Why You Should Fight With Your Friends (and 7 Ways to Do it Well)

By Teigist Taye

We’ve all been there. Your friend does something a little irritating or out of pocket, but you decide not to say anything to them for fear of straining the relationship. Sometimes you forget about it and eventually all is good. Other times, and especially when the behavior is repeated, it leads to resentment—which is dangerous. Resentment often means a big blowup fight is right around the corner, or worse, the slowwww friendship drift to eventual ghost pipeline.

So why does this happen? As a recovering conflict-evader, my reasons for avoiding conflict within my friendships were two-fold. The first is that I didn’t see very many good examples of conflict growing up (think: yelling, name calling, slamming doors), and didn’t fancy experiencing more of that turmoil in my own adult life. What’s more, my romantic relationships (especially with men) became an outsized part of my life. From the ages of 15 to 22, there was never really a time I was truly single. And while I had many friends during this time, I placed more emotional weight on my romantic relationships, which meant I showed up less for my friendships, didn’t bring up issues, and allowed some of them to drift without much thought. What was interesting during this time is that I was not conflict-avoidant in my romantic relationships at all—and this was often the case for many friends that I talked to. We approached conflict head-on in our romantic relationships, but we side-stepped them in other parts of our lives.

This wasn’t a coincidence. By design, heteropatriarchy* privileges the romantic (hetero) relationship above all else, as it will provide the building block for the two-parent nuclear family unit. The ideal outcome of this system, especially as it functions through late-stage capitalism, is to create isolated nuclear family structures, where one or both parents focus solely on work and immediate family, leaving little room for building a wider community and organizing politically.

‍Recently, there has been a growing movement of people, mostly women, “decentering men” or decentering romantic relationships in their lives as a way to resist heteropatriarchy. This could mean different things to different people: not tying your worth to your relationship status, refusing to wait around for a man for various life experiences, or dressing outside of the male gaze, for example. What is universal, however, is that decentering romantic relationships in our lives can create more emotional availability to focus on re-centering other kinds of relationships and giving them the same weight, consideration, and intentionality that we previously afforded only to romantic relationships.

One way to recenter our friendships is by transforming our conflicts within them: caring enough about these bonds to be honest with one another, commiting to bringing up issues before they fester into resentments, and doing so in an intentional way that prioritizes the health of the relationship over any individual’s ego. Besides, under a capitalist system that seeks to isolate us from one another, strong friendship not only becomes radical, but a necessary foundation for meaningful resistance.

Of course, exactly how you handle conflict matters tremendously. Your approach could be the difference between a tense, defensive argument and a loving, caring exchange. Need some guidance? Here are 7 tips to help you better approach conflicts with your friends.

1. Get Used to Conflict

Conflicts are a natural, normal, and necessary part of life. While we should obviously be aiming to avoid conflict on the extreme end of the spectrum, the way to do this is by embracing the lower-level conflict that can be resolved through a simple conversation. The term “conflict-avoidant” is a little misleading here, as conflict can never truly be avoided, only repressed. And wouldn’t you rather just let it out and squash it then and there? Thinking about conflict as something that’s bound to happen, and happen often, makes the whole affair less scary. It allows us to stop focusing on “stopping” conflict, and instead prioritize moving through it efficiently and with care for one another.

2. Prioritize the Relationship (Over Individual Egos!)

One of the main barriers to productive conflict is when people retreat into their own triggers, and prioritize protecting their egos. This shows up most often as defensiveness, but also through hurtful attacks that aim to knock the other person down. Together, identify the problem as the conflict, and not each other. This way, as opposed to one person “winning” and the other “losing,” resolving the conflict is a joint win for both sides.

3. Check-in With Yourself

Productive conflicts happen when people are out of their initial reaction mode, and able to listen to one another. If you are feeling hurt by a friend and want to raise it with them, check-in with your body first. Practice some self-soothing techniques, and take some time to reflect on these questions. What happened, and how did it make you feel? Be specific about the words you use to describe someone’s action (not their state of mind) and your feeling. Sometimes it’s better to write this down. Eg. “Zarah didn’t speak to me today and I felt ignored”, is much better than “Zarah was being a cold bitch this morning and I felt angry”. Feelings wheels are helpful here for specificity.

4. You Need to Listen, Too!

Successfully navigating a conflict is about coming to a mutual understanding, which means both parties need to listen to each other. If you’re the one bringing up an issue, take some time before the conversation to put yourself in the other person's shoes and understand their perspective. Have they been going through a hard time lately? Could they have been trying to do something good for you but executed it insensitively? Expressing an understanding of, and willingness to listen to, the other person’s context during a conversation about conflict helps the whole thing move along a lot smoother.

5. Me, Myself, and I

Now, time for the actual conversation. A great trick when expressing hurt is to stick to ‘I’ statements as much as possible. Focusing on the effect (“I feel betrayed and alone”) as opposed to diagnosing the action or the person (“You're so fake”). This helps the other person focus on your feelings as opposed to feeling like they need to defend themselves from an accusation.

6. Receiving Feedback? Say Thank You

What if you’re on the receiving end of a concern? The next time a friend brings up something you have done that has hurt them, begin by thanking them for telling you this. This practice might be difficult to get used to at first, but once you get the hang of it, it quickly shifts your mindset—from defensiveness to gratitude that this person cares about your relationship and trusts you enough to raise an issue.

7. Think of Conflict as a Chance for Growth, and for Love

Resolving a conflict within a friendship means embarking on a new stage of friendship that meets your collective needs even more. Working together to find a resolution that makes sense for both parties is a deep act of love and care—it is looking at your dear friend and saying I can see that you’re hurt, or that we are both hurt, and I love you enough to make sure we can avoid this in the future. Growing together in this way can take slightly different forms depending on the people involved, and what their desired outcomes are. What’s always the case is this: successfully moving through a conflict in your friendship makes the relationship 10x stronger, and even more fulfilling.