Great Relationships REQUIRE Conflict

Most of us don’t like conflict. Some of us are afraid of it. Some of us avoid it because we don’t know how to do it well. And some of us have gotten so good at shutting down that we barely register conflict at all. But avoiding conflict isn’t harmless. Over time, the things we don’t say—the hurt we swallow, the disrespect we ignore, the conversations we refuse to have—do something to us. They change our relationships, but they also change us. In this episode, I’m talking about what healthy confrontation actually looks like, why conflict avoidance can quietly erode your sense of self, and why learning to resolve conflict may be one of the most important mental health skills you can develop. And then I’m going back 2,000 years to look at Jesus’ instructions for handling conflict... because when you examine what He actually taught, there’s a remarkably sophisticated understanding of human psychology underneath it. What if conflict isn’t necessarily a threat to a good relationship?What if learning how to walk through it is part of what makes a good relationship possible? This is the Work of Being Human.