beings, careful consideration before engaging in a confrontation is an absolute necessity. However, this careful consideration requires the ability to confront our worst enemy.
Confrontation with Ourselves
The most important person that we need to be capable of confronting is ourselves. Unless you're in the mood to roleplay M. Night Shyamalan's Split, it would be pretty difficult to cut yourself off. Thus, we need to get confrontational with ourselves.
This starts with the ability to be honest with ourselves. There's a reason honesty is considered virtuous: it is good for us and those around us, but it is difficult to practice. The best way to improve at being honest with ourselves is more practice. This includes habitually being honest with others. I'm not suggesting to air people out with exhausting levels of detail about yourself, but maybe just start with avoiding telling lies. Yes, cut out even the small ones.
Honesty with others is fairly straightforward, but what does it mean to be honest with ourselves? It means we listen to our wants and needs through our emotions. In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson compares this type of self-awareness to an onion because it has layers and we cry the more we peel back these layers. According to Manson, there are three layers of questioning we should ask to understand ourselves better:
1) What am I feeling?
2) Why am I feeling this way?
3) What underlying values cause this feeling?
This practice of self-awareness can be difficult to fully understand since we are so attached to ourselves, so an example of this line of questioning may be useful:
Not too long ago, I found myself to be in a bit of a funk after moving to a new city where I didn't know anyone during the pandemic.
On the first layer, I was feeling both sad and angry.
Layer number two showed me that I was feeling sad because I missed my friends and family. I was angry because I felt that I had no control over the situation to connect with new people.
In the last layer, I found that I highly valued quality time with those I cared about, but had a distaste for spending time with myself.
By asking myself these questions and listening for an honest answer, I was able to reassess my values and rebuild a healthier relationship with myself. Had I not honestly answered these three questions, I would likely still be struggling with sadness and anger without any path forward.
This method of listening to, processing, and contemplating my emotions and their root causes has helped me come to understand myself better.
It is important to remember that the rules of proper confrontation still apply even with ourselves. Listening for answers to Manson's questions must be done respectfully and without judgment if we want to make any progress with understanding ourselves.
Calling yourself stupid for having certain emotions is just as harmful as calling your partner stupid for expressing her emotions to you. A better understanding of our emotions leads to a better understanding of ourselves. This level of self-awareness is crucial for remaining true to our wants and needs while denying the lies we tell ourselves.
One of the primary benefits of peeling back the layers of our onions is that we may come to understand that our values are not properly aligned before we decide to get confrontational with a loved one. The careful consideration of these questions can lead us to the conclusion, "Huh, maybe this isn't something a virtuous, mature, and self-respecting person would say." And voila, you saved yourself from making a loved one put up with your crap!
With the benefits of having practiced confrontation with ourselves and precisely understanding the roots of our emotions, we are much better equipped for confrontation with others who may cross our boundaries.
When Confrontation Isn't Enough
With the consideration associated with confrontation, we can learn quite a bit about the status of our relationships. We may notice that someone we care about continually walks all over us. This epiphany can help us realize that maybe it isn’t in our best interest to maintain this relationship.
“But Victor! What about forgiveness? Don’t you think people deserve second chances?” Great question my dear reader. Everyone deserves forgiveness. However, our forgiveness should not come at the expense of our self-respect. Your confrontational skills could be impeccable, but some people will continue to violate your boundaries. Others may avoid confrontation at all costs because they would rather pretend everything is perfect instead of face the discomforts of a difficult conversation.
In these situations:
Forgiveness may be better described as your ability to let go internally than to make amends externally.
If we want to feel connected in the relationships we highly value, confrontation every now and then must be part of our repertoire.
The Costs of Avoiding Confrontation
Now you might be thinking, "This is sort of interesting, but WOW, what a pain to put into practice. Why don't I just say ‘serenity now’ and let things go?"
Confrontation is a lot like cleaning. If we don't clean our houses frequently, we risk creating an ugly mess that could damage our housing. Similarly, if we don't effectively utilize confrontation, resentment can build up, creating an ugly mess that could leave us damaged.
Furthermore, fear of engaging in any sort of confrontation leads to the absence of emotional intimacy. This lack of intimacy leaves us vulnerable to being blindsided when the dirt piles up. Let fear dictate your relationship, and suddenly you're surprised that your house is collapsing from the resultant mold damage of all the filth under your rug!
Everything is fine! Certainly no need for maintenance here
Despite how unpleasant it is, we should take the time to clean up if we want to live in a pleasant environment. The cost of avoiding confrontation is simply much higher than the short term pain of cleaning up.
Conclusions
Adding confrontation and its prerequisite self-awareness as a viable skill to your toolkit is a great way to improve the quality of your relationships while effectively weeding out those that bring you down. Although this essay has focused on the development of our confrontational skills, we must remember that a screwdriver isn’t the best tool to hammer a nail. For tools to be effective, we must use them properly.
To properly utilize confrontation, we need:
1) Mutual respect
2) Good intentions
3) Precise boundaries
4) Honest awareness of our wants and needs
5) Honest evaluation of the relationship in question
Through employing these skills, we can shift our mindset away from viewing confrontation as something hostile. The new angle of confrontation becomes:
The use of honesty and vulnerability to stand up for yourself to loved ones engaging in unacceptable behavior.
It can be difficult to stand up to those we admire. Especially since we all care about what our loved ones think of us. When you struggle to find the courage to confront your loved ones, consider if the roles were reversed and you were unknowingly crossing the line:
Would you want your close friend, family member, or partner to think a strong connection with you isn’t worth facing short-term discomfort?
If your answer is no, you may want to employ the Golden Rule. Treat your loved ones with the same respect that you yourself deserve.